Context brings the brightest minds to your living room with perspective-shifting online lectures.

Tokyo's Edo Past: the Birth of Japanese Cool with Dr. Gavin Campbell
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Gavin received a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and came to Kyoto in 2001. He is a Ph.D. professor of history at Doshisha University. His teaching and research revolve around Japan's cultural encounters with the West, particularly during the Edo, Meiji, Taisho and early Showa periods (1600-1940), and he has published on the history of foreign tourism and of Protestant missionaries in Japan. To further explore Japan's global cultural encounters, he is currently writing a book on the history of Japanese menswear from the 1600s through the early 20th century. He is also an expert on Kyoto geisha culture and a frequent participant in geisha entertainment.
This conversation is suitable for all ages.
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.
What an engaging and enlightening look at how Japan started to get its cool points! I will look at all the young, modern, fresh Japanese style differently from now on. This would be so amazing for people traveling to Japan!

This was a truly great presentation of not only the conditions of Edo in the time of Tokugawa, but also an insightful drawing of parallels forward to the current day. Campbell's explanations of the "dueling cultural dynamic" of past and present gave a real depth of understanding to Japanese culture. I can't recommend this highly enough!
Dr. Campbell has a wealth of information and is able to present it in an interesting and organized fashion. His deep dive into facets of the "floating world" and its relation to kabuki and connecting them to modern "cool" were particularly interesting to me.
Dr. Campbell knows his stuff, presents it clearly and simply and illustrates it well. I came away with a much clearer idea of how Edo culture flourished and how subversive it was.
This was my first experience with Context, and I could not have been more impressed. Dr. Campbell's talk and slideshows were fluid, fascinating, and well paced.