Factory labor and childcare in wartime Japan

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Asia-Pacific War clearly had a great social and psychological impact on Japanese women. Two additional types of female factory laborers who are the focus of this article—those hired under the Jūgo Joshi Kinrō Yōin (homefront women workers recruitment system) and jokō (female factory workers)—have received much less scholarly attention until now. This article analyzes homefront women worker recruits and female factory workers and argues that, despite wartime labor shortages, there were differences in the ways these two categories of workers were treated, both in the conditions of their employment and in the kinds of childcare for which they were eligible. Although the socialization of women's domestic responsibilities—in particular childcare—allowed for the expansion of employment opportunities for women, in the end the homefront women workers recruitment system failed to achieve its goal of mobilizing married women and of providing high-quality childcare.