The Centre for Japanese Research (CJR) at the University of British Columbia is delighted to announce a roundtable on the role of the historical imagination in historiography, focusing on approaches to writing women’s history. Our three roundtable members, Professors Gaye Rowley, Amy Stanley, and Marcia Yonemoto, will draw from their scholarship and respond to Prof. Stanley’s new book, Stranger in the Shogun’s City, in considering how we reconstruct the past, particularly when faced with scanty documentary evidence.
We invite you to join us online and look forward to your questions.
Featuring
• Gaye Rowley (Waseda University)
• Amy Stanley (Northwestern University)
• Marcia Yonemoto (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Time
Thursday, December 17, 2020 5-6:15PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Thursday, December 17, 2020 8-9:15PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Friday, December 18, 2020 10-11:15AM in Japan Time
Registration
https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Usf-CpqzwpHdMOqpw0WvmQTBrasQhISu6l
Note
If you do not receive an email with access details by the day before the event, please email bianca.chui@ubc.ca
For disability accommodations, questions, or concerns, please either email bianca.chui@ubc.ca.
We can also be reached via Twitter @ubcCJR
About the Presenters
Gaye Rowley teaches English and Japanese literature at Waseda University in Tokyo, where she is Director of the Library. Her complete translation of In the Shelter of the Pine (Matsukage nikki, ca. 1712) will be published by Columbia University Press in 2021. She is the author or translator of several biographies of Japanese women, including An Imperial Concubine’s Tale, Yasano Akiko and The Tale of Genji, and Masuda Sayo’s Autobiography of a Geisha.
Amy Stanley is a Professor of History at Northwestern University. She is the author of Selling Women: Prostitution, Households, and the Market in Early Modern Japan (UC Press, 2012) and Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner, 2020), as well as articles in The Journal of Japanese Studies, The Journal of Asian Studies, and the American Historical Review. She received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard in 2007, and she has held fellowships from the Japan Foundation, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Marcia Yonemoto is Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period (1603-1868) (UC Press, 2003) and The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan (UC Press, 2016), and co-editor, with Mary Elizabeth Berry, of What Is a Family? Answers from Early Modern Japan (UC Press, 2019). Her articles have appeared in The Journal of Asian Studies, Japan Forum, the U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, and other venues. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, The Japan Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Her current research project is a history of adoption in Japan from 1700 to 1925.
About the Book
Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World
Published by Simon & Schuster
A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo—the city that would become Tokyo—and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West.
The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces—and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval—she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak.
With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno’s life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture—and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions.
Immersive and fascinating, Stranger in the Shogun’s City is a revelatory work of history, layered with rich detail and delivered with beautiful prose, about the life of a woman, a city, and a culture.
Available for purchase from Simon & Schuster in various formats.
