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Roundtable: New Women, Modern Girls, and Postwar Feminists: New Directions in Research on Women in Japan
Organizer and Chair: Jan Bardsley, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Discussants: Teruko Craig, Research, Reischauer Institute, Harvard University; Sarah Frederick, Boston University; Indra Levy, Stanford University; Dina Lowy, Gettysburg College; Barbara Sato, Seikei University; Jan Bardsley, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Nearly 100 years after her debut in Japan, the New Woman is the subject of much research, biography, and translation into English. Viewed as one who sought education, financial independence, and artistic expression, the New Woman emerged in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, and became a symbol of modernity in China, Egypt and Japan. In the 1910s, Japanese associated the New Woman with girl students, actresses, fictional heroines, and women writers. This roundtable considers the New Woman in her own times, but also compares her to Modern Girls of the 1920s and feminist activists of early postwar Japan, many of whom were New Women in their youth. We ask: What does this long view tell us about the New Woman and her relation to these later emblems of women’s liberation? How do such iconic figures shape the study of gender and feminism in Japanese history?
Participants in this roundtable are authors of new books related to women and modernity in Japan. To initiate conversation, each participant will show an image related to her research, read a quote from her book, and describe how both exemplify her view on the New Woman. Each also suggests how the New Woman compares to the Modern Girl, the postwar feminist, and/or other icons used to describe women in Japan. Panelists and audience will discuss the availability of archives, theoretical approaches, and directions for future research on the New Woman in Japan and on the New Woman as a transnational phenomenon.