Episode 596 – Koume’s World, Part 3

September 26, 2025

After a long hiatus, the diary of Kawai Koume picks back up in 1853, a year of absolutely no world-shaking importance in Japanese history whatsoever-wait, I’m hearing from our producers that, in point of fact, some pretty crazy things are about to go down. And Kawai Koume, like many others, is frantically going to be trying to follow the latest news about it all while living her own life as best she can–and dealing with more than her share of tragedies.

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Sources

Partner, Simon. Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration

Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan

Images

Frontispiece for Ansei Korori Ryukoki–Record of the Cholera Outbreak of the Ansei Era (1858). The boxes in the image are coffins.
This particular carnivalesque dancing scene is from the “Ee Ja Nai Ka” movement in the final year of the shogunate–but ‘dancing plagues’ during the cholera epidemic had a similar vibe, for lack of a better word. What exactly motivated them remains a matter of some confusion.
Kawaraban, anonymous newspaper-like circulars such as this one (depicting Perry’s arrival in Edo and the samurai forces arrayed against him) were one of the main vehicles for spreading news during this period.