Lecture by Stepan Rodin, Japanologist, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor at the Institute of History and Culture of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Since the second half of the 19th century, Japan, which had tried to avoid contacts with the outside world for more than two centuries, opened its ports to foreign ships and began to actively adopt, borrow and adapt elements of Western culture, which gradually became part of the new everyday life of the Japanese. During the Meiji period (1868 – 1912), along with large-scale state reforms, the appearance of subjects was also reformed, changes were made to the food culture, and things, objects and items previously unknown in the archipelago or perceived as outlandish appeared, which gradually underwent a process of domestication and formed a significant part of the cultural landscape of the time. One of the slogans under which the Meiji period reforms took place was ‘Wakon yosai “和魂洋才, or ”Japanese Soul – Western Skills’. We will discuss the specifics of this process and the subject matter of Meiji period human daily life in this lecture.