Women on the Verge - Japanese Women, Western Dreams

"Taking cover under her more innocuous theme of the recent internationalization of Japanese women's lives and careers, Karen Kelsky bluntly asks one of the great taboo questions in Japanese studies: why do so many Japanese women, if given the chance, prefer white husbands over those of their own ethnicity? What are the historical and psychological reasons for a powerful attraction enshrined in popular culture since "Madame Butterfly "but until now never critically examined, certainly not from a modern feminist perspective? Kelsky's provocative answers to these questions make her "Women on the Verge" the first study we have of Japan's eroticization of the West, in a world already so full of books that would tell us how the West has eroticized Japan."--John Whittier Treat, Yale University

List of contents

Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Note on Japanese Names and Terms xiii

Introduction 1

1. The Promised Land: A Genealogy of Female Internationalism 35

2. Internationalism as Resistance 85

3. Capital and the Fetish of the White Man 133

4. (Re)flexibility in Inflexible Places 202

Conclusion: Strange Bedfellows 227

Notes 249

Bibliography 259

Index 283

About the author

Karen Kelsky

Summary

Drawing on a supply of autobiographical narratives, as well as literary and cultural texts, this title situates this phenomenon against a backdrop of profound social change in Japan and within an intricate network of larger global forces. It exposes the racial and erotic politics of trans-national mobility.

Product details

• Authors: Karen Kelsky, Kelsky, Karen Kelsky
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 21.11.2001
• EAN: 9780822328056
• ISBN: 978-0-8223-2805-6
• No. of pages: 277
• Weight: 771 g
• Illustrations: 23 b&w photos, 9 figures
• Series: Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society; Asia-Pacific; Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society; Asia-Pacific; Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politic
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; Sociology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies