Loves and Loyalties in Imperial Japan

This open access collection argues that an emotional revolution occurred in Imperial Japan between 1900 and 1950, transforming the lives of millions and spawning new social communities. Exploring the lived experiences of the Japanese, both as individuals and as members of social groups, it examines changes in meanings, expressions and practices of love and loyalty during that period.

Rather than accepting a stark opposition between Western-individualistic love and Eastern-feudalistic loyalty, this book finds a nuanced, entwined and dialectical relationship between the two sentiments that remade the Japanese relationship with family, state and the world. During a time when Japan emerged as a capitalist society and the centre of a growing empire, Loves and Loyalties in Imperial Japan shows how new media dramatically expanded and affected emotional change, while different groups and individuals fought over the meaning and value of their social attachments. Exploring the different versions of love and loyalty that were being circulated while Japan experienced a spluttering democracy, an autocratic wartime empire and military defeat in 1945, this book is the first of its kind to address these issues and help globalize the history of emotions.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of California, Santa Barbara.