Description du projet
Un voyage unique au cœur du Japon traditionnel
La période Edo ou période Tokugawa (1603-1868) a été une époque de paix intérieure relative, de stabilité politique et de croissance économique au Japon. Le projet TOKUGAWATRAVEL, financé par l’UE, examinera les significations culturelles et sociales du voyage dans le contexte de «l’absolutisme» des Tokugawa. En effet, il évaluera comment les voyages tendent à être intimement liés au texte. Des guides et des cartes de voyage seront analysés afin de déterminer si les déplacements au sein du Japon en sont venus à subvertir l’immobilité géographique et sociale qui caractérisait le système administratif des Tokugawa. Un autre aspect du projet consistera à examiner la relation entre les voyages et la formation de l’identité nationale. Il s’agira de déterminer si la transformation idéologique liée au voyage a contribué à une identification «protonationale».
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinateur
M13 9PL Manchester
Royaume-Uni