Five Faces of Japanese Feminism

Five Faces of Japanese Feminism PDF Author: Ineko Sata
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824866177
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This exquisite collection of short fiction by Sata Ineko (1904–1998) offers readers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of women rarely dignified in fiction: glamorous café waitresses, feisty communist activists, a tortured novelist, a soldier’s wife, and single women in Japan’s Korean colony. Her delicately penned portraits challenge the tired, erotic tropes of the geisha and schoolgirl, while delving into the dilemmas women themselves faced in their personal and professional relationships. The stories and novella translated here span a period of two decades and the most important events and themes in twentieth-century history. “Café Kyoto” (1929) takes up the glamorous, if tragic, lives of café waitresses in the wake of the late 1920s Depression. “Tears of a Factory Girl in the Union Leadership” (1931) offers a unique portrait of a woman who works with the underground Communist Party. “The Scent of Incense” (1942), written as a work of “home front” literature, was meant to help mobilize women as productive workers and supportive housewives during World War II. “White and Purple” (1950), one of Sata’s rare postcolonial works penned just after the outbreak of the Korean War, reflects on the psychological damage inflicted on women during Japan’s occupation of Korea. Sata’s first novella, Crimson (1936–1938), joins a long tradition of women’s writing in Japan that sought to assert women’s “liberation” from what was seen as the oppressively patriarchal institution of marriage. Translator Samuel Perry’s critical introduction weaves the story of Sata’s life into an examination of the historical and cultural milieu that helped to generate her stories about working women, their lives in the workplace and in the home. As the celebrated author herself once wrote, “The kinds of womanhood available today exist precisely because literary masters of different ages and cultures have drawn us to them: the woman we pity, the woman with a heart of gold, the cruel woman, the clever woman, the hen-pecker, the cheapskate, and the ‘good wife wise mother.’ As terms we use to describe the kinds of women who exist in the world today, they have simply outgrown their usefulness.”

Five Faces of Japanese Feminism

Five Faces of Japanese Feminism PDF Author: Ineko Sata
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824866177
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book

Book Description
This exquisite collection of short fiction by Sata Ineko (1904–1998) offers readers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of women rarely dignified in fiction: glamorous café waitresses, feisty communist activists, a tortured novelist, a soldier’s wife, and single women in Japan’s Korean colony. Her delicately penned portraits challenge the tired, erotic tropes of the geisha and schoolgirl, while delving into the dilemmas women themselves faced in their personal and professional relationships. The stories and novella translated here span a period of two decades and the most important events and themes in twentieth-century history. “Café Kyoto” (1929) takes up the glamorous, if tragic, lives of café waitresses in the wake of the late 1920s Depression. “Tears of a Factory Girl in the Union Leadership” (1931) offers a unique portrait of a woman who works with the underground Communist Party. “The Scent of Incense” (1942), written as a work of “home front” literature, was meant to help mobilize women as productive workers and supportive housewives during World War II. “White and Purple” (1950), one of Sata’s rare postcolonial works penned just after the outbreak of the Korean War, reflects on the psychological damage inflicted on women during Japan’s occupation of Korea. Sata’s first novella, Crimson (1936–1938), joins a long tradition of women’s writing in Japan that sought to assert women’s “liberation” from what was seen as the oppressively patriarchal institution of marriage. Translator Samuel Perry’s critical introduction weaves the story of Sata’s life into an examination of the historical and cultural milieu that helped to generate her stories about working women, their lives in the workplace and in the home. As the celebrated author herself once wrote, “The kinds of womanhood available today exist precisely because literary masters of different ages and cultures have drawn us to them: the woman we pity, the woman with a heart of gold, the cruel woman, the clever woman, the hen-pecker, the cheapskate, and the ‘good wife wise mother.’ As terms we use to describe the kinds of women who exist in the world today, they have simply outgrown their usefulness.”

Voices from the Japanese Women's Movement

Voices from the Japanese Women's Movement PDF Author: Ampo Japan Asia Quarterly Review
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131745250X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
An insider's view of the world of contemporary Japanese women.

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms PDF Author: Julia C. Bullock
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824878388
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a broad overview of the great diversity of feminist thought and practice in Japan from the early twentieth century to the present. Drawing on methodologies and approaches from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, and sociology, each chapter presents the results of research based on some combination of original archival research, careful textual analysis, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation. The volume is organized into sections focused on activism and activists, employment and education, literature and the arts, and boundary crossing. Some chapters shed light on ideas and practices that resonate with feminist thought but find expression through the work of writers, artists, activists, and laborers who have not typically been considered feminist; others revisit specific moments in the history of Japanese feminisms in order to complicate or challenge the dominant scholarly and popular understandings of specific activists, practices, and beliefs. The chapters are contextualized by an introduction that offers historical background on feminisms in Japan, and a forward-looking conclusion that considers what it means to rethink Japanese feminism at this historical juncture. Building on more than four decades of scholarship on feminisms in Japanese and English, as well as decades more on women’s history, Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a diverse and multivocal approach to scholarship on Japanese feminisms unmatched by existing publications. Written in language accessible to students and non-experts, it will be at home in the hands of students and scholars, as well as activists and others interested in gender, sexuality, and feminist theory and activism in Japan and in Asia more broadly. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.

Japanese Feminism. Full Circle

Japanese Feminism. Full Circle PDF Author: Lauren Lustig
Publisher: Grin Publishing
ISBN: 9783656758334
Category : Feminism
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
Master's Thesis from the year 1999 in the subject Orientalism / Sinology - Japanology, The George Washington University, language: English, abstract: By analyzing literature that has been produced on Japanese feminism and by Japanese feminists in the last century, this paper attempts to provide an overarching framework through which to view the flow of Japanese feminist consciousness from the Meiji period to its current status. Viewing this brief history of feminism will perhaps enable us to come to a better understanding of the factors that keep Japanese women from reaching gender equality. As I mentioned earlier, the main premise of the paper is that the focus of the feminist movement in Japan has traveled full circle, from and to an emphasis on expanding and raising women's consciousness. Within this premise are two important factors: The first being that feminist consciousness has been inhibited by a series of somewhat unique historical and contextual variables from "inside" and "outside" of the Japanese women's movement. The second concept is that, although Japanese feminist consciousness has been stunted, there is indication today that the Japanese women's movement has finally come of age; feminist leaders in Japan have fully targeted the main barriers to equality, developed and evolved theories as to why these barriers exist and are currently implementing special programs, such as the women study-related courses on university campuses, and the Gender Equality by 2000 program, to release the blocked flow of feminist consciousness. I'm sure there are also other, informal and formal programs going on that are beyond an outsider's eyesight, and beyond the limited scope of this brief overall analysis. The paper is divided into seven main sections. First, there are two sections in which I attempt to delineate the particular meaning of "Japanese feminism." Following is a brief discussion of the historical and cultural factors that have inhibited the flow o

Hiratsuka Raichō and Early Japanese Feminism

Hiratsuka Raichō and Early Japanese Feminism PDF Author: Hiroko Tomida
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047412621
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
This work on Hiratsuka Raichō at last fully assesses her key role in the history of the Japanese women's movement. It provides a full and contextual analysis of the life (1886-1971) and work of this leading Japanese feminist, all in the light of the changes affecting women in Japan. At the same time the author compares her working with similar historical shifts and movements in western countries, notably Great Britain and the United States. International comparisons at the level of personal biography and associated ideas are made, to see the influence of Western feminists on Hiratsuka's feminism. Hiratsuka is compared with other Japanese feminists, whereby her pivotal role in the history of the Japanese women's movement becomes clear. With extensive footnotes for further reference - and research -, a number of appendices, a detailed bilingual glossary and bibliography; a true reference on an important subject.

Broken Silence

Broken Silence PDF Author: Sandra Buckley
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520914681
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Broken Silence brings together for the first time many of Japan's leading feminists, women who have been bucking the social mores of a patriarchal society for years but who remain virtually unknown outside Japan. While Japan is often thought to be without a significant feminist presence, these interviews and essays reveal a vital community of women fighting for social change. Sandra Buckley's dialogues with poets, journalists, teachers, activists, and businesswomen exemplify the diversity of Japanese feminism: we meet Kanazumi Fumiko, a lawyer who assists women in a legal system that has long discriminated against them; Kora Rumiko, a poet who reclaims and redefines language to convey her experiences as a woman; Nakanishi Toyoko, founder of the Japanese Women's Bookstore; and Ueno Chizuko, a professor who has tackled such issues as pornography and abortion reform both in and out of the academy. These women speak to a host of issues—the politics of language, the treatment of women in medicine and law, the deeply entrenched role of women as mothers and caregivers, the future of feminism in Japan, and the relationship between Japanese feminists and "western" feminisms. Broken Silence will do much to dispel Western stereotypes about Japanese women and challenge North American attitudes about feminism abroad. With a timeline, glossary, and comprehensive list of feminist organizations, this is a long overdue collection sure to inform and excite all those interested in feminism and Japan.

Japanese Feminist Debates

Japanese Feminist Debates PDF Author: Ayako Kano
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824855833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in Japanese feminism and gender history. This new volume brings to light Japan's feminist public sphere, a discursive space in which academic, journalistic, and political voices have long met and sparred over issues that remain controversial to the present day: prostitution, pornography, reproductive rights, the balance between motherhood and paid work, relationships between individual, family, and state. Japanese Feminist Debates: A Century of Contention on Sex, Love, and Labor contributes to this discussion in a number of unique ways. The book is organized around intellectually and politically charged debates, including important recent developments in state feminism and the conservative backlash against it, spearheaded by the current prime minister, Abe Shinzō. Focusing on essential questions that have yet to be resolved, Ayako Kano traces the emergence and development of these controversies in relation to social, cultural, intellectual, and political history. Her focus on the " rondan"—the Japanese intellectual public sphere—allows her to show how disputes taking place therein interacted with both popular culture and policy making. Kano argues that these feminist debates explain an important paradox: why Japan is such a highly developed modern nation yet ranks dismally low in gender equality. Part of the answer lies in the contested definitions of gender equality and women's liberation, and this book traces these contentions over the course of modern Japanese history. It also situates these debates in relation to modern Japanese social policy and comparative discussions about welfare regimes. By covering an entire century, Japanese Feminist Debates is able to trace the origins and development of feminist consciousness from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Based on over a decade of research, this wide-ranging, lively, up-to-date book will both spark discussion among specialists grappling with long-enduring subjects of intellectual debate and animate undergraduate and graduate classrooms on modern Japanese women's history and gender studies.

Our Unions, Our Selves

Our Unions, Our Selves PDF Author: Anne Zacharias-Walsh
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706365
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In Our Unions, Our Selves, Anne Zacharias-Walsh provides an in-depth look at the rise of women-only unions in Japan, an organizational analysis of the challenges these new unions face in practice, and a firsthand account of the ambitious, occasionally contentious, and ultimately successful international solidarity project that helped to spark a new feminist labor movement. In the early 1990s, as part of a larger wave of union reform efforts in Japan, women began creating their own women-only labor unions to confront long-standing gender inequality in the workplace and in traditional enterprise unions. These new unions soon discovered that the demand for individual assistance and help at the bargaining table dramatically exceeded the rate at which the unions could recruit and train members to meet that demand. Within just a few years, women-only unions were proving to be both the most effective option women had for addressing problems on the job and in serious danger of dying out because of their inability to grow their organizational capacity. Zacharias-Walsh met up with Japanese women’s unions at a critical moment in their struggle to survive. Recognizing the benefits of a cross-national dialogue, they teamed up to host a multiyear international exchange project that brought together U.S. and Japanese activists and scholars to investigate the links between organizational structure and the day-to-day problems nontraditional unions face, and to develop Japan-specific participatory labor education as a way to organize and empower new generations of members. They also gained valuable insights into the fine art of building and maintaining the kinds of collaborative, cross border relationships that are essential to today’s social justice movements, from global efforts to save the environment to the Fight for $15 and Black Lives Matter.

Devouring Japan

Devouring Japan PDF Author: Nancy K. Stalker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190240407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
DEVOURING JAPAN interrogates the global rise and spread of Japanese cuisine through offering original insights into Japanese culinary history, practice, and food-related values by an illustrious roster of food historians and Japan experts. Essays address the evolution of particular foodstuffs, their representation in literature and film, the role of Japanese foods in regional, national, and international identities.

Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan

Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Laura Dales
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134046383
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
In contemporary Japan there is much ambivalence about women’s roles, and the term "feminism" is not widely recognised or considered relevant. Nonetheless, as this book shows, there is a flourishing feminist movement in contemporary Japan. The book investigates the features and effects of feminism in contemporary Japan, in non-government (NGO) women’s groups, government-run women’s centres and the individual activities of feminists Haruka Yoko and Kitahara Minori. Based on two years of fieldwork conducted in Japan and drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic data, it argues that the work of individual activists and women’s organisations in Japan promotes real and potential change to gender roles and expectations among Japanese women. It explores the ways that feminism is created, promoted and limited among Japanese women, and advocates a broader construction of what the feminist movement is understood to be and a rethinking of the boundaries of feminist identification. It also addresses the impact of legislation, government bureaucracy, literature and the internet as avenues of feminist development, and details the ways which these promote agency – the ability to act – among Japanese women.