Podcast with Simon Partner, author of “Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration”

Simon Partner

In 1864, on a midsummer’s day, Kawai Koume, a 60-year old matriarch of a samurai family in Wakayama, makes a note in her diary, which she had dutifully written in for over three decades. “There are reports of armed clashes in Kyoto. It’s said that the emperor has ordered the expulsion of the foreigners, and it’s also said that a large band of vagabond soldiers has gathered in Senju in Edo. It’s said that in Edo people are wearing their [winter] kimono linings, and in Nikko it has been snowing. I don’t know if it’s true. But really, every day we hear nothing but disturbing rumors.”

The Meiji Restoration, which ousts the shogun and restores the emperor’s power, happens four years later.

 

 

Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration, Simon Partner (Columbia University Press, December 2023)
Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration, Simon Partner (Columbia University Press, December 2023)

Koume’s diary is the central document in Simon Partner’s latest book Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration. In this interview, Simon and I talk about Kawai Koume, her diary, and everything she witnessed in the decades covered by her journal.

Simon Partner is professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of three previous books that chronicle modern Japanese history through the lives of ordinary people such as farmers, shopkeepers, and housewives, including most recently The Merchant’s Tale: Yokohama and the Transformation of Japan.


Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio host based in Hong Kong.