From Kabuki Dancer

On Rethinking Japanese Feminisms

“…51 As Collins has suggested, motherhood alone may have enough symbolic significance to empower women in certain communities or parts of the world. 52 It makes sense, then, that matricentric feminism might have a longer history in some communities and parts of the world than in others. In the case of the World Congress of Mothers, Japanese women conceived and executed the idea to hold the Congress, demonstrating not only that matricentric feminism has a long history in Japan, but that Japanese women also sought to spread their feminist vision to other parts of the world during the "summer of mothers."…”

“…This volume, available at bookstores around the country, has long been described as a "bible" for a generation of lesbians and bisexual (baisekushuaru) women, for whom it was often the first positive representation they saw of lesbian life. 52 Many women say that reading this book was the first time they were aware of the extent of the rezubian community-and for some, its very existence. 53 Overlapping with these developments in the 1980s, an "Englishspeaking lesbian community" came together in Japan, centered around Tokyo.…”

“…), the woman credited with "inventing" kabuki theater performance, to an account of the everyday struggle in New York's Harlem precinct of a Japanese war bride who returns to the United States with her African American husband. 52 Judging by the volume of the sales of her work, moreover, readers clearly understood the worth of her narratives. It is no accident perhaps that one of her highestselling works, The Twilight Years (Kōkotsu no hito, 1972), which topped the 1972 best-seller list in Japan, was the narrative of a woman caring for the body of her aged father-in-law stricken with dementia-a clear "witnessing" of the work of a woman, recalling Harding, with responsibility for the welfare of a body in a highly localized place.…”

“…For example, the opening volume of Iwanami Shoten's series, Feminism in Japan, begins by placing ūman ribu as the beginning of "second-wave feminism" (dai ni ha feminizumu) in Japan. 52 This collection, edited by influential feminist scholars Ehara Yumiko, Inoue Teruko, and Ueno Chizuko, (re)produces the dominant master narrative of white-feminist waves and categorizes colonized subjects in Japan as "minorities." The adoption and investment in paradigms of white middle-class feminism by Japanese feminists is also then related to questions of translation.…”

“…She is currently working on a monograph about the legacies of atomic bombings and nuclear testing in the United States, Japan, and the Pacific Islands; and a biography of Yamakawa Kikue (1890 that will also be a social history of twentieth-century Japan. Nobuko (1896Nobuko ( -1973 and is translator of her story "The Yellow Rose" (Expanded Editions, 2016 219,235,248n.22;minikomi by,54,58,228n.54,271,273;Onna erosu journal and,[53][54]overview of,[6][7]274;power within,[211][212]225n.26;and rezubian feminizumu,6,[50][51][52][53][54][55]61n.3,62n.7,225n.26;as transnational feminism,205,[209][210][211]219,228n.54; ūman ribu as radical feminism, 222n.1 Ribu nyūsu (periodical), 54,55,56,63n.24 Ribu Shinjuku Center,54,55,56,…”