Ballroom Dancing in the Rokumeikan Era

In my final project, I will be studying ballroom dancing (or as it would have been called then, Western-style dancing) in the Rokumeikan Era.  More specifically, I will explore how various parties from both the East and the West viewed ballroom dancing in Japan and use those findings to probe the intricate relationship between Meiji Japan and rapid Westernization.

I will explore questions of what Japanese officials were trying to achieve diplomatically by building a Western-style dance hall in the heart of Tokyo and how successful the Rokumeikan actually was in achieving those goals.  Along the way, I will be using domestic reactions to ballroom dancing and the Rokumeikan to deduce answers to questions about how Japanese people at the time viewed Japan’s rapid Westernization and modernization in general.  If I have time, I may also use ballroom dancing to examine the changing roles of women in Meiji Japan.

This is a topic with a wide range of broader cultural implications; by studying it, I hope to gain insight about Japan’s relationship with the West in the Meiji era and the rapid cultural changes that characterized the period.