Remnants of Days Past, by Kyoji Watanabe, is an epic journey into Japan’s past. It is a comprehensive look at the Tokugawa rule and the Edo period, an age in which the civilization of “Old Japan” was still on display and which, for better or worse, ceased to exist with the advent of modernization. Watanabe covers in great detail several topics pertaining to this civilization, including the status and position of the various social classes, views of women and children, attitudes towards sex, labor, and the body and religious beliefs, as well as the unique cosmology behind this civilization. Watanabe makes use of a number of works written by foreign observers who visited Japan from the end of the Edo period to the beginning of the Meiji to support his views. As the author writes in the book, “What is important in my mind is the reality that the civilization of ‘Old Japan’ developed through a universal desire, as well as the ideas behind this desire, to make it as comfortable as possible for human existence.” This is a massive work that takes an in-depth look at what modern Japan has lost.
