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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines temporal and methodological divides that have allowed for an historical narrative to develop which ignores women’s participation in chanoyu prior to the Meiji period.

Paper long abstract:

Despite the fact that women make up the majority of tea practitioners in contemporary Japan, the history of women’s participation is largely ignored in histories of tea culture. When it is discussed, women’s participation is said to have begun in the Meiji period. Yet, my research has shown that there is significant evidence for women’s participation in the Edo period. In this paper, I will consider the historiographical reasons why this perceived Edo/Meiji divide has been so persistent and pervasive. What circumstances have allowed for women to be written out of the pre-Meiji history of this important Japanese cultural practice? Why does this matter? I argue that one answer is the divide between academic and popular history, and this matters because of how contemporary women tea practitioners view their place in the practice. The types of sources historians of tea culture have relied on is another reason women have been obscured view, pointing to a methodological divide. Finally, the divide between the history of Japanese tea culture and other subdisciplines, such as women’s history, must be considered in this analysis.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the relationship between the Japanese state and women in wartime mobilization by examining waste reduction and collection campaigns. Women's wartime mobilization was largely directed by the state, but in some cases women organized their own independent waste campaigns.

Paper long abstract:

In many countries involved in the Second World War, campaigns encouraging waste reduction and scrap collection were largely aimed at women, who took on new roles on the "home front." In Japan, these wartime mobilization efforts were nothing new, as women had been directed to participate in state initiatives to improve the domestic economy, such as the Daily Life Improvement campaigns and the campaign to Promote Diligence and Thrift, since the late 1910s. This type of economic mobilization of women continued in much the same fashion as Japan entered the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s. Until the last years of the war, in an explicit effort to preserve the family system, Japanese mobilization of women on the home front focused on the primacy of their domestic roles as mothers and housewives. This paper analyzes the relationship between the Japanese state and women in wartime mobilization through an examination of wartime waste reduction and collection campaigns.

Waste is an ideal arena to examine this relationship between women and the state because of its inherent connections between the private and the public. During the war years, waste became a topic of particular interest to the state because of its potential to improve the wartime economy: reducing household waste could stretch scarce resources a little further, and collecting certain types of waste could provide materials necessary for the war effort. Efforts to mobilize women for waste campaigns during the war was largely directed by the state from above, but there were also occasions in which women organized their own "mobilization" efforts, with their own goals and targets, in support of the nation and the war. These events show that even those women who embraced cooperation with the state and actively worked to support state goals did not necessarily accept this relationship uncritically. Rather, they acted as full (if not equal) participants in their relationship with the state, contributing their own ideas, initiatives, and even criticism to wartime mobilization efforts.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to investigate the interrelations among magazine genres, gender categories, and the formation of cultural hierarchy, by reconsidering the significance of interwar mass-market women's magazines in the history of print/reading culture in modern Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to investigate the interrelations among magazine genres, gender categories, and the formation of cultural hierarchy, by reconsidering the significance of a periodical genre hitherto marginalized in academia, namely, mass-market women's magazines, in the history of print/reading culture in modern Japan. It also attempts to regard the changes in print media as reconfigurations of various dichotomies, both modern and premodern.

Analysis of diverse periodicals from the late 19th century to the 1930s, their contemporary commentaries and various surveys reveals that, around the turn of the 20th century, magazine genres became increasingly gendered in terms of their formats, editing styles, content, and readership: magazines for adults evolved into either "serious" general magazines (sōgō zasshi) aimed at men concerning "public" matters or "vulgar" women's magazines (fujin zasshi) on "light" issues related to the "domestic" sphere.

It was the latter magazine genre that led to the democratization of print/reading culture in interwar Japan. Inclusion of various article genres written in highly colloquial styles, extensive use of visuals, stress on entertainment and people's private lives, and increasing collaboration with other industries, were to become common practices among Japanese periodicals after WWII. The new editing style also contributed to the spread of a new reading style in Japan.

With its accessible editorial and promotional styles, interwar mass-market women's magazines attracted readers from a wide range of ages and social classes, including men, and functioned as a "transfeminized" entertainment home magazine. Moreover, other periodicals, including the more "serious" types, also began adopting some of the strategies developed in the popular women's magazines, a periodical genre that had formerly been regarded as "deviant." Arguably, the subversive impact mass-market women's magazines had on the publishing world triggered severe criticism.

The perceived "revolution" in print media in interwar Japan can be considered to be a part of the reconfiguration of various dichotomies in fields including literature, arts, and intellectual history during this period. This could also be regarded as a modern redefinition of a premodern cultural dichotomy, "ga (elegance)" and "zoku (vulgarity)."