Makiko's Diary: A Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto.

AuthorRodd, Laurel Rasplica

1910 was a busy year for Nakano Makiko, mother of sociologist Nakano Takashi, an advocate of the use of personal documents in the study of history and society, who arranged for the publication of this diary in Japan. When Makiko wrote her diary, she had been married for four years to Nakano Chuhachi, head of the Nakano household and the family's pharmaceutical business since the death of his father six years earlier. Chuhachi was a vigorous, forward-looking young man: he instituted reforms that moved the family pharmacy into the modern business world, and he also was an enthusiastic participant in numerous civic organizations and social groups. It was a rare day that he did not go out to a meeting, to dine, to attend an exhibit or play, or to visit friends, and the Nakano household was constantly entertaining business clients, artists, writers, educators, friends, and family who dropped by.

Makiko, still childless in 1910, was an active participant in running the family business and in those of Chuhachi's activities that took place at home. The diary bustles with descriptions of meals and snacks served, endless conversations, and amusements ranging from oil painting and astronomy to card games and celebrations of all sorts. In addition, Makiko juggled the heavy responsibilities of the domestic workload, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and serving meals for the family and their employees under the tutelage of her mother-in-law Mine, with whom she enjoyed a harmonious relationship that may surprise readers accustomed to generalizations about the difficult life of the daughter-in-law in traditional extended families.

Makiko's diary may have been in part an aide-memoire to her as she learned the customs of her new family. Hardly a day passes when she does not record some new bit of information...

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