The Weak Body of a Useless Woman

Download The Weak Body of a Useless Woman PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226872353
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (723 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Weak Body of a Useless Woman by : Anne Walthall

Download or read book The Weak Body of a Useless Woman written by Anne Walthall and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-11-15 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1862, fifty-one-year-old Matsuo Taseko left her old life behind by traveling to Kyoto, the old imperial capital. Peasant, poet, and local political activist, Taseko had come to Kyoto to support the nativist campaign to restore the Japanese emperor and expel Western "barbarians." Although she played a minor role in the events that led to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, her actions were nonetheless astonishing for a woman of her day. Honored as a hero even before her death, Taseko has since been adopted as a patron saint by rightist nationalists. In telling Taseko's story, Anne Walthall gives us not just the first full biography in English of a peasant woman of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), but also fresh perspectives on the practices and intellectual concerns of rural entrepreneurs and their role in the Meiji Restoration. Writing about Taseko with a depth and complexity that has thus far been accorded only to men of that time, Walthall has uncovered a tale that will captivate anyone concerned with women's lives and with Japan's dramatic transition to modernity.

The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan

Download The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520965582
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan by : Marcia Yonemoto

Download or read book The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan written by Marcia Yonemoto and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern Japan was a military-bureaucratic state governed by patriarchal and patrilineal principles and laws. During this time, however, women had considerable power to directly affect social structure, political practice, and economic production. This apparent contradiction between official norms and experienced realities lies at the heart of The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan. Examining prescriptive literature and instructional manuals for women—as well as diaries, memoirs, and letters written by and about individual women from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century—Marcia Yonemoto explores the dynamic nature of Japanese women’s lives during the early modern era.

Selling Women

Download Selling Women PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520952383
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Selling Women by : Amy Stanley

Download or read book Selling Women written by Amy Stanley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the social history of early modern Japan’s sex trade, from its beginnings in seventeenth-century cities to its apotheosis in the nineteenth-century countryside. Drawing on legal codes, diaries, town registers, petitions, and criminal records, it describes how the work of "selling women" transformed communities across the archipelago. By focusing on the social implications of prostitutes’ economic behavior, this study offers a new understanding of how and why women who work in the sex trade are marginalized. It also demonstrates how the patriarchal order of the early modern state was undermined by the emergence of the market economy, which changed the places of women in their households and the realm at large.

Women in Japanese Religions

Download Women in Japanese Religions PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479827622
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women in Japanese Religions by : Barbara Ambros

Download or read book Women in Japanese Religions written by Barbara Ambros and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-05-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive history of women in Japanese religious traditions Scholars have widely acknowledged the persistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treat women. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as mere means of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent and even misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotion and emulation among women? In Women in Japanese Religions, Barbara R. Ambros examines the roles that women have played in the religions of Japan. An important corrective to more common male-centered narratives of Japanese religious history, this text presents a synthetic long view of Japanese religions from a distinct angle that has typically been discounted in standard survey accounts of Japanese religions. Drawing on a diverse collection of writings by and about women, Ambros argues that ambivalent religious discourses in Japan have not simply subordinated women but also given them religious resources to pursue their own interests and agendas. Comprising nine chapters organized chronologically, the book begins with the archeological evidence of fertility cults and the early shamanic ruler Himiko in prehistoric Japan and ends with an examination of the influence of feminism and demographic changes on religious practices during the “lost decades” of the post-1990 era. By viewing Japanese religious history through the eyes of women, Women in Japanese Religions presents a new narrative that offers strikingly different vistas of Japan’s pluralistic traditions than the received accounts that foreground male religious figures and male-dominated institutions.

In Close Association

Download In Close Association PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684176654
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis In Close Association by : Marnie S. Anderson

Download or read book In Close Association written by Marnie S. Anderson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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). Marnie 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. Alongside them were Western Protestant missionaries, making this story at once a local history and a transnational one. Placing gender analysis at its core, the book 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. Anderson attends to how the archival record shapes what historians can know about individual lives. She argues for the interdependence of women and men and the importance of highlighting connections between people to explain historical change. Above all, the study sheds new light on how local personalities together transformed Japan.

Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan

Download Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472127330
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan by : Bettina Gramlich-Oka

Download or read book Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan written by Bettina Gramlich-Oka and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although scholars have emphasized the importance of women’s networks for civil society in twentieth-century Japan, Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan is the first book to tackle the subject for the contentious and consequential nineteenth century. The essays traverse the divide when Japan started transforming itself from a decentralized to a centralized government, from legally imposed restrictions on movement to the breakdown of travel barriers, and from ad hoc schooling to compulsory elementary school education. As these essays suggest, such changes had a profound impact on women and their roles in networks. Rather than pursue a common methodology, the authors take diverse approaches to this topic that open up fruitful avenues for further exploration. Most of the essays in this volume are by Japanese scholars; their inclusion here provides either an introduction to their work or the opportunity to explore their scholarship further. Because women are often invisible in historical documentation, the authors use a range of sources (such as diaries, letters, and legal documents) to reconstruct the familial, neighborhood, religious, political, work, and travel networks that women maintained, constructed, or found themselves in, sometimes against their will. In so doing, most but not all of the authors try to decenter historical narratives built on men’s activities and men’s occupational and status-based networks, and instead recover women’s activities in more localized groupings and personal associations.

Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan

Download Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472901605
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (729 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan by : Mara Patessio

Download or read book Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan written by Mara Patessio and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan focuses on women’s activities in the new public spaces of Meiji Japan. With chapters on public, private, and missionary schools for girls, their students, and teachers, on social and political groups women created, on female employment, and on women’s participation in print media, this book offers a new perspective on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese history. Women’s founding of and participation in conflicting discourses over the value of women in Meiji public life demonstrate that during this period active and vocal women were everywhere, that they did not meekly submit to the dictates of the government and intellectuals over what women could or should do, and that they were fully integrated in the production of Meiji culture. Mara Patessio shows that the study of women is fundamental not only in order to understand fully the transformations of the Meiji period, but also to understand how later generations of women could successfully move the battle forward. Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan is essential reading for all students and teachers of 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese history and is of interest to scholars of women’s history more generally.

Ooku, the Secret World of the Shogun's Women 

Download Ooku, the Secret World of the Shogun's Women  PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambria Press
ISBN 13 : 1604978724
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (49 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Ooku, the Secret World of the Shogun's Women  by : Cecilia Segawa Seigle

Download or read book Ooku, the Secret World of the Shogun's Women  written by Cecilia Segawa Seigle and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on 2014-03-28 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the least understood and often maligned aspects of the Tokugawa Shogunate is the Ooku, or 'Great Interior,' the institution within the shogun's palace, administered by and for the upper-class shogunal women and their attendants who resided there. Long the object of titillation and a favorite subject for off-the-wall fantasy in historical TV and film dramas, the actual daily life, practices, cultural roles, and ultimate missions of these women have remained largely in the dark, except for occasional explosions of scandal. In crystal-clear prose that is a pleasure to read, this new book, however, presents the Ooku in a whole new down-to-earth, practical light. After many years of perusing unexamined Ooku documents generated by these women and their associates, the authors have provided not only an overview of the fifteen generations of Shoguns whose lives were lived in residence with this institution, but how shoguns interacted differently with it. Much like recent research on imperial convents, they find not a huddled herd of oppressed women, but on the contrary, women highly motivated to the preservation of their own particular cultural institution. Most important, they have been able to identify "the culture of secrecy" within the Ooku itself to be an important mechanism for preserving the highest value, 'loyalty,' that essential value to their overall self-interested mission dedicated to the survival of the Shogunate itself." - Barbara Ruch, Columbia University "The aura of power and prestige of the institution known as the ooku-the complex network of women related to the shogun and their living quarters deep within Edo castle-has been a popular subject of Japanese television dramas and movies. Brushing aside myths and fallacies that have long obscured our understanding, this thoroughly researched book provides an intimate look at the lives of the elite female residents of the shogun's elaborate compound. Drawing information from contemporary diaries and other private memoirs, as well as official records, the book gives detailed descriptions of the physical layout of their living quarters, regulations, customs, and even clothing, enabling us to actually visualize this walled-in world that was off limits for most of Japanese society. It also outlines the complex hierarchy of positions, and by shining a light on specific women, gives readers insight into the various factions within the ooku and the scandals that occasionally occurred. Both positive and negative aspects of life in the "great interior" are represented, and one learns how some of these high-ranking women wielded tremendous social as well as political power, at times influencing the decision-making of the ruling shoguns. In sum, this book is the most accurate overview and characterization of the ooku to date, revealing how it developed and changed during the two and a half centuries of Tokugawa rule. A treasure trove of information, it will be a vital source for scholars and students of Japan studies, as well as women's studies, and for general readers who are interested in learning more about this fascinating women's institution and its significance in Japanese history and culture." - Patricia Fister, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto

Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan

Download Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520231058
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan by : Dorothy Ko

Download or read book Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan written by Dorothy Ko and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book rewrites the history of East Asia by rethinking the contentious relationship between "Confucianisms" and "women."

Patriots and Redeemers in Japan

Download Patriots and Redeemers in Japan PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226900924
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (269 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Patriots and Redeemers in Japan by : George M. Wilson

Download or read book Patriots and Redeemers in Japan written by George M. Wilson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like the French Revolution, the Meiji Restoration transformed a whole society. Japan was never the same after 1868. The meaning of the events that led to the restoration has therefore profoundly concerned historians, but most Western accounts probe only the dimension of political leadership, largely ignoring the common people. In this book, George Wilson argues that the restoration was a total national event--a revolution to redeem the whole realm of Japan--accomplished by samurai and commoners alike. This study foregrounds the classic contest of agency versus structure, focusing on the actors in Meiji Restoration history rather than the institutions through which they acted. Wilson argues that the samurai who triumphed sought not only the patriotic goal of defending the realm against the external threat of Western imperialism but also the redemptive goal of rescuing the realm from the bakufu's failures. The common people no less than the samurai elite wanted to save Japan in its time of troubles. According to Wilson, redemption complemented patriotism as a motive for both the elite and the general public, contributing a double force to Japan's rising nationalism.

The Female as Subject

Download The Female as Subject PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 1929280750
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (292 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Female as Subject by : P.F. Kornicki

Download or read book The Female as Subject written by P.F. Kornicki and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Female as Subject presents 11 essays by an international group of scholars from Europe, Japan, and North America examining what women of different social classes read, what books were produced specifically for women, and the genres in which women themselves chose to write. The authors explore the different types of education women obtained and the levels of literacy they achieved, and they uncover women’s participation in the production of books, magazines, and speeches. The resulting depiction of women as readers and writers is also enhanced by thirty black-and-white illustrations. For too long, women have been largely absent from accounts of cultural production in early modern Japan. By foregrounding women, the essays in this book enable us to rethink what we know about Japanese society during these centuries. The result is a new history of women as readers, writers, and culturally active agents. The Female as Subject is essential reading for all students and teachers of Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods. It also provides valuable comparative data for scholars of the history of literacy and the book in East Asia.

Excursions in Identity

Download Excursions in Identity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824862430
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Excursions in Identity by : Laura Nenzi

Download or read book Excursions in Identity written by Laura Nenzi and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-04-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Edo period (1600–1868), status- and gender-based expectations largely defined a person’s place and identity in society. The wayfarers of the time, however, discovered that travel provided the opportunity to escape from the confines of the everyday. Cultured travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote travel memoirs to celebrate their profession as belle-lettrists. For women in particular the open road and the blank page of the diary offered a precious opportunity to create personal hierarchies defined less by gender and more by culture and refinement. After the mid-eighteenth century—which saw the popularization of culture and the rise of commercial printing—textbooks, guides, comical fiction, and woodblock prints allowed not a few commoners to acquaint themselves with the historical, lyrical, or artistic pedigree of Japan’s famous sites. By identifying themselves with famous literary and historical icons of the past, some among these erudite commoners saw an opportunity to rewrite their lives and re-create their identities in the pages of their travel diaries. The chapters in Part One, “Re-creating Spaces,” introduce the notion that the spaces of travel were malleable, accommodating reconceptualization across interpretive frames. Laura Nenzi shows that, far from being static backgrounds, these travelscapes proliferated in a myriad of loci where one person’s center was another’s periphery. In Part Two, “Re-creating Identities,” we see how, in the course of the Edo period, educated persons used travel to, or through, revered lyrical sites to assert and enhance their roles and identities. Finally, in Part Three, “Purchasing Re-creation,” Nenzi looks at the intersection between recreational travel and the rising commercial economy, which allowed visitors to appropriate landscapes through new means: monetary transactions, acquisition of tangible icons, or other forms of physical interaction.

Ibss: Anthropology: 1999

Download Ibss: Anthropology: 1999 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780415240086
Total Pages : 584 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Ibss: Anthropology: 1999 by : Compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science

Download or read book Ibss: Anthropology: 1999 written by Compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000-12-07 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IBSS is the essential tool for librarians, university departments, research institutions and any public or private institution whose work requires access to up-to-date and comprehensive knowledge of the social sciences.

Modern Japan, Student Economy Edition

Download Modern Japan, Student Economy Edition PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429973063
Total Pages : 382 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Modern Japan, Student Economy Edition by : Mikiso Hane

Download or read book Modern Japan, Student Economy Edition written by Mikiso Hane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the essential facts of modern Japanese history. It covers a variety of important developments through the 1990s, giving special consideration to how traditional Japanese modes of thought and behavior have affected the recent developments.

Commemorating Meiji

Download Commemorating Meiji PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000441350
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Commemorating Meiji by : D.V. Botsman

Download or read book Commemorating Meiji written by D.V. Botsman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of Japan’s Meiji Restoration, a milestone that the government of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō has actively sought to highlight and celebrate. Whereas other studies have focused on the events of the Meiji Restoration itself, this volume reflects upon the politically charged history of commemorating Meiji, particularly in the twentieth century. This other history of Meiji remains largely unknown outside of Japan, even though it is particularly relevant in the aftermath of a wide range of government-sponsored celebrations marking the Meiji Sesquicentennial. At moments of official historical commemoration, it is natural enough to imagine a direct line linking the act of commemoration to the original event that is the ostensible focus of remembrance and celebration. In fact, the commemoration of Meiji today cannot be understood simply in terms of the relationship between the present and 1868, or even the longer Meiji period. The chapters in this volume highlight the politics of memory as they played out across a series of milestones over the twentieth century. Together they show the pressing need to look more closely at issues of commemoration as a key topic in their own right. The chapters in this book were originally published in Japanese Studies.

Literary Creations on the Road

Download Literary Creations on the Road PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0761856684
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (618 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Literary Creations on the Road by : Keiko Shiba

Download or read book Literary Creations on the Road written by Keiko Shiba and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keiko Shiba, a noted researcher in early modern Japanese history, has spent years collecting hundreds of travel diaries written by women during the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate (17th through mid-19th centuries). The fruit of her research, originally published in Japanese, is now available in an English translation by Motoko Ezaki, with notes provided for general English readers. Shiba intersperses her narration abundantly with excerpts from the actual travel diaries; the book therefore is an invaluable source that offers us direct access to the individual voices of a large number of Tokugawa women, who energetically composed prose and poetry while traveling, sometimes in collaboration with their male companions. This work also sheds new light on women's literary activities in early modern Japan, which are still noticeably understudied compared to other genres of Japanese literary history.

The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko

Download The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 082485389X
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko by : Laura Nenzi

Download or read book The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko written by Laura Nenzi and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-02-28 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko is the story of a self-described "base-born nobody" who tried to change the course of Japanese history. Kurosawa Tokiko (1806–1890), a commoner from rural Mito domain, was a poet, teacher, oracle, and political activist. In 1859 she embraced the xenophobic loyalist faction (known for the motto "revere the emperor, expel the barbarians") and traveled to Kyoto to denounce the shogun's policies before the emperor. She was arrested, taken to Edo's infamous Tenmachō prison, and sentenced to banishment. In her later years, having crossed the Tokugawa-Meiji divide, Tokiko became an elementary school teacher and experienced firsthand the modernizing policies of the new government. After her death she was honored with court rank for her devotion to the loyalist cause. Tokiko's story reflects not only some of the key moments in Japan's transition to the modern era, but also some of its lesser-known aspects, thereby providing us with a fresh narrative of the late-Tokugawa crisis, the collapse of the shogunate, and the rise of the Meiji state. The peculiar combination of no-nonsense single-mindedness and visionary flights of imagination evinced in her numerous diaries and poetry collections nuances our understanding of activism and political consciousness among rural nonelites by blurring the lines between the rational and the irrational, focus and folly. Tokiko's use of prognostication and her appeals to cosmic forces point to the creative paths some women constructed to take part in political debates and epitomize the resourcefulness required to preserve one's identity in the face of changing times. In the early twentieth century, Tokiko was reimagined in the popular press and her story was rewritten to offset fears about female autonomy and to boost local and national agendas. These distorted and romanticized renditions offer compelling examples of the politicization of the past and of the extent to which present anxieties shape historical memory. That Tokiko was unimportant and her loyalist mission a failure is irrelevant. What is significant is that through her life story we are able to discern the ordinary individual in the midst of history. By putting an extra in the spotlight, The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko offers a new script for the drama that unfolded on the stage of late-Tokugawa and early Meiji history.