Treaty Port Society and the Club in Meiji Japan: Clubbism, Athleticism and the Public Sphere
Journal: The Sydney eScholarship Repository (The University of Sydney)
Year: 2016

During the early years of extraterritoriality various foreign clubs and fraternal institutions emerged in Yokohama, and later in Kobe. These institutions variously contributed to the definition, creation and promotion of what may be termed as a civil society, or more specifically what Habermas has referred to as the ‘public sphere’. Despite the absence of any single colonial power controlling the administration of the settlements, the fraternal institutions run by a network of transoceanic Euro-