Autobiographies in modern Japan: Self, memory, and social change

This study makes an inquiry into the Japanese autobiographies that appeared in recent history. The autobiographies are often seen as individually based and authored. My study demonstrates that the genre at the same time has had far-reaching social and cultural ramifications that deserve to be explored in the context of the modernization and the industrialization of Japan. As such, the autobiographies were quite connected with the acquiring of economic power. The development of capitalism and the changes it induced in social relations were critical to the appearance of the modern Japanese autobiographies.; My study begins with autobiographies written by rural entrepreneurs at the end of the Tokugawa period. A distinctively didactic tone characterizes the main texts here by Suzuki Bokushi and Kawato Jindai. This was an aspect that was influenced by the ongoing proto-industrialization at this time. Their autobiographies were one means of empowering the emerging elite, the "gono" or the rural entrepreneurs.; The stage of economic development in late Tokugawa, however, limited the writing and the distribution of these autobiographies. Things changed as the economy developed apace in Meiji. The texts in which various facets of this transition are embodied include several versions of Shibusawa Eiichi, a leading Meiji entrepreneur's autobiography, and the more famous self-narration of Fukuzawa Yukichi. In the background of their works was the increase in the number of white-collared managers and the changing relations within the Japanese companies and factories.; The other two chapters discuss the Taisho socialists' and workers' autobiographies, and the women's autobiographies of the 1950s. There, the changing role of the workers and the women also had a significant bearing on the authoring and the content of their autobiographies.; Through these chapters, I demonstrate that some of the leading intellectuals of particular social groups almost simultaneously began to make use of the autobiographies to inform and to convert. These works, from their appearance at various transitional moments for the groups their authors identified with, become significant means to transform the consciousness of their cohorts and that of the other fellow citizens. Memory, narrated as autobiographies, proved a potent force in the economic and social processes that modernized Japan.