Ohio State is in the process of revising websites and program materials to accurately reflect compliance with the law. While this work occurs, language referencing protected class status or other activities prohibited by Ohio Senate Bill 1 may still appear in some places. However, all programs and activities are being administered in compliance with federal and state law.

IJS Lecture: Ann Marie Davis, "Book Talk: Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913"

Haigyo Ato Image
October 28, 2019
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Mendenhall Lab Room 125

The Institute for Japanese Studies presents:

Ann Marie Davis
Assistant Professor and Librarian of Japanese Studies
Ohio State Libraries

Book Talk: Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913

Lecture: 4:00-5:30pm
Reception: 5:30-6:00pm

Flyer: AnnMarieDavis

Abstract:  This presentation will examine the ways in which modern Japan imagined the symbol of the prostitute as a project of nation- and empire-building. In response to Western incursion, wide-ranging debates in Japan linked the prostitute to national security and international prestige in imperative new ways. I argue that the figure of the prostitute was a powerful symbolic resource deployed, variously, by wide-ranging interest groups, as they negotiated their own shifting distinctions of power and status. By the end of the Meiji period (1868-1912), the figure of the prostitute was the product of more than a half-century of high-stakes conversations about the future of Japan and the role of women in the modern nation-state. Such debates about the prostitute were in turn central to and mutually constitutive of the emergent social order in modern Japan.

Ann Marie Davis obtained her PhD in Japanese History from the University of California, Los Angeles.  She is currently an assistant professor and librarian of Japanese Studies at The Ohio State University.  A former history instructor, she has taught courses on the history of Japan, 

Imagining Prostitution Book Cover
global sex trafficking, and empire and expansion in East Asia.  With research interests spanning the disciplines of Japanese Studies, Teaching and Learning, and Information Science, she has published articles in the U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, College and Undergraduate Libraries, and Information Technology and Libraries.  Her book, Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913 was published in March 2019 by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.  She was recently presented the Annual Research Excellence Award by the University Libraries in recognition of her publications. 

Free and Open to the Public

This event is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.