From the Archives: Stranger in the Shogun’s City
Over the last few weeks the book Stranger in the Shogun’s City has come up several times in conversations with fellow history buffs and book nerds. Each time, my response has been “I love that book!” And after a while I decided it was time to tell those of you who didn’t read this review when I first posted it in 2020 that I loved this book. I hope you love it too.
One of the major challenges historians face when writing about the lives of non-elite women of the past is the absence of sources. Sources written by men that describe their lives are rare. Those written by the women themselves are rarer yet. Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World, by historian Amy Stanley, demonstrates how rich history can be when such sources are available.
The project began when Stanley became fascinated with a family archive that included dozens of letters written in early nineteenth century Japan by a rebellious woman named Tsuneno and the letters (and legal documents) created by her family in response. Together, these letters created a rare picture of the life an unconventional, non-elite woman, written in her own words.
Born in 1804 in a rural village, Tsuneno was the daughter of a Buddhist priest. She tried to settle into the traditional (and relatively privileged) life that her family expected of her, but it didn’t take. After three divorces and faced with another arranged marriage, she ran away to Edo (now Tokyo), then one of the largest cities of the world. Her life in Edo was always hard and often scandalous by the standards of her family and society. She made horrible decisions. She moved from tenement to tenement, took menial jobs that didn’t pay enough to support her, and married, divorced, and re-married a violent man from her home region. Her life can be summed up in a single line from one of her letters: “I ended up in so much trouble.”
Stanley places Tsuneno firmly in her historical context, creating a multi-layered picture of life in Japan in the decades before it was forcibly “opened” to the West by Commodore Perry’s fleet in 1854. Stranger in the Shogun’s City is a vivid and often lyrical portrait not only of Tsuneno, but of Edo, the city she loved.
Idols of Perversity
In the course of reading around the edges of the book topic I’m exploring[1], I was surprised to come across a discussion of a book I found useful while writing my dissertation: Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture by literary scholar Bram Dijkstra. I found the way the author used Dijkstra’s work as a theoretical prop for her own arguments inappropriate, unconvincing, and actively annoying.[2] On the other hand, it has been at least 25 and probably closer to 40 years since I read Dijkstra, so I decided to take another look.[3]
Jean Delville. Idol of Perversity. 1891
The title, Idols of Perversity, comes from a graphite drawing by Belgian Symbolist painter and author Jean Delville (1867-1953) The painting has been described as embodying fin-de-siècle fascination with the femme fatale as a force of temptation, corruption, and hidden power; Dijkstra, in turn, is fascinated with that fascination.
Dijkstra describes his work as an “iconography of misogyny” —a term that seems more accurate than the “feminine evil” of the title. He explores a number of repeating themes as they appear in images drawn from the visual arts in the academic tradition of the late nineteenth century: sleeping women, dead women, women looking at themselves in mirrors, women with dangerous animals,[4] women as dangerous animals. Many of the works draw from classical mythology and medieval stories[5], though Dijkstra also looks at images of nineteenth century women through the same lens. All are erotic to some degree. (Not surprisingly, since Dijkstra links nineteenth-century discomfort with female sexuality and feminism through the book.) He enriches his arguments with related examples from poets, scientist, and social theorists of the period. His analysis of any given painting can feel far-fetched; the iterative effect is powerful.
In my memory, Idols of Perversity was lush, dense, and challenging. Certainly it was an intriguing model for my dissertation, in which I chased recurring themes from art and literature in the early nineteenth century. The book did not capture my imagination in quite the same way returning to it decades and thousands of books[6] later. I suspect that has as much to do with me as a reader as it does with the book itself.
[1] Nope. Still not prepared to put it out into the world.
[2] Yes, I have opinions. And your point?
[3] Procrastination comes in many shapes and sizes. There is a reason that my to-be-read piles never seem to get smaller.
[4] Lots of big snakes. Iconography is not always subtle.
[5] Mythological rapes and murders are easier for viewers to handle.
[6] Not an exaggeration.
From the Archives: Road Trip Through History: Memorial Day near Omaha Beach
Here in the United States, we are heading into the Memorial Day weekend. My Own True Love and I always find a way to honor the war dead on Memorial Day. We’ve gone to services in small towns and distant suburbs, usually put on by local VFW chapters with a Boy Scout color guard. We’ve visited military museums. For several years our go-to service was the one put on in Grant Park, which manages to have all the emotional punch of a small town service even though it occurs in the heart of downtown Chicago. I don’t know yet what we’ll do on Monday, but I have no doubt we will find a service to attend.
In anticipation, I’m sharing a post from 2018 about an event that’s been on my mind lately.
On Memorial Day, My Own True Love and I make sure we attend a service in honor of the fallen. This year we were in Normandy on Memorial Day, enjoying a D-Day tour. In some ways, the entire tour was an extended Memorial Day experience, defined by General John Logan, who established the formal holiday in 1868, as “cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foe.”
My Own True Love and I expected the Sunday before Memorial Day to be a gut-wrenching experience. The schedule included attending the official D-Day memorial service at the American Cemetery near Omaha Beach.* It soon became clear that the official service was too distant to have much impact. Instead our guide led us through the cemetery, telling us stories about fallen soldiers, love, loss, and heroism. The National World War II Museum, which organized the tour, had provided a flower arrangement and a large number of white roses. The members of the tour improvised a small service of our own. One member suggested that we leave the arrangement on the grave of an unknown soldier. Another suggested that the veterans in our group present the arrangement. It was a powerful moment. Tears were shed. (In fact, I am tearing up typing this after the fact.) As a ceremony, it had all the impact that the official celebration did not.(Leading me to suspect that intimacy is an essential ingredient in a Memorial Day service.) Afterwards, we scattered to place individual white roses on graves.**
As I walked back to the bus, I heard the sound of a lone bugle playing “Taps”–the end of the official celebration. I stopped to listen with a lump in my throat and an ache in my chest.
Remember the fallen. Thank the living. Pray for peace.
*Not the first time we’ve visited an official American cemetery abroad. It is always a moving experience. The Visitors’ Center at the cemetery in Normandy was closed due to the ceremony. Rumor has it that the exhibits are excellent. Quite frankly, I don’t think I could have handled any more.
**I would have liked to place mine on the grave of one of the four women buried in the cemetery. (I am pleased to say that one of the male members of the tour asked where they were buried before I could.) Unfortunately, they were all buried in a portion of the cemetery that was roped off to protect the ground due to recent weather conditions. While I am perfectly willing to kick open a door when there is a good reason, this didn’t seem to be one of these times.