Symposium Report

Symposium Report
On the 19th of May 2019, the Institute for Gender Studies (IGS) hosted the international
symposium, ‘The Philosopher and the Princess: Freedom, Love, and Democracy in Cold War
Japan’, which was coordinated by Jan Bardsley (Specially Appointed Professor, IGS/Professor, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Professor Bardsley and Julia C.
Bullock (Associate Professor, Emory University) made keynote speeches. Aya Kitamura(Lecturer, Tsuda University) and Gaye Rowley (Professor, Waseda University) were invited as
discussants, and Fumie Ohashi (Associate Professor, IGS) served as the moderator.
Post-war democracy and economic development in Japan gave rise to new insights among
young women in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. The French feminist philosopher Simone deBeauvoir and the Japanese Crown Princess Michiko became role models who introduced
these women to new ways of living their lives. Beauvoir, for example, encouraged women toobtain financial independence, and her romantic relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre
represented a new form of love. Michiko Shoda, on the other hand, married the crown princeand became what others regarded as a perfect housewife. At first glance, these two women’s
paths in life might seem very different, but they were both women who dreamt of freedom,
opportunities for self-discovery and love. Bardsley’s presentation on Princess Michiko(‘Romance Revisited: The Royal Wedding of 1959 Viewed Sixty Years Later’) and Bullock’spresentation on Beauvoir (‘Beauvoir in Japan: Japanese Women and The Second Sex’) shedlight on the differences and similarities between these two formidable women in history.
In her presentation, Bardsley explained how Princess Michiko’s life empowered women
to dream about becoming a princess. In Japan, a commoner marrying a crown prince for love
was an improbable fairy tale prior to the Second World War. Their royal wedding in 1959 canbe seen as a projection of youth and beauty (as presented by the princess) and the success ofthe post-war democratic reform. When she became a mother, the progressive princess did not
follow the royal family tradition; instead, she willingly took responsibility for childcare andhousework. This iconic ‘Princess Homemaker’ who supported her husband as a housewife,
became a model for the post-war family in the 1960s. The media praised her image, andyoung women aspired to become a homemaker like the princess. She was perceived as awoman who realised her dreams of freedom, self-discovery and love.
However, some women did not approve of such a lifestyle. Bullock discussed the women
who were against the idea of pursuing a ‘career’ of becoming a wife and mother. These
women were attracted to their vision of freedom, which Beauvoir presented in her book The
Second Sex. This freedom was to be secured through financial independence and professional
success. In the 1960s, Japanese society and politics moved towards a conservative viewpoint,
and the post-war reforms in Japan were set aside. This development coincided with Princess

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IGS Project Series 14
The Philosopher and the Princess: Freedom, Love, and Democracy in Cold War Japan

Michiko’s appearance as the perfect homemaker. While the younger generation supported
gender equality which the post-war reform envisioned, the princess revived an old fashioned
idea of femininity (i.e. ’Good Wife, Wise Mother’). At the same time, Japanese women whoread Beauvoir’s first memoir published in 1961 discovered that she had managed to establish
financial and intellectual independence. Japanese women admired her for her independence
and her open relationship with Sartre.
Japanese feminists, however, criticised her discussions about the liberation of women,interpreting them as a denial of motherhood and femininity. Beauvoir’s well-known statementin The Second Sex, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’, presently describes theconcept of gender. However, in the 1953 translation, some of her arguments weremistranslated. This turned Beauvoir’s criticism of gender into negative expressions about
women’s bodies. Thanks to a series of movements in the following decades—which included
a re-evaluation of Beauvoir’s work after her death in 1986, the development of women’s andgender studies in Japan and the publication of a new, ‘decisive’ Japanese translation of thebook—the misunderstanding was cleared, and Japanese feminists rediscovered Beauvoir’sphilosophy. Today, her writings are read as important literature in gender studies, and theyinspire the women fighting against persistent traditional gender norms in contemporarysociety.
In response to the presentations by Bardsley and Bullock, Kitamura discussed the risk ofgeneralisation of people by category. For example, she argues that people tend to talk about‘Japanese women’ as a group of identical people without giving much consideration to thevariation within the group. Among Japanese women, there were those who admired Princess
Michiko and those who worshipped Beauvoir. Although their lifestyles and attitudes seemdifferent, they were all ‘Japanese women’. Moreover, Kitamura pointed out, there must havebeen other types of Japanese women who were excluded from these two urban, middle-classgroups. For example, in the farming villages, some women were working like men while
seeking ways to spend more time on homemaking and childcare. In other words, althoughthese women had acquired independence and freedom, which Beauvoir preached, they dreamtof becoming a housewife like Princess Michiko. Furthermore, aside from diversity, classstructures and power relationships also exist among Japanese women. The second wave offeminism, which was inspired by Beauvoir’s philosophy, is often criticised for overlooking
the diversity among Japanese women. In recent years, however, a movement to establish
inclusive societies for transgender people activated the debate on who and what a woman is.
There are always questions about who should be included or excluded when a social category
is presented. These matters of categorisation interest Kitamura, and she is researching how wecannot speak of ‘the Japanese Woman’.
Rowley discussed the enduring value of Beauvoir’s arguments by focusing on the speech
she gave at the Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya Public Hall in 1966, ‘Women and Creativity’. In77

Symposium Reportthe speech, Beauvoir argued that women’s underachievement in various fields (such aspolitics, philosophy and the arts) was not because they were less capable than men. To support
her argument, she referred to the Japanese historical figure Murasaki Shikibu, who was theauthor of The Tale of Genji. In her girlhood, Murasaki Shikibu read classical Chinese
literature very well. When her father discovered this, he lamented over his misfortune. If only
she were a boy, he said. The story suggests that boys are raised to be ambitious and girls areexcluded from that kind of expectation. Beauvoir argued that such exclusion prevented
women from being successful in their professional careers. She stressed that, in this way,
women’s opportunities to express their creativity were limited, and they had to fight for achance to prove themselves. These issues surrounding gender inequality, which Beauvoir
pointed out in the 1960s, still permeate society and are continuously challenged. Also, thewomen affected by gender inequality are now aware that they share these challenges withother minority groups and people who experience multiple or intersectional forms ofdiscrimination. Half a century ago, Beauvoir preached the importance of freedom andself-discovery, and that advocacy has the same significance in the 21st century. Rowley
stressed that the teaching of Beauvoir’s text in university classrooms is still meaningful andrelevant.
The discussions presented in the keynote speeches and comments were deepened in theQ&A sessions. In these sessions, participants raised topics such as existentialism, sexualityand gender equality indexes. The discussions on translation—an essential part of all thespeakers’ works—were lively. The discussions emphasised that translation is a complicatedprocess that involves reading between the lines and taking cultural background into account.
Translation is not a simple and systematic process of replacing words; it is an act oftransmitting information and meaning through a translator as the medium. Because translation
inevitably involves the perspective of the translator, questions about neutrality are always
raised. Researchers who take on global research projects and present the outcomes must keepsuch a cross-cultural aspect in mind. The presentations and discussions werethought-provoking.
Kumi Yoshihara (Project Research Fellow, IGS)
http://www2.igs.ocha.ac.jp/en/report/2019/05/0519-2/

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