EpilogueManaging Women in Wartime and Beyond

Abstract

This chapter shows that much continuity existed in the management of female factory labor during wartime and into the postwar era. By the early 1940s, the textile industry had almost totally collapsed, as the war cut off Japanese access to raw cotton and to foreign markets for finished goods. But textile-industry labor management provided a template for the state as it sought to mobilize women to work in the war economy. With defeat came the temporary resurgence of the industry, which for about two decades after the war was used to jump-start Japan's war-ravaged economy. Analysis of the Omi Kenshi Spinning strike of 1954 and Japan's Olympic gold-medal women's volleyball team of 1964, which was composed of female textile employees, help to understand better bhow postwar labor-management practices and the position of women in factory labor compared to the prewar situation.