Monetized Masters: Early Modern Japanese Literati and the Economy of Cultural Networks

Abstract

This dissertation studies the economic roles of early modern Japanese literati (Jpn. bunjin) in the nineteenth century and the historical interpretation of these literati in the early twentieth century through their engagement in popular cultural production, particularly centering calligraphy and painting gatherings (Jpn. shogakai). I argue that shogakai was a space of temporary freedom for early modern Japan’s popular cultural producers and consumers. During a time of class separation by the four-class structure of aristocrats-samurai-peasants-merchants in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), shogakai was one of the few occasions where a performing master’s social status was overpowered by their cultural influence while a patron’s cash investment could determine new trends in cultural production. Everyone participating in the on-the-spot creation was remembered in popular fiction and playbills as a literatus. Yet after the gatherings ended, everyone returned to their assigned social role where the cultural producer’s autonomy was again confined by the symbolic power of the four-class system.Ultimately, through examples from shogakai and the popular cultural network, I argue that Japan’s literati were neither romantic figures of eremitism nor despicable creators of vulgar content. They grappled with negotiating their own identity in hierarchies of social class, knowledge, and cultural production in the turbulence of the nineteenth century, but eventually were turned into an elitized and romanticized concept to be used for Japan’s modern construction of cultural and national identity in an age of rising fascism.