書評◆ 書評 ◆

Edited by Julia Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms（University of Hawaii Press 2018, ISBN: 9780824866693, US$65.00）

Mire Koikari（Womenʼs Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa）

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms proposes to reconsider the meanings of feminism
in the context of Japanese modernity andpostmodernity. Originating from the international conference held in 2013, whereVera Mackie, Barbara Molony, and Ueno
Chizuko were featured as keynote speakers, the volume contains fourteen essays
contributed by its participants, a group ofscholars hailing from the US and Japan
whose disciplinary backgrounds range
from history to literature to anthropology.
Intending to complicate existing understandings of feminism in Japan, the volume
focuses on four topical areas—activism
and activists, education and employment,
literature and the arts, and geographicaland disciplinary boundaries. Retracing thevaried and sometimes surprising pathways
taken by workers, activists, artists, thinkers, and scholars, the volume provides aheterogeneous picture of “Japanese feminisms.”
Part I: Rethinking Activism and Activists poses a question, “which activists

208and which movements should we consider‘feminist’?” (p. 13) To answer this question, the essays in this segment shed lighton four instances of feminist articulations,
namely Yamakawa Kikue and her activism at the intersection of gender and classin the prewar years, the Mothers Congress
and its engagement with peace activism in
the early postwar years, the role and placeof lesbianism in the women’s movementin the 1970s, and gender backlash in thetwenty-first century.
Following Part I, Part II: Rethinking
Education and Employment reconsiders
the nature of women’s labor and education
so as to further extend the notion of feminism. Focusing on those conventionally
excluded from the category of “feminists,”
the essays in this section shed light on theeducational philosophy of Koizumi Ikuko
in prewar Japan, and acts of transgression
pursued by female practitioners of ikebana
and female workers at ryokan (traditionalinns) in postwar Japan.
The volume’s intent to unsettle the no-ジェンダー研究

tion of “feminism,” already evident inPart II, becomes even more conspicuousin Part III: Rethinking Literature and theArts. The essays in this segment illuminate diverse forms of literary and artistic
expressions, as exemplified by the visual
art of Takebatake Kashō in Taisho era, theliterary work of Sono Ayako and Ariyoshi
Sawako in the early postwar decades, andthe blockbuster novels of Kirino Natsuo inthe contemporary context.
Finally Part IV: Rethinking Boundaries analyzes various binaries involving
sexuality, gender, race-nation, and so onthat have historically resulted in the construction of the Other. The essays in thissection retrace intellectual ties between
Yamakawa Kikue and Edward Carpenter,problems of (anti)imperialism in feminist
mobilization in the 1970s, Korean women’s
redress movement for “comfort women,”
and Takemura Kazuko and her engagement with queer subjectivities. Highlighting multitudes of border-crossings in feminist activism as well as scholarship, theseessays call attention to the significance of“transnational” in feminist discourses andpractices within and beyond Japan.
Following these fourteen essays, Kano
Ayako, one of the editors of the volume,
provides concluding remarks by responding to a question, “[W]hy is there a needto rethink Japanese feminisms? Why now?
And how?” (p. 267). While reflecting on

第 22 号

2019 年

the imperial nature of Japanese modernity
and its impact on feminism, she also references the rise of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism, whose tides have been accelerated rather than decelerated as a result of
the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami,
and nuclear meltdown in 2011 and whose
gendered manifestation is seen in Prime
Minister Abe’s promotion of women underthe banner of “Womanomics.” Critical (re)examination of feminisms would provide
important insights and strategies in negotiating with this and other dynamics emerging in Japan, Kano seems to suggest.
Notwithstanding Kano’s call for re-historicizing and de-territorializing Japanese
feminisms, the volume tends to reproduce the bounded notions of “Japan” and“feminism.” With the absence of criticalreflections on feminisms’ relations to themarginalized—indigenous
populationsin Hokkaido and Okinawa and overseas
immigrants in Hawaii, North and SouthAmericas, and Southeast Asia among
them—the borders the volume intends tointerrogate are inadvertently reinstated.
Other studies—Gender in Modern East
Asia: An Integrated History edited by Barbara Molony, Janet Theiss, and Hyaeweol
Choi 1 and Reading Colonial Japan: Text,Context, and Critique, edited by Michele
Mason and Helen Lee 2—are full of suggestions about how to decenter Japan in
critical gender analysis. As Kano alludes

1 Barbara Molony, Janet Theiss, Hyaeweol Choi, eds., Gender in Modern East Asia: An IntegratedStudies (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2016).
2 Michele Mason and Helen Lee eds., Reading Colonial Japan: Text, Context, and Critique (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

209

書評

to the significance of neoliberalism andneo-conservatism, moreover, one wishes
to learn more about how seismic shifts
triggered by the economic downturn in the1990s and the catastrophic event in 2011
have been informing feminist articulationsin Japan. Elaboration on this matter seems
especially necessary, as she tries to theorize the context of “now” so as to frame

the publication of this volume as not only
timely but urgent.
Overall, the volume sparks a series ofcritical reflections on gender, race, sexuality, nation, and empire, compelling its
readers to situate “feminisms” within thelarger historical and geopolitical terrainsthat would exceed the conventional notionof “Japan.”（掲載決定日：2019 年 5 月 29 日）

210