Introduction: Doing Interdisciplinary Edo

The essays collected in this volume center on new perspectives on the political, literary, cultural, religious, and environmental history of Tokugawa-era Japan (1603-1868). They take methodological inspiration from recent attempts to redraft demarcation lines between traditional academic disciplines and seek in turn to contribute to that process of reimagination by drawing attention to previously occluded points of connection between textual, visual, and material cultures. The topics under consideration range in scale from individual paintings and works of prose fiction to the literal tectonic plates underlying the Yamashiro basin. The disciplinary approaches adopted in the analyses of these artifacts are similarly diverse. In terms of official, university-sanctioned affiliation, the contributors to the collection comprise an array of experts in cultural, political, and material history; literary studies; art history; and religious studies. That being said, contributors were explicitly asked to center their discussions on items and topics that resist these tidy divisions, and in doing so, encourage us to grapple with the disciplinary blind spots and methodological shortcomings of our own respective fields.