Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan

Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan makes a unique contribution to the international literature on the formation of modern nation–states in its focus on the gendering of the modern Japanese nation-state from the late nineteenth century to the present. References to gender relations are deeply embedded in the historical concepts of nation and nationalism, and in the related symbols, metaphors and arguments. Moreover, the development of the binary opposition between masculinity and femininity and the development of the modern nation-state are processes which occurred simultaneously. They were the product of a shift from a stratified, hereditary class society to a functionally-differentiated social body. This volume includes the work of an international group of scholars from Japan, the United States, Australia and Germany, which in many cases appears in English for the first time. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the formation of the modern Japanese nation–state, including comparative perspectives from research on the formation of the modern nation–state in Europe, thus bringing research on Japan into a transnational dialogue. This volume will be of interest in the fields of modern Japanese history, gender studies, political science and comparative studies of nationalism.

Andrea Germer is Associate Professor of Gender Studies, Japanese Studies and Visual Culture at Kyushu University and the author of Historische Frauenforschung in Japan [Women’s History in Japan], 2003. Research interests include gender and nation, feminist theory, propaganda, visual history and transcultural aesthetics.

Vera Mackie is Senior Professor of Asian Studies in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong and Research Leader of the Forum on Human Rights Research. She has published widely on cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies and feminist history.

Ulrike Wohr is Professor of Japanese Studies and Gender Studies at Hiroshima City University and the author of Frauen zwischen Rollenerwartung and Selbstdeutung [Women between Role-Expectations and Self-Representation], a historical reading of Japanese feminist thought of the 1910s. Research interests include gender and feminism in modern Japan from a transnational perspective.