Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World | 
pickThis biography is a fascinating account of the life of an indomitable woman as well as life more generally in 19th c. Japan. After three failed marriages, Tsuneno decides she‘s had enough & she sets out on her own into an uncertain future. We know about Tsuneno & her life not only because she was a prolific letter writer but also because her family, in spite of her unconventional choices, saved the correspondence. Definitely an interesting read.
First nonfiction book of 2023…
pickThought this was a wonderful book, and now I want to go and look at some art...
Author explores life of one woman whose choice to leave her family and head to Edo (now Tokyo) left a trail of letters in the archive. Stanley sets her choices in the context of 19c Japan: the tail end of the Shogunate before the US forced Japan to trade with the 'West'.
(Ed to try and fix my sentence structure.😱😫)
Dressed only in loincloths, they pulled handcarts, bore palanquins and ran around the city with parcels and messages. Their nudity was a marker of their low status... As if to compensate, the labourers adorned their bodies with colourful tattoos that spilled across their backs and down their thighs, cloaking their exposed skin in images of thick robes and armour, glittering fish and dragon scales, and bristling tiger fur.
Detail from Lady-in-Waiting at Edo Castle Utagawa Kuniyoshi 歌川國芳
Maybe, under their clothes, all the people in Edo were like the heroine of the kabuki play Yotsuya Ghost Story... who began a descent into disfigurement and madness when her greedy husband tore off her kimono and plucked out her hairpins, intending to exchange them for cash at a pawnshop. Maybe everyone in Edo was maintaining an illusion of sanity with clothes and hairpins.
These busy people kept tabs on their neighbours. They gathered around the well, at the bathhouse and at the barber. They even chatted across the alleys while they were working. Men flung boasts and insults back and forth in narrow spaces, put-upon grandmothers criticised their daughters-in-law, and pompous old men bored everyone with peevish complaints. There was always something to say.
😱Fairly confident 1800s Edo was not for me!
Yet somehow, amid all of this....she, too, looked up and imagined a different kind of life. Was it the pictures in her books? The habit of envisioning the Pure Land, which inspired her to imagine other distant realms and better possibilities? Or was it some overheard conversation about the city, possibly concerning the plans for her little brother Gisen's future? Maybe it was just a vague sense that a life like her mother's would never be enough.
pickTsuneno was the daughter of a rural Buddhist priest, born in 19th century Japan. She aspires to leave the country (and ultimately 3 marriages) and move to Edo (the eponymous city, now Tokyo). Stubborn and adventurous, she irritates her family to no end. And it‘s all a true story ferreted out by social historian Amy Stanley.
Full review http://www.TheBibliophage.com
#thebibliophage2021 #readingasia2021 #japan #nonfictionchallenge2021 #aboutfamily
pickIt seemed like there were two narratives here: the story of a rebellious woman and her sometimes uncomfortable relationship with her family and society and the story of Edo and Perry: Both of these stories are interesting on their own. I don‘t quite buy the bridge between them. But I‘d read either narrative on its own.
So for the first time I‘m reading only non fiction for a month - #nfn2020 is proving to be fantastic! I did think it would be a way of decreasing my non fiction TBR but almost every day I read one and then find another to take its place on the TBR! 🤣
Beautiful cover a story of a Japanese Woman her life and world in the Shogun‘s city.The cove drew me in I love reading about women‘s lives in different times in history. @ScribnerBooks a book I can‘t wait to devour,📚💕
