Japanese American Migration and the Making of Model Women for Japanese Expansion in Brazil and Manchuria, 1871-1945

Abstract

This article examines how the experience of Japanese American migration shaped the ways in which women were instrumentalized by the Japanese empire for its expansion in South America and Northeast Asia. The anti-Japanese sentiment and campaigns in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century greatly impacted the Japanese government's approach to managing women's role in Japan's migration-driven expansion in Brazil and Manchuria during the following decades.