COMPLETION REPORT
Alternative Feminist Imaginaries: The Sino-Japanese Leftist Feminism(1890-1930) at the Turn of theTwentieth Century
Dr. Lin Li
Graduate StudentDepartment of History
University of Wisconsin - Madison （ USA）
Thanks to the generous help of the Sumitomo Foundation, my research advanced greatly during the research period(April 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017). The past year has been a fruitful year for my dissertation research, and here I would
like to focus on three aspects of this research period.
First, between June and August 2016, I conducted archival trips to China and Japan, through which I not only identified
archives that host important historical sources for my dissertation research, but also gathered sources that enhanced myunderstanding of the emergence and development of East Asian feminism. In particular, during my archival research inJapan, I met with and received the guidance of Professor Murata Yujiro at Tokyo University. As a renowned historian inmodern Chinese intellectual history, Professor Murata is very familiar with Japanese studies on modern China. He not
only raised my attention to aspects of Sino-Japanese intellectual exchange that I was not yet aware of, but also pointed
out key historical sources that are worth looking into. Thanks to the archival research and my meeting with Professor
Murata, I have acquired a deeper understanding of the entwined relationship between East Asian feminism, on one hand,and patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, and Pan-Asianism, on the other. I have also expanded my research to include
places such as Manchuria and Taiwan in order to better understand how feminist thought and movements developed inresponse to the expansion of Japanese imperialism.
Second, based on my preliminary research, I presented my paper at the Thinking Gender Graduate Student Conference
at University of California Los Angeles in April 2016, for which I received the Prize for the Best Academic Paper of theConference. In my paper, I analyzed how intellectual exchange between Japanese and Chinese intellectuals deeply
influenced left-wing feminism in both countries by tracing transnational dialogue between Kōtoku Shūsui, a Japanesesocialist and anarchist, and He-Yin Zhen, a Chinese anarchist feminist, which was published in the Anarcho-feminist
Magazine Tianyi (1907-1908). Feedback I received at the conference helped me realize different conceptual frameworks
I could use to organize my paper as well as sources that I was unaware of and should investigate.
Third, based on the historical sources I collected in China and Japan during the summer of 2016, I reconceptualized andrefined my dissertation proposal. The revised proposal received the Japanese Studies Fellowship, with which I will beable to conduct a year-long research trip in Japan starting in September 2017. I believe that my acceptance to theJapanese Studies Fellowship is inseparable from my research conducted under the sponsorship of the Sumitomo
Foundation. If it were not for the generous support of the Sumitomo Foundation, I would not be able to gather historicalsources that are unavailable in the United States, and neither would I have been able to further hone my research
proposal. As I am preparing for my archival research in Japan, I am grateful to the support I have received from theSumitomo Foundation. I believe that my upcoming fieldwork in Japan will allow me to discover more archival sources,
based upon which I will be able to further enhance my understanding of East Asian feminism at the turn of the twentiethcentury.

Publication of the Results of Research Project:
Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)“Transnational Feminist Exchange between He-Yin Zhen and Kōtoku Shūsui through the Magazine Tianyi (19071908),” Thinking Gender Graduate Student Conference, Panel: “Modernity, Domesticity, and Femininity in East andSoutheast Asia,” University of California Los Angeles, April 8, 2016.

Thesis (Name of Journal and its Date, Title and Author of Thesis, etc.)“Transnational Feminist Exchange between He-Yin Zhen and Kōtoku Shūsui through the Magazine Tianyi (19071908),” University of California Los Angeles - Thinking Gender Conference Papers Database, upcoming 2017.

Book (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)

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