Interdisciplinary Edo

Interdisciplinary Edo brings together scholars from across the methodological spectrum to explore new approaches to innovative humanistic research on early modern Japan (1603-1868).

Joshua Schlachet is an Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona, where he teaches courses on Japanese history, dietary cultures, and everyday life. He is a historian of early modern Japan, specializing in the cultural history of food and nourishment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His monograph in progress, Nourishing Life: Cultures of Food and Health in Early Modern Japan, examines the emergence of dietary common knowledge and its engagement with social hierarchy, economic productivity, and moral cultivation. William C. Hedberg is an Associate Professor of Japanese literature at Arizona State University. His primary focus is the Japanese reception of Chinese fiction and drama during the early modern period, and he is the author of The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction: The Water Margin and the Making of a National Canon (2019). His current research project focuses on the literature and culture of travel in Edo-period Japan, with special emphasis on Japanese perceptions of the Manchu conquest of the Ming.

1. Introduction: Doing Interdisciplinary Edo Joshua Schlachet and William C. Hedberg Part I: Interconnected Edo-Global Roots and Routes of Early Modern Japan 2. The Buddhist World Map in Edo Print Culture: Religious Vision in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction D. Max Moerman 3. What Was Dutch in Early Modern Japan? Claire E. Cooper 4. Nonsense, Gibberish, and Scribble: Playing with Foreign Languages and Re-Orienting Epistemic Regimes Drisana Misra 5. Ocean Influences: Managing Risk in Coastal Shipping Jakobina Arch Part II: Objects and Ideas-Crosscurrents in Material and Intellectual Culture 6. The Environmental and Material Foundations of Kyoto Morgan Pitelka 7. Seeing History: Warrior Images in Late Edo Popular Culture Hilary K. Snow 8. Ninety-Nineteenth Bottles of Wine: Objects, Affects, and Intoxication in Shikitei Sanba's Namaei Katagi Dylan McGee Part III: Popular Culture and Aesthetics-How Serious Was Play in Edo Japan? 9. Poetry, Natural Wonders, and Changing Perception in Tokugawa Japan Nobuko Toyosawa 10. New Bracken and Flying Hover Flies and the Expanding Universe of Painting in Late Eighteenth-Century Japan Chelsea Foxwell 11. Against Popularization: Anti-Populist Currents in Edo-Period Literati Culture Yoshitaka Yamamoto Part IV: Edo After Edo- What is 'Early Modern,' 'Japanese,' and 'Cultural' About Early Modern Japanese Culture? 12. The Modern Discovery of F-ry- in Twentieth Century Japan Jingyi Li 13. Histories of Periodization: Demarcations, Blurred Boundaries, and New Perspectives Christina Laffin 14. Modern Predicaments and Forgotten Enlightenment: Towards a Post-Post-Colonial Humanity (In Honor of Tetsuo Najita) Katsuya Hirano, Translated by N.H. Wimpey 15. The Always Already (But Maybe Not Quite) Pre-Postmodern Edo Christopher Smith 16. Conclusion: Should Japanese Studies Be Disciplined? Joshua Schlachet and William C. Hedberg