Event Host: The Institute for Japanese Studies
Join Sumie Jones, Professor Emerita of Japanese and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington to discuss how the Tokugawa shogunate allowed no space for sexual relations within its social strata of samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. So-called “notorious places” (akusho)—the theatre district and Yoshiwara brothel quarters—were set outside the respectable boundaries of the city and inhabited by persons uncategorized in the Tokugawa class structure. Debates on the relative values of “nyoshoku” (love of women) and “nanshoku” (love of men) grew into theories of each “Way” and prose fiction featured the two separate Ways of love. While Yoshiwara-based fiction tamed heterosexuality by teaching polished manners, nanshoku books championed violent, untamed masculinity among samurai. By analyzing Ihara Saikaku’s The Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Ōkagami) and a few other works of fiction, this lecture considers the power dynamic those works create between the senior and junior lovers, between the narrator and the reader, and, ultimately, between men and women. Images will be shown on PowerPoint. For more information visit https://easc.osu.edu/events/ijs/sumie-jones