Splendid monarchy : power and pageantry in modern Japan
In 1993, Masako Owada captured the world's attention when she agreed to marry Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan. She was widely portrayed as a progressive, Westernized woman about to enter one of the last bastions of traditional Japanese sexism. Crown Prince Naruhito's world was known to be steeped in ancient tradition, and the strictures placed on her were seen as tragic vestiges of the patriarchal past. But in this dramatic departure from accepted assumptions about Japan, T. Fujitani argues that just over a century ago, there was no such thing as an imperial family, imperial family, imperial wedding ceremonies were unheard of, and the image of the emperor as patriarch did not exist. Demonstrating how the trappings of the emperor were imported from nineteenth-century Western courts, he concludes that the Japanese monarchy as we know it is actually an invention of modern times
History
1 online resource (xiv, 305 pages) : illustrations
9780520920989, 9780585104386, 9780520202375, 0520920988, 0585104387, 0520202376
42922671
Preface and acknowledgments
1. Introduction : Inventing, forgetting, remembering
Part One. National mise-en-sce︡ne : 2. From court in motion to imperial capitals
Part Two. Modern imperial pageantry : 3. Fabricating imperial ceremonies
4. The monarchy in Japan's modernity
Part Three. The people : 5. Crowds and imperial pagentry
6. Epilogue : Toward a history of the present