title: Child's Play: Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan
author: Sabine Frhstck
description: <DIV>&quot;I do not know of any collection like this in English, dealing so comprehensively and from so many angles with the topic of the history of children and childhood in Japan, which is a very under-researched subject. The authors are all experts in their particular period of history and bring a high level of scholarship to bear, offering new analyses and original material.&quot;&mdash;Peter Cave, author of&#160;<I>Schooling Selves&#160;</I>and&#160;<I>Primary School in Japan<BR /><BR /> &quot;</I>In autobiography, the role of childhood is to furnish a point of departure, a way of beginning a narrative emplotment of one&rsquo;s life together with all the other lives in which one is implicated. In <I>Child&rsquo;s Play</I>, &#39;childhood&#39; assumes many roles and guises, and many points of departure. Readers who perceive child and childhood as biological and/or chronological categories of human life will find their assumptions challenged from the first chapter onward. Also undercut in this volume are facile equations of women with children. The authors comb through diverse resources, from diaries and cartoons to religious polemics and sport PR, written across generations in times of peace and of war. Collectively, they demonstrate the significance of Japanese cultural institutions and practices for a more comprehensive, and sobering, understanding of the artifice and operations alike of &ldquo;childhood.&rdquo;&mdash;Jennifer Robertson, author of&#160;<I>Robo sapiens japan</I><I>icus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation </I></DIV>
zlib_text: Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos
  provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing
  for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly
  work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the
  same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as
  those in our traditional program. [ www.luminosoa.org
  ](http://www.luminosoa.org)
  
  
  Child’s Play
  
  
  Child’s Play
  
  Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan
  
  ![img1.png](Image00005.gif)
  
  Edited by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall
  
  ![img2.png](Image00006.gif)
  
  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
  
  
  University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university
  presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing
  scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its
  activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic
  contributi