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Susan Fernsebner

Founded in 1897, the Kyoto National Museum holds a rich collection of pre-modern art and artifacts from Japan and East Asia. Offering an… [more]

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Susan Douglass

Viewing the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum site takes time, as it is very dense in content and full of narratives, documents and images. The site's… [more]

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Susan Fernsebner

The Japanese Old Photographs of the Bakumastu-Meiji Periods collection housed at the Nagasaki University Library offers a rich assembly of images of… [more]

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During the modern Imperial period (1868-1945), daughters of poor Japanese families worked as komori taking care of their own siblings or working as indentured servants for other poor families. The state's efforts to foster Japanese citizenship and… [more]

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One of the major obstacles to consistent attendance at the new elementary schools was the fact that children played an important role in the household economy. One such role was that of caregiver for younger children. In this picture, we see an image… [more]

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During the first two decades of the Meiji era, the new government invested a great deal of effort into building the institutions of the modern Japanese state. By the 1880s, officials and other commentators had begun in earnest to articulate the moral… [more]

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This essay was printed in the periodical Meiroku Zasshi in May 1874. The magazine was produced by a small group of intellectuals committed to the study of Europe and America. This journal, and the individuals who contributed to it, were at the core… [more]

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During the 1870s, the Meiji government established many institutions based on the examples from Europe and the U.S., and many intellectuals advocated a thoroughgoing transformation of Japanese society and culture patterned after the model of… [more]

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Below are two tables that reveal both the accomplishments and the limitations of Meiji educational reforms. Table 1 shows an impressive increase in the number of schools and the enrollment rates for both girls and boys, one that culminates in 1905… [more]

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Contrary to impression left by document #2, schools for commoners were plentiful prior to the Meiji Restoration in 1868. These schools are usually known by the term terakoya, which literally means "temple school." The first image is of one such… [more]