Japan in print : information and nation in the early modern period / Mary Elizabeth Berry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berry, Mary Elizabeth, 1947-

Series:

Asia--local studies/global themes ; 12.

Asia--local studies/global themes ; 12

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Printing--Japan--History--17th century.

Printing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (347 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 1600's. 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.

Contents:

List of figures

Acknowledgments

1. A traveling clerk goes to the bookstores

2. The library of public information

3. Maps are strange

4. Blood right and merit

5. The freedom of the city

6. Cultural custody, cultural literacy

7. Nation

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-308) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786612360466

9781282360464

1282360469

9781423752646

1423752643

9780520941465

0520941462

9781598759280

1598759280

OCLC:

63813517