The Modern Japan History Association (mjha.org) presents a "New Books on Japan" conversation between Marnie Anderson (Smith College), author of In Close Association: Local Activist Networks in the Making of Japanese Modernity, 1868-1920 (Harvard University Asia Center Press, 2022) and Anne Walthall (Professor Emerita, UC Irvine). The event is free and open to the public and will be held over Zoom. Pre-registration is required.

Date and Time: Wednesday, October 11, 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT / 8:00am JST (Thursday morning)

Register for Zoom here: https://mjha.org/event-5316843

Event details:

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Marnie Anderson (Professor of History, Smith College). Professor Anderson will be speaking about her new book, In Close Association: Local Activist Networks in the Making of Japanese Modernity, 1868-1920 (Harvard University Asia Center Press, 2022). In Close Association is the first English-language study of the local networks of women and men who built modern Japan in the Meiji period (1868-1912). Professor Anderson uncovers in vivid detail how a colorful group of Okayama-based activists founded institutions, engaged in the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, promoted social reform, and advocated "civilization and enlightenment" while forging pathbreaking conceptions of self and society. Placing gender analysis at its core, In Close Association offers fresh perspectives on what women did beyond domestic boundaries, while showing men's lives, too, were embedded in home and kin. Writing "history on the diagonal," Anderson documents the gradual differentiation of public activity by gender in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Meiji-era associations became increasingly sex-specific, though networks remained heterosocial until the twentieth century. Anne Walthall (Professor of History Emerita, University of California, Irvine) will serve as discussant.