Early Twentieth-century Japan Research Articles

Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan

Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan

Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan

Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan

Women's Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870-1925

author wishes to thank the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines at the London School of Economics and Political Science for permission to use material contained in her article, and Women in Modern Japan: Feminist Discourses in the Meiji and Taisho Eras, in Janet Hunter, ed., Japan: State and People in the Twentieth Century (London, 1999). 1. relationship of women to the Japanese state has been the object of much discussion in English-language Japanese studies. Some scholars look at women as the target of government policies; see, e.g., Sharon H. Nolte and Sally Ann Hastings, The Meiji State's Policy toward Women, 1890-1910, in Gail Lee Bernstein, ed., RecreatingJapanese Women, 1600-1945 (Berkeley, 1991), 151-174; Janet Hunter, Legislation and Employer Resistance: Abolition of Night Work in the Cotton-Spinning Industry, in Tsunehiko Yui and Keiichiro Nakagawa, eds., Japanese Management in Historical Perspective (Tokyo, 1989), 243-272; Yoshiko Miyake, Doubling Expectations: Motherhood and Women's Factory Work under State Management in Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, in Bernstein, ed., RecreatingJapanese Women, 267-295; Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan (Stanford, Calif, 1983). Some works examine women as agents of some part of the state; see, e.g., Sumiko Otsubo, Engendering Eugenics: Feminists and Marriage Restriction Legislation in the 1920s, in Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, eds., Gendering Modern Japanese History (Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming); Barbara Molony and Kathleen Molony, Ichikawa Fusae: A Political Biography (Stanford, Calif., forthcoming); Kathleen Uno, Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan. By Kathleen S. Uno. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. x, 237 pp. $47.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan. By Kathleen S. Uno. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. x, 237 pp. $47.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Orley Ashenfelter And David Card (Eds.), Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume 3 Paul Boyle, Keith Halfacree, and Vaughan Robinson, Exploring Contemporary Migration Weixing Chen, The Political Economy of Rural Development in China, 1978–1999 David A. Crocker and Toby Linden (Eds.), Ethics of Consumption: The Good Life, Justice, and Global Stewardship James Z. Lee and Wang Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700–2000 Jonathan M. Mann and Daniel J. M. Tarantola (Eds.), AIDS in the World II: Global Dimensions, Social Roots, and Responses Julian L. Simon, The Economic Consequences of Immigration, Second Edition Sopemi, Trends in International Migration: Continuous Reporting System on Migration. Annual Report, 1999 Edition Jacqueline Stevens, Reproducing the State United Nations Development Programme China, The China Human Development Report United Nations, Economic Commission For Europe, Economic Survey of Europe 1999, No. 1 Kathleen S. Uno, Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan

Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Contemporary Japanese women are often presented as devoted full-time wives and mothers. Yet child-tending by non-maternal caregivers was widely accepted at all levels of Japanese society at the beginning of the 20th century. This study traces the rise of day-care centres and related areas.

Passages to modernity: motherhood, childhood, and social reform in early twentieth century Japan

Passages to modernity: motherhood, childhood, and social reform in early twentieth century Japan

Nationalism, Imperialism, and the International Education Movement in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

The literature on nationalism ascribes a pivotal role to schools in creating what Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community,” through the formation and dissemination of a common national identity and a shared national consciousness where none existed before (e.g., Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; Smith 1991). It is not unusual to find Japan cited as a prime example of this process, not only among theorists of nationalism, but among Japan specialists, as well (e.g., Beauchamp 1988, 226–29; Cummings 1980, 17–25; Hunter 1989, 192–97; Ienaga 1978; Pyle 1996, 125–30; Rohlen 1983, 46–57; Schoppa 1991, 29–31; Thomas 1996, 254–62). In general, they portray the first two decades of the Meiji period, between 1868 and 1890, as the era when a modern national consciousness merged with a revivified nativist identity to form an “emperor-centered nationalism” that was institutionalized and propagated by the state, chiefly through a newly established compulsory, centralized school system. Frequently, this assertion is supported by citing the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890), which begins, “Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjects, ever united in loyalty and filial piety, have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof.” This distinctive brand of Japanese nationalism is also regarded as a factor contributing to the subsequent development of Japanese imperialism and the country's pursuit of a colonial empire abroad, which began with its victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), and concluded fifty years later with its defeat in the Pacific War.

Under the Banner of the New Science: History, Science, and the Problem of Particularity in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Under the Banner of the New Science: History, Science, and the Problem of Particularity in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Ethnic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Ethnic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

The Living Artist

An important feature of the evolution of Japanese art after 1868 was the contest between the claim of validity made for artistic self-expression and the assertion of cultural authority vested in the larger collectivity, as represented by the nation-state. In its narrowest sense, this was a battle over the autonomy of subjective artistic vision. More broadly, it was part of the philosophical conflict in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan between the discourses of egalitarian individualism and hierarchically ordered, group-based identity. For most of the period under consideration, the contest between different understandings of the role and obligation of the artist was fought out in the absence of strong coercion by the forces of the state. Beginning in the late 1930s, however, there occurred a qualitative change in the dialogue between the artist and the government. In January 1941 a long article in the art magazine Mizue detailed the aesthetic views of an organization new to art discourse, the...

Nationalism, Internationalization, and the Dilemma of Educational Reform in Japan

L'A. etudie, a partir d'observations personnelles et d'interviews realisees entre 1989 et 1992, le courant d'internationalisation, d'ou de reforme, de l'enseignement au Japon. Le mouvement s'empetre dans une lutte politique et ideologique a propos des objectifs, du contenu et du controle de l'enseignement. L'issue de cette bataille sera determinante pour connaitre la position retenue au sein du systeme educatif quant aux changements necessaires a l'internationalisation

The Reproduction Strategy of New Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan

New middle class, defined by its particular life style, is one of the foci of the problematiques of modern societies. In this article, we examine the reproduction strategy which Japanese new middle class in its burgeoning stage (1910 s and 20 s) exerted in the familial and, educational areas, and analyze the “relationship to the self” (it is a problematique of Michel Foucault) which we can find in the strategy. The relationship to the self of new middle class is found in its practices of “contraception”, “home education”, and “new education”. And it can be considered as reflection to oneself of the power relations which connect firmly with the kind of knowledge (savoir) which can be called “modern science”. Also it involves the dominance of the professional and mass media, and contains “cultivation of the self” and “control of the self” which contributes to the exploitation of capital or of the state. The relationship to the self in this form, which has disseminated to almost the whole Japanese society in the second half of the twentieth century, makes a base for domination. It forms a very stable domination because it is internalized in the life and body of people by nature.

Women writers and feminist consciousness in early twentieth-century Japan

Women writers and feminist consciousness in early twentieth-century Japan

In Search of Japan's First Modern Autobiography

This article explores the development of autobiography as a genre in early twentieth-century Japan by looking at three examples of Japanese autobiography from the first quarter of the century. The author finds that Taoka Reiun's A Record of My Misfortunes (1911) is the most successful at balancing an account of the external circumstances of a life with deeply self-revelatory, inner reflections. The language and tone of the text, the attention paid to the formation, development and explication of a self, establish this work as one of Japan's earliest modern autobiographies in which the self is clearly perceived to be at the center of experience.

The “Success” Boom and its Evolution in early twentieth century Japan

The “Success” Boom and its Evolution in early twentieth century Japan