Geographies of identity in nineteenth-century Japan

This study looks beneath the surface structures of the Japanese state to reveal the mechanism by which markers of polity, status, and civilization came together over the divide of the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

It illustrates how a short roster of malleable, explicitly superficial customs - hairstyle, clothing, and personal names - served to distinguish the 'civilized' realm of the Japanese from the 'barbarian' realm of the Ainu in the Tokugawa era.