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Portents and Politics: Two Women Activists on the Verge of the Meiji Restoration

Portents and Politics: Two Women Activists on the Verge of the Meiji Restoration Abstract: This essay examines the deployment of revelations and prophetic dreams in the writings of two female political activists of the bakumatsu period, Kurosawa Tokiko and Nomura Bōtō. As a rhetorical device, the supernatural enabled Kurosawa and Nomura to foster their affiliation with the loyalists, to envision order, and to justify their actions. As a weapon and as a shield, it offered a sense of entitlement and the illusion of invulnerability. Studies of bakumatsu ideology often emphasize its rational qualities; these two case studies, however, shed new light on the multifaceted expressions of political activism on the verge of the Meiji Restoration. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of Japanese Studies Society for Japanese Studies

Portents and Politics: Two Women Activists on the Verge of the Meiji Restoration

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Publisher
Society for Japanese Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Japanese Studies.
ISSN
1549-4721
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Abstract

Abstract: This essay examines the deployment of revelations and prophetic dreams in the writings of two female political activists of the bakumatsu period, Kurosawa Tokiko and Nomura Bōtō. As a rhetorical device, the supernatural enabled Kurosawa and Nomura to foster their affiliation with the loyalists, to envision order, and to justify their actions. As a weapon and as a shield, it offered a sense of entitlement and the illusion of invulnerability. Studies of bakumatsu ideology often emphasize its rational qualities; these two case studies, however, shed new light on the multifaceted expressions of political activism on the verge of the Meiji Restoration.

Journal

The Journal of Japanese Studies – Society for Japanese Studies

Published: Feb 1, 2012

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