Co-Sponsors:
The Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley, the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Japan Foundation, and the Association for Asian Studies.
ABOUT
Professors Mary Elizabeth Berry of the University of California, Berkeley and Marcia Yonemoto of the University of Colorado Boulder are organizing an international, interdisciplinary conference on the history of the early modern Japanese family to take place at UC Berkeley September 26-28, 2014. The importance of the family and the family system in early modern Japan is incontestable, and considerable research, largely centered in the social sciences, was done on the subject between the 1970s and 1990s. But the humanistic dimensions of the family have seldom been examined in a sustained and focused way, and the subject in general has not received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years. This conference will bring together thirteen leading scholars of early modern Japanese history and literature, who will present and discuss papers on key aspects of the construction, development, maintenance, and representation of the family in general, and of specific families in particular.
After the conclusion of the conference, we plan to revise and then publish the papers as essays in a conference volume to make our research available to a larger audience.
SCHEDULE
Friday, October 3, 2014
Session I | 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Mary Elizabeth Berry, University of California, Berkeley
Managing a Family Fortune: Value and Practice in the Expansion of the Mitsui House
Morgan Pitelka, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Material Legacies: Collecting, Displaying, and Transmitting Early Modern Family Histories
Amy Stanley, Northwestern University
Fashioning the Family: A Household Economy in Silk, Cotton, and Paper
Session II | 1:30 - 4:30 PM
David Spafford, University of Pennsylvania
Filial Vassals and Loyal Sons: The Contours of Familial Obligation in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan
Luke Roberts, University of California Santa Barbara
The ‘Inside Story’ on Samurai Households: Records of Women in ‘Family-use’ Lineages
David Atherton, University of Colorado, Boulder
Imagining the Family in Crisis: the Early Modern Household in Popular Vendetta Literature
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Session III | 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Marcia Yonemoto, University of Colorado Boulder
Ties that Bind: In-Marrying Husbands (muko yōshi) and the Perpetuation of Early Modern Daimyo Families
Anne Walthall, University of California, Irvine
On the Margins of Family Life: Temporary residents in Hirata Atsutane’s household
Fabian Drixler, Yale University
Imagined Communities of the Dead, the Living, and the Yet to Be Born
Session IV | 1:30-4:30
Group Discussion
Discussants
Daniel Botsman, Yale University
Sungyun Lim, University of Colorado Boulder
Kären Wigen, Stanford University
ABSTRACTS
After the conclusion of the conference, we plan to revise and then publish the papers as essays in a conference volume to make our research available to a larger audience.
David Atherton, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Colorado Boulder—Presenter
Paper title: “Imagining the Family in Crisis: the Early Modern Household in Popular Vendetta Literature”
--Focuses on the ways in which fictional revenge literature in the early modern period facilitated and revealed different popular imaginations of the household.
Mary Elizabeth Berry, Professor, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley—Co-organizer and Presenter
Paper title: “Managing a Family Fortune: Value and Practice in the Expansion of the Mitsui House”
--Focuses on a prominent early modern merchant house to explore the management of wealth and the connection between work and family.
Fabian Drixler, Associate Professor, Department of History, Yale University—Presenter
Paper title: “A Japanese Puzzle in the History of Contraception”
--Focuses on the barriers to the spread of effective contraception from prostitution into marriage, which are suggestive about the role of sexual propriety in marital relations.
Morgan Pitelka, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill—Presenter
Paper title: “Material Legacies: Collecting, Displaying, and Transmitting Early Modern Family Histories”
-- Focuses on how elite early modern families deployed material culture in memorial rituals, commemorative tea ceremonies, and displays of family heirlooms.
Luke Roberts, Professor, Department of History, University of California Santa Barbara—Presenter
Paper title: “The ‘Inside Story’ on Samurai Households: Records of Women in ‘Family-use’ Lineages”
--Focuses on the role of women in samurai houses serving the Yamauchi daimyo by analyzing the differences between lineages submitted to the daimyo, and lineages created for use within a related group of samurai families.
David Spafford, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania—Presenter
Amy Stanley, Associate Professor, Department of History, Northwestern University—Presenter
Paper title: “Between the City and the Countryside: The Long-Distance Family in Early Modern Japan”
--Focuses on how nineteenth-century families in Kanto and Kansai managed long-distance households, and how distance altered the balance of power between men and women as well as between parents and children.
Anne Walthall, Professor, Department of History, University of California Irvine—Presenter
Paper title: “On the Margins of Family Life: Temporary residents in Hirata Atsutane’s household”
--Focuses on the household of nativist scholar Hirata Atsutane as a case study of the permeability of family boundaries.
Marcia Yonemoto, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Colorado Boulder—Co-organizer and Presenter
Paper title: “Ties that Bind: In-Marrying Husbands (muko yōshi) and the Perpetuation of Early Modern Daimyo Families”
--Focuses on the widespread, strategic use of adoption and marriage among daimyo families in the form of marrying in adopted heirs as husbands for daughters, and its effect on gender and family relations inside and outside of the family itself.
VENUE
Geballe Room | 220 Stephens Hall
The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
Stephens Hall is located in the central part of the campus near Sather Tower (the clock tower). It is a cream-colored stucco building with a large arched breezeway in its center.
From the south entrance at Telegraph Avenue, proceed across the plaza to Sather Gate and turn right, walking up the hill past Wheeler Hall and South Hall. Stephens Hall is on your right, directly south of the clock tower. Once you are in in the breezeway of Stephens Hall, take the door on the right, walk through the hallway, and exit to the terrace; walk across the terrace to the Center’s entrance.