Amy Stanley (History, Northwestern University)

"Stranger in the Shogun’s City" is a book about the adventures about a Buddhist priest’s daughter, Tsuneno, who ran away from her village in Echigo to make a life for herself in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) in the last decades of the Tokugawa period. This talk is an introduction to the book, but it is primarily about the process of writing. What are the challenges of writing a book about Japanese history for an American audience? How is writing narrative different from other argumentative strategies in history? And what are some useful approaches to writing about unknown people, particularly women?