Happy Families

Available for over a year

Delving further into the darker sides of Japan's recent history, Christopher Harding explores two starkly contrasting models of ‘family’ in turn-of-the-century Japan. One was a neo-Victorian idyll, epitomised by the emperor serving as the benevolent head of a national family; the other was symbolised by a woman who joined a group of anarchists plotting to assassinate the emperor and by feminists who opposed "the heavy investment of powerful people in this familial ideal." Producer: Sheila Cook