Please note: This lecture will be in-person only and will not be recorded.

This talk examines the activities of two former samurai who committed themselves to social and political reform in the decades following the 1868 Meiji Restoration: Nakagawa Yokotarō (1836-1903) and Sumiya Koume (1850-1920). In this talk, Professor Anderson suggests that this period of rapid transformation offered each of them a new start and the chance to create a new identity. Together, their stories shed light on how gender roles changed in these years and demonstrate how modern Japanese society was increasingly organized around the principle of gender difference.

Marnie S. Anderson is the Barbara Richmond 1940 Professor of History at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she teaches premodern and modern Japanese history and modern East Asian history. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2005. Her current research investigates the rise of large-scale conservative women’s activism in prewar and wartime Japan with a focus on the Patriotic Women’s Association (Aikoku fujinkai).

This lecture is made possible with the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at cjsevents@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.