The Lady Who Loved Insects is a charming short story set in the Heian period. The story follows a young noble woman who has intellectual interests, such as studying insects, in a society where women were supposed to be wives and sometimes poets. The Lady Who Loved Insects can be found in The Riverside Middle…
Category: History
Geishas and the Floating World: Inside Tokyo’s Yoshiwara Pleasure District
Geishas and the Floating World by Stephen and Ethel Longstreet examines the history and development of Tokyo’s red-light district of Yoshiwara. The name of the book misleads a little. Most of the book focuses upon the prostitutes that worked Yoshiwara. The authors note that geisha weren’t sex workers, but geisha did blur the line as…
Sketching Taoism’s Influence on Japan
Taoism, or Daoism depending on which transliteration system you want to use, like many Chinese imports, mixed with Japan’s culture and the native religion Shinto. Although calling Shinto a unified religion is an oversimplification, let’s just go with it for now. Like Taoism’s venture into the West, the philosophy took root in Japan more than…
No More Wars: the Edo Period’s Final Rebellions
After Japan was unified under Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and finished with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Tokugawa government declared there would be no more wars. The final war is a two-part rebellion of Christian samurai, farmers, and other impoverished people. The second part of the rebellion remains the best remembered because of how it ended in…
Basho’s Travel Memoir, “The Narrow Road of the Interior”
Matsuo Basho is known for his haiku, poetry consisting of 17 syllables divided into lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. However, he is also famous for his travel memoirs, especially The Narrow Road of the Interior. Basho (1644-1694) was the son of a minor samurai and studied poetry, Zen Buddhism, Chinese learning, history, and Japanese literature….
That Was How Much?! The Surpising Cost of Things in Japan During the 1900s
This seems like a strange question, but examining costs of items and salaries can offer interesting insights into history. I came across this information while I worked on approximating a reasonable cost for an item in one of my stories. The detail matters for the plotline, so I wanted some accuracy. The data in this…