Japanese Literature discussion

There are several of us reading the non-fiction book Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period by Mary Elizabeth Berry as a buddy read starting in September.

Summary:
A quiet revolution in knowledge separated the early modern period in Japan from all previous time. After 1600, self-appointed investigators used the model of the land and cartographic surveys of the newly unified state to observe and order subjects such as agronomy, medicine, gastronomy, commerce, travel, and entertainment. They subsequently circulated their findings through a variety of commercially printed texts: maps, gazetteers, family encyclopedias, urban directories, travel guides, official personnel rosters, and instruction manuals for everything from farming to lovemaking. In this original and gracefully written book, Mary Elizabeth Berry considers the social processes that drove the information explosion of the 1600s. Inviting readers to examine the contours and meanings of this transformation, Berry provides a fascinating account of the conversion of the public from an object of state surveillance into a subject of self-knowledge.


"Japan in Print "shows how, as investigators collected and disseminated richly diverse data, they came to presume in their audience a standard of cultural literacy that changed anonymous consumers into an "us" bound by common frames of reference. This shared space of knowledge made society visible to itself and in the process subverted notions of status hierarchy. Berry demonstrates that the new public texts projected a national collectivity characterized by universal access to markets, mobility, sociability, and self-fashioning.

The non-fiction buddy read may be over a 2 month period. Please join in if interested.

Nice find. I'll see if I can't scrounge up a copy and I'd be happy to join you!

I like the way Berry starts the book with information overload, to give you a feeling for how overwhelmed our potential traveler is when looking for advice. Then she backs off and gives us the larger picture.

This book is a bit too academic for my taste, but it's still within the bounds of readability. Only a few of the sentences are less than clear on their first reading.

Earlier this year I read Early Modern Japanese Literature , an overview of Edo period fiction with genres, authors, and excerpts. I thought that might be applicable here, but it seems Berry is only interested in non-fiction in Japan in Print.

Read through the first chapter last night and, just as Bill notes, there was information overload. I am currently planning a trip to north Honshu so comparing my research to the fictional character in chapter one was very interesting.
(9/21/2025) finished chapter 2.

I also did chapter one, I like the stylistic immersive approach that was taken. A fun and easy way to present and access a massive amount of information.

Chapter 3 on Maps is considerably better than chapters 1 and 2. Yes, there's still a layer of academic verbosity on top, but the subject matter is unique.

The idea that large scale maps are an aspect of modernity isn't something I'd seen before. Yes, there were a few large scale pre-modern maps, but very few. It was centralized government and colonialism that brought them about.

It lends further credence to the view of Tokugawa Japan as "Early Modern" as opposed to "Medieval." In the late 19th century both westerners visiting Japan and Japanese reformers saw Tokugawa Japan as "Medieval" because it was feudal. The two were conflated in western minds because Europe began to move away from both at the same time. Japan didn't.

I am just a bit into Chapter 3, just where she is explaining the likely reason(s) for the explosion of map creation and wider availability. I wish I had more reading time.