Symposium Outline

International Symposium “The Philosopher and the Princess” Outline
On May 19, 2019, the Institute for Gender Studies (IGS)
hosted the international symposium, “The Philosopher and thePrincess: Freedom, Love, and Democracy in Cold WarJapan.” The symposium aimed to analyze Cold War dynamics
from the perspectives of gender representations. This fresh
approach was based on a pioneering research project thatProfessor Jan Bardsley was conducting at IGS.
Keynote speeches depicted the young women’s search for
new ways of living at that time. Discussants responded to thespeeches by emphasizing the importance of considering thediversity among women and the need for women’sempowerment. Subjects of the discussion included feminism
and the dissemination of the concept of gender in Japan. A
thought-provoking, multidimensional discussion took place inthe symposium.
【Date】 Sunday, May 19, 201913:30～16:30【Venue】 Multi-purpose Hall, Hisao & Hiroko TAKI Plaza, Ochanomizu University【Coordinator】 Jan Bardsley (Specially Appointed Prof., IGS/Prof. North Carolina Univ. Chapel Hill)【Keynote Speeches】

Jan Bardsley “Romance Revisited: The Royal Wedding of 1959 Viewed Sixty Years Later”
Julia C. Bullock (Emory University) “Beauvoir in Japan: Tracing the Impact of The Second Sex on
Japanese Women”【Discussants】 Aya Kitamura (Tsuda University), Gaye Rowley (Waseda University)【Moderator】 Fumie Ohashi (IGS)【Organizer】 Institute for Gender Studies (IGS), Ochanomizu University【Language】 English (with English-Japanese simultaneous interpretation)【Number of Participants】 72【Symposium Summary】

Japan’s rising affluence in the 1950s and 1960s, the expansion of girls’ education, the increase in
women’s magazines, and the rise of middle-class consciousness led women to imagine new possibilities.
What new choices did women have? What would it take to realize dreams of freedom, self-discovery,and love? This symposium engages with these questions by discussing the influence of two legendary
figures—French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and Crown Princess Michiko, women who
posed radically different models of self-expression, sexuality, and social engagement. Viewing attention
to these women through a Cold War lens, we can also ask how ensuing discussion of the philosopher
and the princess positioned Japan itself amid the transnational dynamics of the 1950s and 1960s.

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The Philosopher and the Princess: Freedom, Love, and Democracy in Cold War Japan【Speakers】 (Extracts from handouts)

Jan Bardsley is Specially Appointed Professor at IGS and Professor at University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Women and Democracy in Cold
War Japan (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) and The Bluestockings of Japan: New
Women Fiction and Essays from Seitō, 1911-1916 (University of Michigan, Center forJapanese Studies, 2007), which was awarded the 2011 Hiratsuka Raichō Prize by Japan
Women’s University. With Laura Miller, she has co-edited two books, Manners andMischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan (University of California Press,2011) and Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave, 2005).

Julia Bullock is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies and Chair of the Departmentof Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures (REALC) at Emory University in
Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of The Other Women’s Lib: Gender and Body inJapanese Women’s Fiction, 1960-1973 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) and Coeds
Ruining the Nation: Women, Education, and Social Change in Postwar JapaneseMedia (University of Michigan Press, summer 2019). With Ayako Kano and James
Welker, she also edited the essay collection Rethinking Japanese Feminisms(University of Hawaii Press, 2017).

Aya Kitamura is Lecturer at Tsuda University. She specializes in sociology, genderstudies and Japanese studies, and conducts ethnography in Tokyo, Honolulu, Hong
Kong and Singapore. Her publications include: Nihon josei wa doko ni irunoka(Locating Japanese Women: The Politics of Image and Identities), Tokyo: Keisō
Shobō, 2009, “English Mystique? A Critical Discourse Analysis on Gendered
Bilingualism in Japan,” Gender and Language 10 (1), pp.1-20, 2016, and “Gender,Representation and Identity: The Multifold Politics of Japanese Woman Imagery” inJieyu Liu and Junko Yamashita eds., Handbook of Gender in East Asia, London:
Routledge, pp.269-284, 2020. She is also a co-editor of Gendai esunogurafi(Contemporary Ethnography), Shin’yōsha, 2013.

Gaye Rowley teaches English and Japanese literature at Waseda University. She has
written and/or translated several biographies of Japanese women, including Yosano
Akiko and The Tale of Genji (2000), Autobiography of a Geisha (2003), and An
Imperial Concubine’s Tale: Scandal, Shipwreck, and Salvation in SeventeenthCentury Japan (2013). Her translation of Ōgimachi Machiko’s Matsukage nikki (In theShelter of the Pine, 1710-12) is almost complete.

Fumie Ohashi is Associate Professor of the Institute for Gender Studies and theGraduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University. Her researchinterests focus on gender and migration in the reproductive sphere of Mainland
China, Hong Kong and Chinese speaking communities in Japan. Her first book
Migrant Domestic Workers in Contemporary China: The Politics of Reproductive
Labor in Rural-Urban Relations (Ochanomizu Shobō, 2011. in Japanese) was basedon her long-term fieldwork experiences in Beijing and was awarded the 31stYamakawa Kikue Women's Studies Memorial Book Award in 2011. Currently she isworking on the labor relations and labor movements of migrant and local domestic
workers in Hong Kong. She is also interested in transnational and translocal women’s
activisms in East Asia.

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