From the late 1880s onward, a distinctly late Meiji strain of “decadence” began to emerge across popular literature, theater, and mass media. This creative movement was produced by the first generation of writers, illustrators, and performers who had no firsthand experience of Edo-period life. Their work both coincided with and reflected the political upheaval of the Freedom and People’s Rights movement and the waves of public protest that followed. This “decadence,” however, was far from the languid self-indulgence the term might suggest. In A Cultural History of Late Meiji Japan: Empire and Decadence, Alistair Swale defines it as “an aversion to adhering to the narrative of ‘civilization and improvement’ being promoted by the government” (4). Rather than passive withdrawal, it represented a skeptical—often satirical—stance toward the state’s project of cultivating loyal, compliant subjects. Within this framework, humor and irony became central tools of resistance against the official rhetoric of bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment). Understanding this redefinition of “decadence” is crucial for readers, as it underpins the book’s approach to cultural history.
Swale’s book shows that early Meiji gesaku (playful, satirical literature) writers and artists harbored sophisticated, humorous, and often scathing views of Meiji modernity. They questioned the ethical foundation of Western civilization, exposing contradictions between progress and morality, illusion and reality. The five central chapters move chronologically across the final twenty-two years of the Meiji era, with the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars each receiving dedicated treatment. This structure ties Swale’s discussion closely to the country’s arc of imperial expansion. He reconsiders the literary, visual, and performative practices of a period when veteran gesaku writers and a younger cohort of cultural producers reached creative maturity. Popular media thrived on a proliferation of minor publications—from vividly colored nishikie shinbun (illustrated woodblock tabloids) and monochrome sashie (monochrome illustrations) to serialized newspaper novels (tsuzukimono)—whose wit and satire appealed to an increasingly diverse readership. While many of the figures and works are familiar to specialists (and many others less so), Swale’s synthesis of Japanese and Anglophone scholarship makes for a timely reassessment. His prose is generally elegant, warm, and well-paced, though the early chapters are occasionally marred by typos and formatting errors.
One of the book’s strongest contributions is its gathering of writers, artists, and performers into a single accessible volume, framed to invert familiar bunmei kaika-centered narratives. Here, decadence appears far more mainstream than is often acknowledged. Swale moves fluidly between literary, theatrical, and visual media, giving as much attention to gidayū (narrative chanting) and kōdan (performative storytelling) performance as to the minor presses, serialized fiction, and war-related popular art. The book remains approachable for students while offering specialists a coherent synthetic view. A recurring focus on Miyatake Gaikotsu provides a lively biographical throughline, and in its most engaging moments—especially chapter 4, where Gaikotsu takes center stage—it conveys the textures and contradictions of cultural life. Swale is persuasive in presenting the last two decades of Meiji as fraught with tensions between cultural production, political activism, and state-building, and in underscoring the deep interdependence of politics and popular culture.
Often, however, discussion strays well beyond the bounds of decadence. Chapters often open with extended political, labor, or technological histories whose connection to popular culture remains unexplained. The chronological structure, while clear, sometimes produces eclectic juxtapositions—bicycles, telephones, sports, and vaccines appear alongside subcultural satire without a clear interpretive bridge. Some topics, such as those announced in the title of chapter 2, “The Constitution and Latent Anarchy,” receive limited treatment, while others—like shingeki (new theater) or patriotic war art—are explicitly acknowledged as non-decadent, leaving their place in the argument somewhat unclear. A notable case is chapter 6, which concludes with a substantial discussion of General Nogi’s ritual suicide: its media coverage, public reception, and effect on figures such as Natsume Sōseki, Mori Ōgai, Tanimoto Tomeri, and Nitobe Inazō. While rich in context, the episode’s contribution to the larger mosaic of late Meiji cultural life is left largely unexplained.
The study also engages only briefly with the tension between decadence, as Swale defines it, and the pull of wartime nationalism or market-driven popular culture—forces that at times supplanted the subversive spirit he describes. Public agitation over the legacy of the Sat-Chō oligarchy, the Meiji Constitution, party politics, and the Ashio copper mine pollution is acknowledged, but the book stops short of demonstrating decisively that decadence—or even dissent more broadly—prevailed as a dominant cultural mode. Swale’s choice to feature Gaikotsu—a figure who was often incarcerated, fined, and commercially unsuccessful—alongside more establishment figures like the kōdan performer Bitō Itchō, who was invited to perform for the emperor, reveals how creative innovation could coexist with, or even actively support, patriotic and militarist sentiment. During wartime in particular, popular culture grew patently intolerant of sociopolitical critique.
These drawbacks do not eclipse the book’s broader merits. Swale’s ability to move between media, his integration of performance genres often sidelined in literary history, and his skill in evoking the era’s lively print culture make A Cultural History of Late Meiji Japan a rewarding read. Its ambition lies less in proving decadence as the defining cultural mode of the late Meiji years than in mapping the intersections of politics, popular culture, and everyday life during a period of rapid imperial expansion. For undergraduates and general readers, it offers an engaging introduction to the personalities and media of the time; for specialists, it serves as a wide-ranging and thoughtful supplement—occasionally diffuse in focus, but acutely aware of the tensions and contradictions that shaped the late Meiji cultural landscape.