Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan

In this pioneering study, David L. Howell looks beneath the surface structures of the Japanese state to reveal the mechanism by which markers of polity, status, and civilization came together over the divide of the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Howell illustrates how a short roster of malleable, explicitly superficial customs—hairstyle, clothing, and personal names— served to distinguish the "civilized" realm of the Japanese from the "barbarian" realm of the Ainu in the Tokugawa era. Within the core polity, moreover, these same customs distinguished members of different social status groups from one another, such as samurai warriors from commoners, and commoners from outcasts.

David L. Howell is Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University. He is the author of Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery (California, 1995).

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
2. The Geography of Status
3. Status and the Politics of the Quotidian
4. Violence and the Abolition of Outcaste Status
5. Ainu Identity and the Early Modern State
6. The Geography of Civilization
7. Civilization and Enlightenment
8. Ainu Identity and the Meiji State
Epilogue Modernity and Ethnicity

Notes
Works Cited
Index