Date: Friday, November 9, 2018
Time: 4:30 PM
Venue: C. K. Choi Building, Room 120 (1855 West Mall)
By: Dr. Rebecca Corbett (University of Southern California)
Abstract:
In her recent book, Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan, Rebecca Corbett writes women back into the history of chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony) and shows how tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted in the Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods. Viewing chanoyu from the lens of feminist and gender theory, she sheds new light on tea’s undeniable influence on the formation of modern understandings of femininity in Japan, and corrects the male-centered narratives that dominate writing about tea history. Her current research project likewise focuses on a hitherto unexplored aspect of Edo period tea culture: children’s participation. Using the tea gatherings of Tagami Kikusha (1753-1826) – a nun who practiced calligraphy, painting, and music (shichigenkin), and a broad range of poetry including haikai, waka, and kanshi, in addition to chanoyu – Corbett will discuss a world of tea practice in which play and children’s edification were the main functions.
About the Speaker:
Rebecca Corbett gained a Phd in Japanese Studies from the University of Sydney in 2009, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University before taking up her current role as Japanese Studies Librarian at the University of Southern California in 2016. Her research interests include the history and practice of Japanese tea culture (chanoyu), and early modern Japanese women’s history. In particular, her work has focused on reevaluating the role of women as practitioners and producers of Japanese tea culture historically. Her book Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2018) analyses privately circulated and commercially published texts to show how tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Her current project is a biographical study of the Buddhist nun and artist Tagami Kikusha (1753-1826). This work will examine both her life in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries, and the transmission of her work in modern Japan. Other interests include the role of traditional culture in modern Japan, and in shaping ideas about Japan internationally.
See the event poster.
