Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan

Andrea Germer is Associate Professor of Gender Studies, Japanese Studies and Visual Culture at Kyushu University and the author of Historische Frauenforschung in Japan [Women's History in Japan], 2003. Research interests include gender and nation, feminist theory, propaganda, visual history and transcultural aesthetics.

Bringing together international scholars from various disciplines, this book focuses on the gendering of the modern Japanese nation-state from the late nineteenth century to the present, through contemporary concepts of citizenship, ethnicity, sexuality, work and everyday life. The development of the modern nation-state happened simultaneously with the development of a masculine/feminine binary opposition, and references to gender relations are deeply embedded in concepts of nationalism. This book makes an important contribution to studies on formation of modern nation-states and will interest students and scholars of Japanese history, gender studies and political science.

1. Introduction: Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan2. The Formation of Modern Imperial Japan from the Perspective of Gender 3. Narratives of Heroism in Meiji Japan: Nationalism, Gender and Impersonation 4. The Nexus of Nation, Culture and Gender in Modern Japan: The Resistance of Kanno Sugako and Kaneko Fumiko 5. Domestic Roles and the Incorporation of Women into the Nation State: The Emergence and Development of the 'Good Wife, Wise Mother' Ideology 6. The Making of Ainu Citizenship from the Viewpoint of Gender and Ethnicity7. The Gendering of Work and Workers in the Process of Modernisation of the Textile Industry 8. The Nation at Work: Gendered Working Patterns in the Taish¿ and Sh¿wa Periods 9. The Spirit to Take Up a Gun: Militarising Gender in the Imperial Army 10. Women's Professional Expertise and Women's Suffrage in Japan, 1868-195211. From Natalism to Family Planning: Population Policy and Its Reception During the War and the Postwar Period 12. From Mothers of the Nation to Embodied Citizens? Reflexive Modernisation, Women's Movements and the Nation in Japan 13. Gender and Citizenship in the Anti-Nuclear Power Movement in 1970s Japan 14. Salaryman Anxieties in Tokyo Sonata: Shifting Discourses of State, Family and Masculinity in Post-Bubble Japan 15. Identity Politics, Gender and Nation in Modern Western Philosophy16. From Personal Experience to a Political Movement in the 1970s: My View of Feminism