Organizer and Chair: Keiko Ikeda, Barnard College, Columbia University
Discussant: Claudia Koonz, Duke University
In the past decade, we have seen the development of a reflexive women's history that views women during the Pacific War not as passive victims, but as active participants in imperialism and ultra-nationalism. Through re-examinations of feminist writings and national politics in war-time Japan, these papers analyze the ways in which women collaborated with the modern nation-state. The papers variously show tensions between women as citizens and women as mothers, and raise questions relating to the critical juncture between feminism and nationalism. The papers take Japan as a specific case for examination, yet the presenters share the thrust that studies of the relationships between women and nation must go beyond the scope of regional focus and incorporate a perspective of comparative history. As a step in that direction, we have invited Claudia Koonz to be our panel discussant. Professor Koonz' widely-read book on women in Nazi Germany (Mothers in the Fatherland) raises similar issues in the historical context of another nation that experienced a fascist regime.
Narratives of Reflexive Women's History: Women's Participation in War
Chizuko Ueno, Tokyo University
Once portrayed in historical narratives as victims of World War II, Japanese women have come to be viewed over the past decade as active agents of military mobilization. This shift in view has been accompanied by a rereading of feminists texts and accusations of "guilt." Because the war was a "bad war," everything women did in the name of nationalizing women and contributing to the state is now seen as "wrong." The question this perspective begs, however, is "Does a 'good war' excuse women's contributions to the state?" This paper will examine the narratives of Japanese women's past, from the issue of "military comfort women" to that of women's participation in battle, and argue that this problem does not belong to the past.
Feminist Rhetoric and War Mobilization of Women
Yuko Nishikawa, Kyoto Bunkyo University
Two years after the realization of men's suffrage in Japan in 1928, women suffragist groups began to meet annually during the session of the Diet to hold a demonstration outside the Diet building. In 1931, the Manchurian Incident marked the beginning of the Fifteen-Year War. Against this background, this paper aims to analyze the gradual change of the slogans of the suffragist conferences between 1930 and 1937 to explain how the feminist movements ended up collaborating with the wartime government.
Initially, feminists were opposed to the war: some stated that women's civil rights would prevent the war, while others argued that in the name of motherhood their sons should never be sent to the battlefield. Soon, however, rhetorical discourses were created to accommodate the concession. Suffragists such as Fusae Ichikawa claimed that women in England and the U.S. obtained the right to vote in reward for their collaboration in the First World War. On the other hand, feminists emphasizing the virtue of motherhood stressed that the mothers whose sons died for their motherland should also be allowed to show their love for their country by fighting till death.
Despite its falseness, this rhetoric successfully mobilized both feminist and conservative groups. I will argue that as long as we restrict our thinking to the boundaries of the nation-state, we will never be able to deconstruct these rhetorical discourses.
Feminism at War: Yamakawa Kikue (1931-1945)
Beth S. Katzoff, Columbia University
The reactions of feminists in wartime Japan to the ways in which war destroyed and re-created the social order exemplify the clash between personal convictions and national allegiance. They also reveal that feminists found opportunity in the Asia-Pacific War for social and economic reform on behalf of women. In this paper, I address both these issues through the wartime writings of one socialist-feminist woman Yamakawa Kikue (1890-1980).
Before 1937, Yamakawa's writings clearly expressed her disapproval of war, militarism, capitalism, imperialism, fascism, and leaders-both men and women-who supported them. Yamakawa's attitude in 1918 toward war as a situation fundamentally at odds with women's interests and feminist principles was, in 1937, complicated by the chances for women's advancement in the workplace produced by the war. She shifted her discussion from victimization to the expanded labor opportunities available to women as a result of war mobilization. Yamakawa argued that women, as women and as mothers, could contribute to the nation, and consequently, to the war. Although she never wrote that war was good for women, Yamakawa did not promote progressive resistance due to such wartime constraints as censorship and the threat of incarceration. Still, she remained a feminist; Yamakawa's use of the language of nationalism to promote her feminism demonstrates that feminism can be pragmatic as well as complicit with structures of power.
Reproductive Politics in Modern Japan
Miho Ogino, Kyoto Bunkyo University, Kyoto, Japan
It is generally understood that reproductive politics in modern Japan experienced a 180-degree turnabout from the "bear and multiply" policy of the pre-war period to the encouragement of "family planning" that resulted in a miraculously rapid decline of the birthrate in the post-war period. Although such a view seems valid as far as the decrease in the number of children per family or the legalization of contraception and abortion is concerned, there were, at the same time, some continuous factors from the pre-war period that worked favorably in facilitating acceptance of post-war changes in reproductive policy. One such factor was the eugenic idea of reproduction, namely, the importance attached to the "quality" of children. Another factor was the traditional tolerance for induced abortions as a means of fertility control. Transformation of the National Eugenic Law of 1940 into the Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 is one example of such continuity.
In this paper, I will look at what were discussed among Japan's firstwave feminists in the 1910s concerning abortion, contraception, and women's reproductive rights. Discourses from the 1920s to 1940s of birth control activists including Shizue Ishimoto, Isoo Abe, and Tenrei Ohta will also be examined. I argue that, whether pro-natalist or probirth control, many of them shared a nationalist concern for the "quality" of the Japanese population and the importance of women's role in improving it. In the post-war turnabout of reproductive policy, the "quantity" of people may have changed, but the significance of the notion of "quality" persisted unquestioned.