1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910811115303321

Autore

Bernstein Gail Lee

Titolo

Isami's house : three centuries of a Japanese family / / Gail Lee Bernstein

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2005

ISBN

9786612358333

1-4237-3149-2

1-282-35833-2

0-520-93942-5

1-59875-802-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (334 pages)

Disciplina

929/.2/0952

Soggetti

Japan History Tokugawa period, 1600-1868

Japan History 1868-

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-267) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Prologue: history revealed -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on conventions -- Time Line -- Central persons -- Introduction: An Agrarian Childhood -- PART ONE. ANCESTORS AND DESCENDANTS -- PART TWO. GOING OUT INTO THE WORLD -- PART THREE. EMPIRE,WAR, AND DEFEAT -- PART FOUR, LOVE AND OTHER FORMS OF COMPENSATION -- EPILOGUE. KIN WORK -- NOTES -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

In this powerful and evocative narrative, Gail Lee Bernstein vividly re-creates the past three centuries of Japanese history by following the fortunes of a prominent Japanese family over fourteen generations. The first of its kind in English, this book focuses on Isami, the eleventh generation patriarch and hereditary village head. Weaving back and forth between Isami's time in the first half of the twentieth century and his ancestors' lives in the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, Bernstein uses family history to convey a broad panoply of social life in Japan since the late 1600's. As the story unfolds, she provides remarkable details and absorbing anecdotes about food, famines, peasant uprisings, agrarian values, marriage customs, child-rearing practices, divorces, and social



networks. Isami's House describes the role of rural elites, the architecture of Japanese homes, the grooming of children for middle-class life in Tokyo, the experiences of the Japanese in Japan's wartime empire and on the homefront, the aftermath of the country's defeat, and, finally, the efforts of family members to rebuild their lives after the Occupation. The author's forty-year friendship with members of the family lends a unique intimacy to her portrayal of their history. Readers come away with an inside view of Japanese family life, a vivid picture of early modern and modern times, and a profound understanding of how villagers were transformed into urbanites and what was gained, and lost, in the process.