Nationalism and Gender

by Chizuko Ueno

Overview

A discursive battle over how Japan's history should be remembered constitutes the most recent, and perhaps the most explosive, round in a struggle over the legitimacy of different "narrator's" understandings of the past and its focus on the "comfort women" issue. Feminist theorist Chizuko Ueno confronts head on, in her usual lucid and hard-hitting style, the various actors in the debate. She skillfully cuts through the argument of the neo-nationalist "historical revisionists" who have attempted to deny or minimize the reality of the former "comfort women". Ueno's equally biting treatment of her natural allies - left-wing historians and feminist supporters of the "comfort women" - has also made the book highly controversial.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781925608007
Publisher:	Trans Pacific Press
Publication date:	07/20/2020
Series:	Japanese Society Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	263
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

UENO Chizuko is a leading Japanese feminist scholar and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo.

Table of Contents

	Translator's Introduction	vii
	Author's Introduction to the English Edition	xxviii
Part I	Engendering the Nation
	Methodological Issues	3
	Paradigm Change in Post-War History	6
	Paradigm Change in Women's History	14
	The Nationalisation of Women and Wartime Mobilisation	16
	The Feminist Response	22
	The Feminist Version of 'Conquering the Modern'	30
	Female Socialist or Socialist Feminist? The Case of Yamakawa Kikue	33
	The War Responsibility of Ordinary Women	38
	The Dilemma of the Nation-State's Gender Strategy	43
	The Paradox of this Gender Strategy	49
	Women and the Issue of Conversion	52
	Ideas Capable of Transcending the State	56
	A Critique of the Reflexive School of Women's History	59
	Going Beyond the 'Nationalisation of Women' Paradigm	63
Part II	The Military Comfort Women Issue
	A Triple Crime	69
	The Patriarchal Paradigm of National Shame	73
	The 'Purity' of Korean Women	76
	The Military Rape Paradigm	80
	The Prostitution Paradigm	82
	The Sexual Violence Paradigm	87
	The Nationalist Discourse	92
	The Grey Zone of Collaboration with Japan	95
	A Uniquely Japanese or Universal Phenomenon?	97
	Gender, Class and the Nation	100
	'Truth' Amidst Multiple Histories	104
Part III	The Politics of Memory	107
	The Japanese Version of Historical Revisionism	109
	The Challenge to Gender History	112
	The Positivist Myth of Objective and Neutral History	114
	Historicization versus an Ahistorical Approach	119
	Oral History and Testimony	123
	Narrating History	127
	Reflexive Women's History	132
	Going Beyond the Nation-State	137
	Can Feminism Transcend Nationalism?	143
Part IV	Hiroshima from a Feminist Perspective: Between War Crimes and the Crime of War
	Feminism, Peace Studies and Military Studies	149
	Hiroshima as a Symbol	151
	Hiroshima as seen from an American Perspective	154
	The Hague International Court of Justice and the De-Criminalization of Nuclear Weapons	157
	The Split in the Peace Movement	159
	The De-Criminalization of State Violence	161
	Two Lawless Zones	163
	Who is a Citizen?	165
	Public Violence and Gender	167
	Women's Participation in the Military	170
	The Nationalisation of Women	171
	Between War Crimes and the Crime of War	174
	Epilogue	179
	Chronology of Related Events	188
	Notes	197
	References	227
	Index	247