New Books on Japan: "Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan"

Thursday, February 15, 2024 | 8:00-9:30 PM ET | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Author: Morgan Pitelka, Bernard L. Herman Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Discussant: Ethan Segal, Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with  Morgan Pitelka (Bernard L. Herman Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) . Professor Pitelka will be speaking about his new book,  Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2022) . Reading Medieval Ruins takes us back to the Japanese provincial city of Ichijōdani, which was destroyed in the civil wars of the late sixteenth century but never rebuilt. Archaeological excavations have since uncovered the most detailed late medieval urban site in the country. Drawing on analysis of specific excavated objects and decades of archaeological evidence to study daily life in Ichijōdani, Reading Medieval Ruins illuminates the city's layout, the possessions and houses of its residents, its politics and experience of war, and religious and cultural networks. Professor Pitelka demonstrates how provincial centers could be dynamic and vibrant nodes of industrial, cultural, economic, and political entrepreneurship and sophistication. In this study a new and vital understanding of late medieval society is revealed, one in which Ichijôdani played a central role in the vibrant age of Japan's sixteenth century.  Ethan Segal (Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University ) will serve as discussant.