This course is centered on urban popular culture, particularly that of Edo (present-day Tokyo) from the early 17th to the late 19th century. While there is a list of content that we will cover— woodblock prints, kabuki theater, pleasure quarters, street gangs, commoner carnivals, popular literature and so on—we will not limit our investigations to the mere enumeration and chronological layout of a certain content that might be labeled “popular culture in early modern Japan.”  We will be just as concerned with the form and the concept of “popular culture” in early modern Japan as we are the content.

One question that will engage us is the degree to which formations of popular culture serve to liberate or control everyday lives.  Another is how popular cultural practices have served to construct, reinforce, and contest gender, status, and ethnic identities. There is a practically unlimited supply of items that we might include in our investigation; unfortunately we do not have unlimited time in pursuing them.  Thus, I have made strategic choices in organizing our material.  For the most part I have chosen topics according to a couple of considerations: first, availability of English-language materials for readings; second, connections that can be drawn among topics.  After that, it’s my own personal fashion decision.