Isami's house : three centuries of a Japanese family
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Isami's house : three centuries of a Japanese family
(A Philip E. Lilienthal book)
University of California Press, c2005
- : cloth
Available at 9 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-267) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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 1600s. 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.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Prologue: History Revealed
Acknowledgments
Reader's Guide
Introduction: An Agrarian Childhood
Part One: Ancestors and Descendants
1 The House Isami Built
2 Kissing Cousins
3 Father of the Village
4 Strong Wives
Part Two: Going Out Into the World
5 Urban Studies
6 The Marriage Pipeline
7 Frugality and Fancy Schemes
Part Three: Empire, War, and Defeat
8 Outposts of Modernity
9 Isami's Children in Harm's Way
10 Hard Times on the Home Front
11 Surviving Hiroshima
12 Missed Fortunes
13 Making History
Part Four: Love and Other Forms of Compensation
14 Absent Husband
15 Couples and Uncouplings
16 Mothering
Epilogue: Kinwork
Notes
Credits
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"