Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture

by Eiko Ikegami

In this path breaking book, Eiko Ikegami uncovers a complex history of social life in which aesthetic images became central to Japan's cultural identities. The people of premodern Japan built on earlier aesthetic traditions in part for their own sake, but also to find space for self-expression in the increasingly rigid and tightly controlled Tokugawa political system. In so doing, they incorporated the world of the beautiful within their social life which led to new modes of civility. They explored horizontal and voluntary ways of associating while immersing themselves in aesthetic group activities. Combining sociological insights in organizations with prodigious scholarship on cultural history, this book explores such wide-ranging topics as networks of performing arts, tea ceremony and haiku, the politics of kimono aesthetics, the rise of commercial publishing, the popularization of etiquette and manners, the vogue for androgyny in kabuki performance, and the rise of tacit modes of communication.

Genres: Japan, History, Nonfiction, Japanese History, Japanese Literature, Sociology

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ikegami's "Bonds of Civility" combines the historical analysis of poetry, flower arrangement and the tea ceremony with sociological theory, revamping ideas of public and private civil society in Japan. Many of Ikegami's lines of analysis are interesting: the difference between the Habermas's analysis of politics and the emergence of autonomous individuals as civil society in Europe and the emergence of a different kind of civil society in Japan with the Shogunate and feudal Japan, for example, is phenomenal.
While I applaud the efforts of Ikegami to shake up East Asian historical interpretation, I found it difficult to accept that participation in poetry circles represents "boundary trespasses" between the levels of social hierarchy found in Japan. Indeed, Ikegami has difficulty drawing these boundaries as well: between chapters, arts popular among the common people were at once high arts filled with literati, great script writers, and fantastic historical illusions would later be described as low, debase arts which brought people into a frenzy.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently I have heard a lot of Japanese scholars challenging the idea that Tokugawa Japan was a constricted feudal society. Eiko Ikegami argues that the Tokugawa aesthetic publics of haiku, flower arranging, and tea ceremony groups, and the spread of "common knowledge" through literacy and the publishing industry, are part of the reason Japan was able to make its rapid transition to "modernity" in Meiji.
As a participant in a haiku circle and a resident of modern Japan, I found myself nodding in recognition through a lot of the book. I also used to think that the iemoto system of arts learning was kind of a racket, but reading this made me realize that becoming a master and teacher of an art was actually one of the few ways that a person could be recognized on his own merit, free of the constraints of feudal society. 納得。

[Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suggestive thesis of trying to expand Habermas's notions of the public sphere, as well as looking at the Elias thesis of civility in Japan. But like a lot of historical sociology, too much theory, not enough evidence.

[Jacqueline Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

eiko is a genius AND she gave me an a. holler.

[Benemint · Rating 4 out of 5]

She is bold in making theoretical claims, which makes the book a little awkward. But there are many intriguing descriptions of aesthetic lives in Tokugawa Japan.