In this episode, Dr. Gideon Fujiwara (Lethbridge) positions the Meiji Restoration in the comparative context of a global "Age of Revolution."  We discuss the "revolutionary" aspects of the Restoration, including popular involvement, political upheaval, and cultural change during the Meiji Period, touching on the political significance of the Utakai Hajime poetry-reading ceremony and global approaches to the Restoration in the classroom. (Transcript here).

In this lecture, Dr. Gideon Fujiwara (Lethbridge) discusses the ritualization of the "Utakai Hajime" imperial poetry reading-ceremony in the early Meiji Period.  Within the context of nation-building programs carried out by the Meiji government, the inclusion of poems composed by civilians in the poetry ceremony represented an attempt to make the imperial family more visible to the people.

This presentation was delivered on 24th November, 2017 at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. 

In this lecture, Dr. Gideon Fujiwara (Lethbridge) discusses the ritualization of the "Utakai Hajime" imperial poetry reading-ceremony in the early Meiji Period.  Within the context of nation-building programs carried out by the Meiji government, the inclusion of poems composed by civilians in the poetry ceremony represented an attempt to make the imperial family more visible to the people.

This presentation was delivered on 24th November, 2017 at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. 

In this episode, Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh (UBC) sheds light on the story of Nogi Shizuko and her gruesome suicide alongside husband Nogi Maresuke on the day of the Meiji Emperor's funeral in 1912.  Noting the relative silence on Shizuko's role in the story, we discuss the absence of Shizuko as a figure in anti-war or women's movements in the prewar period, her reappearance in the postwar, and the position of women more broadly in Japanese wartime ideology. 

In this episode, Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh (UBC) sheds light on the story of Nogi Shizuko and her gruesome suicide alongside husband Nogi Maresuke on the day of the Meiji Emperor's funeral in 1912.  Noting the relative silence on Shizuko's role in the story, we discuss the absence of Shizuko as a figure in anti-war or women's movements in the prewar period, her reappearance in the postwar, and the position of women more broadly in Japanese wartime ideology. 

In this episode, Dr. David Howell (Harvard University) situates the Meiji Restoration as one moment in Japan's longer nineteenth century of social, cultural, and political transformations.  We consider the "spirit of 1868" that informed many of the early Meiji state's reforms, along with their impacts on people in different areas of Japan, including the Ainu population of Hokkaido. (Transcript here).

In this episode, Dr. David Howell (Harvard University) situates the Meiji Restoration as one moment in Japan's longer nineteenth century of social, cultural, and political transformations.  We consider the "spirit of 1868" that informed many of the early Meiji state's reforms, along with their impacts on people in different areas of Japan, including the Ainu population of Hokkaido.

In this presentation, Dr. David Howell (Harvard University) argues that the night-soil economy of Edo offers a novel way to situate late Tokugawa and early Meiji Japan into the broader history of the nineteenth-century world, while at the same time challenging the tendency to essentialize the “greenness” of early modern Japanese cities.

This presentation was delivered on 10th November, 2017 at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.