Toshié: A Story of Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan (Philip E. Lilienthal Books)

Sakaue Toshié was born on August 14, 1925, into a family of tenant farmers and day laborers in the hamlet of Kosugi. The world she entered was one of hard labor, poverty, dirt, disease, and frequent early death. By the 1970s, that rural world had changed almost beyond recognition. Toshié is the story of that extraordinary transformation as witnessed and experienced by Toshié herself. A sweeping social history of the Japanese countryside in its twentieth-century transition from'peasant'to'consumer'society, the book is also a richly textured account of the life of one village woman and her community caught up in the inexorable march of historical events. Through the lens of Toshié's life, Simon Partner shows us the realities of rural Japanese life during the 1930s depression; daily existence under the wartime regime of'spiritual mobilization'; the land reform and its consequences during occupation; and the rapid emergence of a consumer culture against the background of agricultural mechanization during the 1950s and 1960s. In some ways representative and in other ways unique, Toshié's narrative raises questions about conventional frameworks of twentieth-century Japanese history, and about the place of individual agency and choice in an era often seen as dominated by the impersonal forces of modernity: technology, state power, and capitalism. Sakaue Toshi was born on August 14, 1925, into a family of tenant farmers and day laborers in the hamlet of Kosugi. The world she entered was one of hard labor, poverty, dirt, disease, and frequent early death. By the 1970s, that rural world had changed almost beyond recognition. Toshi is the story of that extraordinary transformation as witnessed and experienced by Toshi herself. A sweeping social history of the Japanese countryside in its twentieth-century transition from "peasant" to "consumer" society, the book is also a richly textured account of the life of one village woman and her community caught up in the inexorable march of historical events. Through the lens of Toshi's life, Simon Partner shows us the realities of rural Japanese life during the 1930s depression; daily existence under the wartime regime of "spiritual mobilization"; the land reform and its consequences during occupation; and the rapid emergence of a consumer culture against the background of agricultural mechanization during the 1950s and 1960s. In some ways representative and in other ways unique, Toshi's narrative raises questions about conventional frameworks of twentieth-century Japanese history, and about the place of individual agency and choice in an era often seen as dominated by the impersonal forces of technology, state power, and capitalism. Annotation "Within the lively and often gripping story of Sakaue Toshie and her world, Partner gives us a sweeping and thought-provoking history of social change in rural Japan and sheds new light on key developments such as war mobilization and US occupation reforms. Fresh, personal, and engaging."--Steven Ericson, author of "The Sound of the Whistle: Railroads and the State in Meiji Japan "Partner beautifully tells the story of the life and times of a farm woman from the 1920s to the present. He traverses seamlessly between the often moving details of her life and the large transformations which it exemplifies."--Andrew Gordon, Harvard University Frontmatter List of Figures (page ix) Preface (page xi) 1. On the Banks of the Agano (page 1) 2. The Making of a Japanese Citizen (page 35) 3. The Village Goes to War (page 59) 4. Rural Life Under the Occupation (page 103) 5. Red Carpets and Whisky (page 127) Conclusion (page 159) Notes (page 171) Bibliography (page 183) Index (page 189) Sakaue Toshie was born on August 14, 1925, into a family of tenant farmers and day laborers in the hamlet of Kosugi. The world she entered was one of hard labor, poverty, dirt, disease, and frequent early death. By the 1970s, that rural world had changed almost beyond recognition Annotation A broad, richly textured social history of the Japanese countryside from the 1920s to the present. told through the life of one woman and her community Simon Partner. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 171-187) And Index.