Women's History and Local Community in Postwar Japan Contributor(s): Gayle, Curtis Anderson (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415860776 ISBN-13: 9780415860772 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $56.04 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2013 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Women's Studies - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - General - History | Asia - Japan |
Dewey: 305.488 |
Series: Routledge/Asian Studies Association of Australia (Asaa) East |
Physical Information: 0.44" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (0.66 lbs) 192 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Asian - Cultural Region - Japanese - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: This timely look at a neglected corner of Japanese historiography spotlights the decade following the end of World War II, a time in which Japanese society was undergoing the transformation from imperial state to democratic nation. For certain working and middle-class women involved in education and labor activism, history-writing became a means to greater voice within the turbulent transition. Women's History and Local Community in Postwar Japan examines the emergence of women's history-writing groups in Tokyo, Nagoya and Ehime, using interviews conducted with founding members and analysis of primary documents and publications by each group. It demonstrates how women appropriated history-writing as a radical praxis geared less toward revolution and more toward the articulation of local imaginations, spaces and memories after World War II. By appropriating history as a praxis that did not need revolution for its success, these women used connections established by Marxist historians between history-writing and subjectivity, but did so in ways that broke rank from nationally-referenced renditions of history and memory. Under conditions in which some women saw history as a field of articulation that remained dominated by men, they put into practice their own de-centered versions of history-writing that continue to influence the historical landscape in contemporary Japan. |