'Custom-izing' daily life in Meiji Japan

This project explores the emergence of 'custom' ( fuzoku) as a fundamental category of knowledge about social life in Japan in the Meiji period (1868--1912). Whether characterized as an obstacle to the nation's development or as the true source of its progress, customs came to figure prominently in late nineteenth-century understandings of Japan's past, present, and future. This dissertation investigates how the new national police force, kabuki artists and theater modernizers, historians, and reform activists struggled to define and shape social practices designated as fuzoku, such as hairstyles and clothing, in the service of 'civilization' and 'enlightenment,' the twin goals of Meiji Japan. As a result of these endeavors, 'custom' came to play a pivotal role in broader Japanese efforts to create a modern nation and preserve its autonomy in the face of Euro-American imperialism.;This approach to fuzoku calls into question its status as a simply descriptive or taxonomic term and foregrounds what it does for those who have taken it up before, during, and since the Meiji period. From this perspective, the preoccupation of a variety of groups and institutions with describing and influencing 'custom' can be recognized as a strategy that aimed as much at staking out a space of authority for its self-appointed guardians as it did at actually affecting social practices.;Neither the concern with 'custom' nor the salience of that category to understandings of nationhood was unique to Japan. In an era of frenzied nation-building and expanding empires, daily life came under intense new forms of scrutiny the world over in the nineteenth century. More recently, 'everyday life' has become a crucial field of inquiry for those seeking to grasp the social history of modern nation- and empire-building. This project seeks to illustrate how discourse on fuzoku has shaped both social practices and understandings of Japan's modern transformation, and speaks to the larger transnational history of how such categories as 'custom' or 'everyday life' can be seen as contributing to the unfolding of modernity rather than merely registering its material effects.