A01=Mary Elizabeth Berry
agronomy
asian history
Author_Mary Elizabeth Berry
cartography
Category=NHF
Category=NHTB
commerce
common frames of reference
communication
cultural literacy
diverse data
early modern japan
early modern period
east asian culture
entertainment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
gastronomy
japan
japanese culture
japanese society
markets
material culture
media studies
medicine
mobility
model of the land
national collectivity
print culture
self fashioning
self knowledge
sociability
state surveillance
status hierarchy
travel
Product details
- ISBN 9780520254176
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Aug 2007
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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.
Mary Elizabeth Berry is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto (UC Press, 1994) and Hideyoshi (1982).
