Rethinking Japanese Feminisms (2025)

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms [Open Access]

2018

[**Table of Contents Downloadable Here**] The chapters in Rethinking Japanese Feminisms work toward the rethinking of feminisms in modern and contemporary Japan, from the Meiji era to the present. Contributors variously draw on methodologies and approaches from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, and sociology. In some chapters authors draw attention to ideas and practices that variously resonate with feminist beliefs but find expression through the work of writers, artists, activists, and laborers who are not typically included under a feminist rubric, while other authors 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. These chapters have been organized into sections focused on literature and the arts, education and employment, activism and activists, boundary crossing, and scholarship. The first five sections are preceded by a brief introduction that underlines key points made in each of the chapters and highlights points of overlap across the chapters. The final chapter, by Ayako Kano, examines the current state of scholarship on Japanese feminisms, drawing on talks given by leading scholars Vera Mackie, Barbara Molony, and Ueno Chizuko. These talks were presented as keynote addresses at the “Rethinking Japanese Feminisms” conference at Emory University in 2013, where drafts of chapters in this volume were presented and discussed by scholars from around the world with the aim of reinvigorating—and rethinking—scholarship on feminisms in Japan.

Introduction (Rethinking Japanese Feminisms) [Open Access]

In Rethinking Modern Japanese Feminisms, ed. Julia Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018

[**Full Chapter Downloadable Here**] by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker

VII. On the rich tapestry of Japanese feminisms

Feminism & Psychology, 2011

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms ed. by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker

The Journal of Japanese Studies, 2019

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms is a groundbreaking volume that emerged out of a conference on the same topic at Emory University in 2013. Consisting of 14 chapters plus a marvelous conclusion by Ayako Kano, the volume appears slightly longer than most of its kind, yet the essays are on the short side. The editors have divided the book into four parts, each centering on a set of themes and paired with a concise introduction. The contributors, who come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including literature, history, anthropology, sociology, and feminist studies, take on topics ranging from the activism and translation work of socialist feminist Yamakawa Kikue (1890-1980), to the opportunities available to postwar women teaching ikebana (fl ower arranging) and working in ryokan (traditional Japanese inns), to refl ections on the legacy of the ūman ribu (women's liberation) movement of the 1970s. The book joins other recent collections on women and gender in Japan including Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan (2014), Modern Girls on the Go (2013), and Recreating Japanese Men (2011). What makes Rethinking Japanese Feminisms stand out is its sustained attention to feminisms; feminism hovers in the background of many studies of women and gender, but here it is foregrounded. The plural feminisms is crucial as the editors and contributors do not adhere to a single defi nition of feminism. Rather, they embrace debate and contestation as they sort through "our interpretations of the past, our engagement with the present, and our outlook for the future" (p. 8). Part 1 focuses on activism and begins with Elyssa Faison's chapter on Yamakawa Kikue's work as an activist and bureaucrat rather than a theorist

Feminisms and differences in Japan: Korean-Japanese women’s activism and Japanese feminisms

2006

This paper aims to give a brief overview of contemporary Korean (zainichi) women's groups in Japan and their contribution to Japanese feminist discourse and activism. Research in the area of marginalisation has been significantly informed by gender and feminist theory. As Anthias and Yuval-Davis have argued; "the heterogeneous nature of racism needs to be considered not only in terms of ideologies surrounding biological difference but also in terms of fluid intersections of class, ethnicity, race and gender" (1992: 20). While feminists in Japan have published widely on the problems of patriarchy, androcentricity and inadequate notions of the reproductive family as the fundamental social unit in contemporary society, it is only recently that migrant women have voiced their concerns through feminist and gender studies frameworks. Laura Dales and David Chapman Feminisms and Differences in Japan 3 obviously issues of representation, and such discussions aside, there should be no ranking of "truth" to this assessment of subjectivity. It simply acknowledges the potential for different outcomes given different perspectives, reflecting that the view is largely dependant on the vantage point. 3 Located somewhere at the junction of First/Third World and East/West binaries, Japan is not easily placed in standard categories of Other-post-colonial, socialist or post-socialist, or "developing nation". Straddling the divide between what Caplan calls "the imperializing Subject and the colonized Other", Japan can thus be seen as the site of a selective and specific blurring of binaries, and as such represents a challenge to those frameworksfeminist includedfounded on the constructs of Similarity and Difference. 4 Constructions of "Japanese" womanhood must therefore be understood as embedded in specific relational contexts that reflect international relations (including wars and globalisation) as much as domestic social trends. A study of feminism and women's experiences in Japan thus evokes the various "figure(s) of difference", including but not limited to, those which mark

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture

2019

The space of debates Japan presents a paradox: How can a nation that is so highly developed be so gender-unequal that it ranks 114th out of 144 nations (in 2017) on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index? Could it be that lack of consensus about gender equality-how to define it, how to achieve it, whether it is desirable-has something to do with this paradox? This chapter examines debates in Japanese feminism. I begin with the role of debate in Japanese publishing culture in general and the sphere of feminist debate in particular, then describe a series of debates about abortion, motherhood, housework, and paid employment. Debates might be a common feature of intellectual history in general, but the particular prominence of debate in modern Japan can be attributed to a few factors. At least since the late nineteenth century, an intellectual class and educated readership has supported the wide circulation of newspapers and journals, starting with the Meiroku zasshi (Meiji six journal 1874-75). This journal, for example, featured an early debate on the definition of equality between women and men (Yamaguchi 1989). Highly informed and motivated editors often stage-managed published conversations and contentions. In the 1920s and 1930s, as leftist intellectuals were forced out of academia along with the rise in militarism, they were recruited by the expanding journalistic world, and general interest magazines such as Chūō kōron (Central public debate 1899-) and Bungei shunjū (Literary seasons 1923-) became their chief venues of expressions. As these journals competed with one another, their editorial strategies evolved to include staged debates, along with interviews, dialogues (taidan), and round-table discussions (zadankai) that remain features of Japanese publishing to the present day (Ōsawa 2015). From its inception, women were part of this world as editors, contributors, and readers. Activists like Kishida Toshiko and Fukuda Hideko aspired to political roles, and public speech making (enzetsu) became a new outlet for women's expression in the early Meiji period (Anderson 2010; Patessio 2011). Such roles would eventually become restricted as the government clamped down on women's political activities, yet women continued to publicize their views through writing and circulating petitions. The first journal to be edited by a woman was Fujin no tomo (Ladies' companion 1906-), founded by educator Hani Motoko, which sought to promote ideals of feminine education and cultivation. We see the clear emergence of a feminist discursive space in the early twentieth century, with the founding of the journal Seitō

12. Rethinking Japanese Feminism and the Lessons of Ūman Ribu: Toward a Praxis of Critical Transnational Feminism

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms

noted in 2001 that the very term "transnational" "has become so ubiquitous in cultural and critical studies that much of its political valence seems to have become evacuated." 7 In the context of neoliberal globalization, feminists continue to debate the efficacy of the terms "transnational" and "transnational feminism."

Dialogue, Distance and Difference: Feminism in contemporary japan

1998

Feminisms and differences in Japan: Korean-Japanese women’s activism and Japanese feminisms (OCIS Conference Refereed Proceedings)

2006

This paper aims to give a brief overview of contemporary Korean (zainichi) women's groups in Japan and their contribution to Japanese feminist discourse and activism.

14. Takemura Kazuko: On Friendship and the Queering of American and Japanese Studies

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms