The first wave of international women's movements from a Japanese perspective: Western outreach and Japanese women activists during the interwar years

Abstract

Rumi Yasutake's article shifts westward in space and forward in time to add the Pan Pacific Women's Association to the better known trans-Atlantic organizations that flourished in what has been called the “first wave” of international feminism. The PPWA was initiated in 1928 in Hawaii by Anglo–American women and drew on nineteenth century discourses and practices of “advanced” nations uplifting “backward” ones. Yasutake demonstrates how participation in the PPWA and by extension other international organizations became an important prize for feminist activists outside the west and helped them to organize at a national level. By focusing on the perspective and experiences of Japanese feminists, Yasutake illustrates how the PPWA became an important venue for Asian nations and insurgent nationalisms. Japanese feminists' international activism prior to the Second World War forces an awareness that the distinction between West and East did not map simply onto the inequalities of Empire and Colony. Yasutake demonstrates that Japan's imperial aspirations and powers grew substantially in the 1930s. Nonetheless, Japanese boldness and challenge to Europe inspired anticolonial nationalists and feminists from India to the African diaspora.