Sixteen years of effort from Sumie Jones and her team has finally paid off in the form of the Edo-Tokyo Anthology's completion in February 2020. The project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Toshiba International Foundation, and various offices of Indiana University, with publication subvention grants from the Japan Foundation and Suntory Foundation. The three-volume anthology divides a large body of popular literature and arts into three urban areas of Kamigata (Kyoto and Osaka), Edo, and Tokyo. The anthology features many texts that were lesser known and have never been translated. The number and quality of the illustrations in the volumes have also attracted much attention. She is currently working on two projects to disseminate the findings her team gathered while preparing the three volumes. One is an international conference on the discursive history of modernity from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, to be held in 2022. The other is a co-authored book on the multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural view of modernity in Japan.
In order, the titles of the three volumes are:
- A Kamigata Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Metropolitan Centers, 1600-1750 (https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/a-kamigata-anthology)
- An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega City, 1750-1850 (https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/an-edo-anthology)
- A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Modern Capital, 1850-1920 (https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/a-tokyo-anthology)
We wish her the best of luck and look forward to her future publications!
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