Dialogue, distance and difference

Abstract

Abstract In this article, I examine the ways in which women’s groups in Japan have attempted to deal with issues of difference prompted by the co-existence of residents of different ethnicities in contemporary Japan, and the new issues raised by labour migration in the context of globalization of economies and labour markets. Japan’s place in contemporary East Asia can be clarified by using the term colonial modernity , to refer to Japan’s early 20th-century history; and the term postcoloniality to refer to the legacy of the colonial project in the culture of the metropolitan society. In representations of Japan’s contemporary “Others,” notions of gendered difference interact with representations of ethnic and cultural difference. Contemporary attempts to deal with these issues will be placed in the context of several decades of feminist activism in Japan.