Unfolding possibilities through a decolonizing project: Indigenous knowledges and rural Japanese women

Abstract

Rural Japanese women have been overlooked or misrepresented in the academic and nationalist discourses on Japanese women. Using an anti‐colonial feminist framework, I advocate that centring discussions on Indigenous knowledges will help fill this gap based on the belief that Indigenous‐knowledge framework is a tool to show the agency of the ‘colonized’. In this paper, I attempt to answer the following question: What is the role of Indigenous knowledges in the context of rural Japanese women? I first discuss my epistemological approach by exploring the notion of Indigenous knowledges and my location within it. This process led me to employ autoethnography as the central methodology of this paper. Second, in order to better situate rural Japanese women, I look at Japanese history, especially the Meiji period (1868–1912) when Westernization began to exert a major influence on the Japanese nationalist movement via its control over knowledges carried by rural Japanese women. Third, in order for me to reclaim these subjugated Indigenous knowledges, I introduce my lived experience through autoethnography as a starting point to explore the possibilities that lie in the Indigenous‐knowledge framework. Fourth, I further discuss the interlocking nature of the issues surrounding nationalism, representation, knowledge production and identity emerging from the discussion on rural Japanese women and my reflexive text. This leads us to an assessment of how an Indigenous‐knowledge framework may shift discussions/perceptions of rural Japanese women in particular. Lastly, I conclude by noting the potential implications and applications of further research on this topic in other parts of the world.