Isami's House: Three Centuries of a Japanese Family.

ISAMI'S HOUSE: Three Centuries of a Japanese Family. By Gail Lee Bernstein. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. 2005. xxviii, 283 pp. (B & W photos, maps.) US $19.95, paper. ISBN 0-520-24697-7.

Isami's House traces the history of a prominent rural family in northeastern Japan from when it was first entrusted with the office of village head in the late seventeenth century to the present. The "Isami" of the title refers to Matsuura Isami, the eleventh generation patriarch of the family. The author, Gail Lee Bernstein, professor of history at the University of Arizona, first encountered his children when doing graduate research in Tokyo in the 1960s. She states that her goal in writing this book was to "put a personal face on the last three hundred years of life in Japan" (p. xii), and in this she has largely succeeded, relating a compelling and accessible narrative of the Matsuura through three centuries of Japanese history.

Nevertheless, this is no mere melodrama of a family's fortunes. The personal lives of the Matsuura provide sociological and cultural insights into postwar Japan: husbands die of "cancer of the esophagus, stomach, or lungs, possibly related to their heavy smoking habits" (p. 213); the wives outlive them and, "For a woman whose marriage bond was based on gratitude or respect or pride or economic security, if not a close emotional connection, genuine affection, or physical intimacy, a husband's death brought a certain sense of satisfaction and pride in a job well done" (p. 215). Cramped quarters and daily shopping illustrate everyday life in 1960s Japan, while issues of divorce, adoption and conflict between generations belie stereotypes of the stable and harmonious family in postwar Japan.

However, some may question whether a "personal" account can, or should, be taken at face value. When a family member is posted as consul-general in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, Ms. Bernstein notes that, "Ishii and his wife, Moto, like other Matsuura relatives, were unwitting imperialists" (p. 132). For an army surgeon son and his wife sent to a military base that housed a subunit of the infamous Unit 731, "memories of Japanese army life in Manchuria were mainly of the cold, not the fiendish cruelty. Masako never heard of ... Unit 731 then or later, and if her husband did, he never told her" (p. 138).

Much of what is related in the text was gleaned from interviews with family members, and the inability to understand the significance of events at the time one is living through them is understandable. Nevertheless, such passages inevitably raise the question of selective memory and historical amnesia.

What, then, is the value of a work of this nature to the specialist? For the scholar, there are some limitations here: although Japanese primary source documents are cited, secondary sources are predominantly in English, a disadvantage to those seeking access to the Japanese resources that the author undoubtedly utilized. The absence of a bibliography makes looking up sources laborious, and a narrative that frequently jumps from the present to the past may make for effective storytelling, but disrupts historical continuity.

Nevertheless, Isami's House is not just an absorbing narrative for the general reader. It also provides a refreshing perspective for the specialist and even mundane events can be informative, as when a Matsuura servant in the late eighteenth century is scolded for discharging a firearm. Bernstein explains that despite the Tokugawa restrictions on guns, "most villages, especially in the north, possessed muskets ... lent out for protection against wild animals, such as boar, which could destroy crops and threaten villagers as well" (p. 65).

Thus, Ms. Bernstein's new book may present some problems for the specialist, but it is still a valuable resource as it illustrates the variety of a people's experiences and humanizes history.

CARY SHINJI TAKAGAKI

The University of Toronto at Mississauga, ON, Canada