Makiko's New World: About the Book

If you like the movie, be sure to read the book, Makiko's Diary: a Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto. The video program taps only 46 of the 365 daily entries in Nakano Makiko's journal for 1910. And the program spotlights only one or two events among the several that she recorded on most days. As the saying goes, the video interpretation is "based on" the journal but is a prism that bends and distorts the components of its source.

In composing the program script I selected days and moments that accent lessons I think the journal offers to us a century later and an ocean away. The program reflects my agenda for teaching about Japanese life and history, not Makiko's personal agenda for learning the ways of the Nakano house.

So that you will have other perspectives on the journal and its significance, in making the program we interviewed several authorities on Japanese history, diaries, and women's lives. Only a few of their perceptive comments survived the editorial hatchet and are included in the video. So we invited each of these experts to write a few pages on what they regard as the larger significance of Makiko's record of life in her micro-world.

David W. Plath, Producer