Amy Stanley’s “Stranger in the Shogun’s City”: A Quest for Independence and Freedom

Amy Stanley’s “Stranger in the Shogun’s City” examines the dialogue between women and social expectations. Tsuneno was, from the start, a rebel and a warrior. While she transcends external hardships despite the circumstances, many women nowadays still choose to chain themselves to one single set of narratives even though they could have chose the world.

In the first chapter, the narration focus on the external description of Tsuneno’s environment, her status as a victim, a pawn in patriarchy, and the ruthless institutionalization Edo women went through as they mature.

There is a sense of sympathy the writer expresses towards the Edo women. The protagonist, Tsuneno, however, is able to develop into a dynamic character with immense agency and resilience.

Tsuneno’s confidence is contagious. During her marriage with her first husband, Giyu, she “ignored his lectures about Buddhist and Confucian morality” (Chapter 2, Stanley).

The book is a legend of how a woman can express herself against all odds. Interpreting the life of women in Edo is a major battlefront of contention. Stanley uses abstract words such as “might” to encourage the reader to make their own interpretation of the story and to co-create the narration. Instead of tying the knot, the author is generous in opening her story up for readers’ own judgement and creativity. As Amy Stanley mentions in one roundabout, while some readers evaluate Edo women’s lifestyle according to the historical context, Amy Stanley relates to “the women in the past” from her perspective as a mother. She raises the question “How much, you can, as a woman,… relate to a woman in the past?”

Work Cited

Amy Stanley, “Narrating Women: Historical Imagination and the Writing of History,” roundtable, Centre for Japanese Research, Vancouver, December 17, 2020.

Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City, Scribner, 2020.