Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- 1 Introduction: Values, Identity, and Equality in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan / Peter Nosco and James E. Ketelaar -- 2 Waiting for the Flying Fish to Leap: Revisiting the Values and Individuality of Tokugawa People as Practiced / Ikegami Eiko -- 3 Good Older Brother, Bad Younger Brother: Sibling Rivalry in the Hirata Family / Anne Walthall -- 4 Being a Brat: The Ethics of Child Disobedience in the Edo Period / W. Puck Brecher -- 5 The Early Modern Co-Emergence of Individuality and Collective Identity / Peter Nosco -- 6 Rebirth of a Hirata School Nativist: Tsuruya Ariyo and His Kaganabe Journal / Gideon Fujiwara -- 7 New Cultures, New Identities: Becoming Okinawan and Japanese in Nineteenth-Century Ryukyu / Gregory Smits -- 8 Searching For Erotic Emotionality in Tokugawa Japan / James E. Ketelaar -- 9 Laughter Connects the Sacred (sei 聖) and the Sexual (sei 性): The Blossoming of Parody in Edo Culture / Kojima Yasunori -- 10 The Unconventional Origins of Modern Japan: Mantei Ōga vs. Fukuzawa Yukichi / M. William Steele -- 11 Flowery Tales: Ōe Taku, Kōbe and the Making of Meiji Japan’s ‘Emancipation Moment’ / Daniel V. Botsman -- 12 From Relational Identity to Specific Identity: On Equality and Nationality / Sakai Naoki -- 13 Epilogue: Reimagining Early Modern Japan—Beyond the Imagined/Invented Modern Nation / Isomae Jun’ichi -- Glossary -- Index for Values, Identity and Equality.

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The chapters in this volume variously challenge a number of long-standing assumptions regarding eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese society, and especially that society’s values, structure and hierarchy; the practical limits of state authority; and the emergence of individual and collective identity. By interrogating the concept of equality on both sides of the 1868 divide, the volume extends this discussion beyond the late-Tokugawa period into the early-Meiji and even into the present. An Epilogue examines some of the historiographical issues that form a background to this enquiry. Taken together, the chapters offer answers and perspectives that are highly original and should prove stimulating to all those interested in early modern Japanese cultural, intellectual, and social history Contributors include: Daniel Botsman, W. Puck Brecher, Gideon Fujiwara, Eiko Ikegami, Jun’ichi Isomae, James E. Ketelaar, Yasunori Kojima, Peter Nosco, Naoki Sakai, Gregory Smits, M. William Steele, and Anne Walthall.