Reconfiguring Modernity

by Thomas, Julia Adeney

• ISBN13: 9780520228542
• ISBN10: 0520228545
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

A study of changing Japanese understandings of "nature" from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.

Author Biography

Julia Adeney Thomas is Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Notre Dame and winner of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians' award for best article of 1999

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Note on Transliteration	p. xv
Introduction: The Trouble with Nature	p. 1
Objections	p. 4
Justifications	p. 10
Outline of Nature's Political History in Japan	p. 29
The Topographical Imagination of Tokugawa Politics	p. 32
Mental Maps	p. 34
China as Imperial Center	p. 40
Japan's Imperial Center	p. 43
Rural Centers	p. 48
Centers of Learning	p. 53
Divorce Proceedings: Space versus Time	p. 56
Early Meiji's Contentious Natures	p. 60
Natural Forms of Contention: Laws and Bodies	p. 62
The Historiography of Meiji Ideologies	p. 73
Nature's Indeterminate Determinism	p. 80
Kato Hiroyuki: Turning Nature into Time	p. 84
Kato Hiroyuki and Tenko	p. 87
Shinsei tai'i and Kokutai shinron	p. 95
Jinken shinsetsu	p. 103
The Reaction to Jinken shinsetsu	p. 108
Baba Tatsui: Natural Laws and Willful Natures	p. 111
The Equilibrium of Forces in Nature and History	p. 114
The Death Wishes of Baba Tatsui and Herbert Spencer	p. 117
Tenpu jinkenron: The Reply to Kato	p. 121
Catalyzing Nature: The Role of Will in Baba's Social Evolution	p. 130
Ueki Emori: Singing the Body Electric	p. 133
The Basic Body of Tenpu jinkenben	p. 138
The Political Problems of Ueki's Bodies	p. 146
A Dance of Loneliness	p. 155
The Acculturation of Japanese Nature	p. 158
Social Evolution's Victory	p. 160
Social Evolution's Defeat: The Political Inadequacy of a Progressive Cosmopolis	p. 163
Nature as Japanese Culture: Bringing the Outside In	p. 168
The Last Vestiges of Social Darwinism	p. 176
Ultranational Nature: Dead Time and Dead Space	p. 179
Shinto's National Nature	p. 188
Economizing Nature	p. 193
Educating the National Family	p. 198
World-Historical Nature	p. 201
Conclusion: Natural Freedom	p. 209
Index	p. 227
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