Project description DEENESFRITPL A unique trip to traditional Japan The Edo period or Tokugawa period (1603-1868) was a time of relative internal peace, political stability and economic growth in Japan. The EU-funded TOKUGAWATRAVEL project will review the cultural and social meanings of travel in the context of Tokugawa 'absolutism'. In fact, the project will assess how travel tends to be interconnected with text. Travel guides and maps will be analysed to investigate whether travel within Japan came to subvert the geographical and social immobility that characterised the Tokugawa administrative system. Another aspect of the project is to review the relationship between travel and the formation of national identity. It will consider whether the ideological transformation connected with travel served as a 'proto-national' identification. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective This research project investigates the practice of travel in Edo/Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868), particularly in connection with notions of social identity, transformation, and nationhood. Through a theoretical framework that combines Social History and Historical Bibliography, primary sources will be investigated, including commercially “unofficial” and “popular” sources published and distributed, such as travel guides and commercial maps. In the analysis the material will be considered: a) as objects, viewed in the light of the cultural and economical processes that led to their production and circulation, in order to understand the “range” of the ideological impact of travel; and b) in terms of their contents, in order to assess how their “commercialized” narratives reflect popular notions of identity and nationhood. An interdisciplinary approach, based on Travel Studies, Japanese Historiography, and in particularly, World Society Theory, will be implemented to discuss the cultural and social meaningof travel in the context of Tokugawa “absolutism”. Travel tends to be entwined with social mobility, in a way that alters and marks social and cultural landscapes. The project will therefore investigate whether travel within Japan, becoming growingly commonin a context of economic growth, came to subvert the geographical and social immobility that characterized Tokugawa administrative system. Furthermore, the analysis will discuss the relationship between travel and the formation of a national identity, assessing whether the social and ideological transformation connected with travel worked in Japan as a prompt for “proto-national” identification,as opposed to forms of local nationalism. Fields of science humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2017 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2017 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF Coordinator THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER Net EU contribution € 183 454,80 Address Oxford road M13 9PL Manchester United Kingdom See on map Region North West (England) Greater Manchester Manchester Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
