Masculinity and Mediality in 18th Century Edo

Abstract

Thomas Gaubatz is an interdisciplinary scholar of early modern Japanese literature, woodblock print culture, and urban history. His research explores the nature of the early modern city as a social and media space, representations of the city in literature, Tokugawa popular fiction as a form of urban culture, and the roles played by woodblock print culture in giving shape to new ideas of community and identity. His first book, The Textual Townsman: Writing Urban Identity in Early Modern Japan (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a study of the formation of a merchant class, and a literature of urban identity, between the late 17th. and early 18th century. He received his PhD in Japanese literature from Columbia University in 2016.