The New Japanese Woman - Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan

"Barbara Sato has produced a superb book on the construction of a new women's culture in Japan in the interwar period. In captivating detail, she documents the creation of a new subjectivity--'women'--through the interactions of middle-class women with consumer capitalism and the mass media. By showing us the myriad ways that women wrote themselves into the narratives of modernity, Sato's book opens up new ways of thinking about the relationship between women and the modern."--Louise Young, author of "Japan's Total Empire"

List of contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Prologue: Women and the Reality of the Everyday 1

1. The Emergence of Agency: Women and Consumerism 13

2. The Modern Girl as a Representation of Consumer Culture 45

3. Housewives as Reading Women 78

4. Work for Life, for Marriage, for Love 114

5. Hard Days Ahead: Women on the Move 152

Notes 165

Bibliography 213

Index 233

About the author

Barbara Sato is Professor of History at Seikei University in Tokyo. She is coeditor of Gender and Modernity: Rereading Japanese Women's Magazines.

Summary

Presenting a social history of "the new woman" that emerged in Japanese culture between the world wars, this title shows how images of modern women burst into Japanese life in the midst of the urbanization, growth of the middle class, and explosion of consumerism resulting from the postwar economic boom, particularly in the 1920s.

Product details

• Authors: Barbara Sato, Barbara Hamill Sato
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.04.2003
• EAN: 9780822330448
• ISBN: 978-0-8223-3044-8
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 163 mm x 228 mm x 18 mm
• Weight: 395 g
• Series: Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society; Asia-Pacific; Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society; Asia-Pacific; Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politic
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories