Section 7 | History, Politics and International Relations| Session 9C, Panel
Chair and Organiser: Beatrice Bodart-Bailey (Ôtsuma Women's University)
In helping us understand Japan's encounter with the European world in the early modern period, European source material is indispensable. As far as Japan's encounter with Catholic Christianity is concerned, much interesting material, mainly in Spanish and Portuguese, has remained either underutilised or else ignored, especially in the English-speaking world. This is pity because this material sheds much light on Japan's involvement and participation in international relations far beyond its traditional east Asian world. It also sheds much additional light on our understanding of the nature of the Euro-Japanese encounter itself. How did the European and Japanese 'selves' view their respective 'others', and what use was made of the historical encounter by various elites in both Europe.
Beatrice Bodart-Bailey (Ôtsuma Women's University)
The multi-volume set known as Tokugawa jikki (lit.: The True Tokugawa Record) is a work no serious student of the Tokugawa period can ignore. The greater part of the work is organized as a daily record, collating material from various sources. The convenience for historians of being able to check at a glance what events occurred on a specific day is obvious. This is especially so since the bakufu's official daily record, Ryûei hinami ki or Edo bakufu nikki, is still available only in manuscript form, expensive to obtain as copy, in beautiful, yet for most scholars difficult to decipher cursive writing. With the convenience offered by Tokugawa jikki, it is, however, easy to overlook that the record is shaped not only by the editorial policy of what topics needed covering, but also what works and which parts of a work should be cited and which not. This paper explores the political motives that shaped this record.
Laura Nenzi (Florida International University)
The Edo period (1600-1868) rapidly evolved from an age of samurai culture to an age when money mattered more than pedigree in mediating access to services. Against this background developed a thriving travel industry that offered many a chance to acquire historical perspective through tangible artifacts.
Already by the first century of the early modern period, the souvenir industry had gone a long way. Rare were the travelers who would be content to return home without tangible mementos of their journeys. Temples, shrines and circuits first created the commercialized souvenir by putting a price tag on their amulets. The secular versions did not wait too long to make the scene. These objects made sites acquirable and transportable, and perpetuated associations with standardized icons and quintessential stereotypes. Quaint souvenirs and specialized gastronomies allowed diversity and re-creation to be purchased by facilitating the acquisition of sanctity, of lyricism, and of history.
As travelers demanded to purchase history through tangible amenities, the tourist industry replied with a proliferation of merchandise and self-referential simulacra. Tangible objects and local specialties thus became the material equivalents of a quotation, the easily purchasable counterparts of an intertextual engagement. Through such icons, the spaces of travel multiplied ad infinitum, becoming domesticated, pervasive, and acquirable by way of a monetary transaction.