Nationalism and Gender

by Ueno, Chizuko; Ueno, Chizuko

• ISBN13: 9781876843595
• ISBN10: 1876843594
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Trans Pacific Press

Summary

This is written by a sociologist and Japan's "most famous feminist", Chizuko Ueno. 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.

Author Biography

Chizuko Ueno is a professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo Beverley Yamamoto teaches in the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction	vii
Author's Introduction to the English Edition	xxviii
Part I - Engendering the Nation
Methodological Issues	3	(3)
Paradigm Change in Post-War History	6	(8)
Paradigm Change in Women's History	14	(2)
The Nationalisation of Women and Wartime Mobilisation	16	(6)
The Feminist Response	22	(8)
The Feminist Version of 'Conquering the Modern'	30	(3)
Female Socialist or Socialist Feminist? The Case of Yamakawa Kikue	33	(5)
The War Responsibility of Ordinary Women	38	(5)
The Dilemma of the Nation-State's Gender Strategy	43	(6)
The Paradox of this Gender Strategy	49	(3)
Women and the Issue of Conversion	52	(4)
Ideas Capable of Transcending the State	56	(3)
A Critique of the Reflexive School of Women's History	59	(4)
Going Beyond the 'Nationalisation of Women' Paradigm	63	(6)
Part II - The Military Comfort Women Issue	69	(38)
A Triple Crime
The Patriarchal Paradigm of National Shame	73	(3)
The 'Purity' of Korean Women	76	(4)
The Military Rape Paradigm	80	(2)
The Prostitution Paradigm	82	(5)
The Sexual Violence Paradigm	87	(5)
The Nationalist Discourse	92	(3)
The Grey Zone of Collaboration with Japan	95	(2)
A Uniquely Japanese or Universal Phenomenon?	97	(3)
Gender, Class and the Nation	100	(4)
'Truth' Amidst Multiple Histories	104	(3)
Part III - The Politics of Memory	107	(42)
The Japanese Version of Historical Revisionism	109	(3)
The Challenge to Gender History	112	(2)
The Positivist Myth of Objective and Neutral History	114	(5)
Historicization versus an Ahistorical Approach	119	(4)
Oral History and Testimony	123	(4)
Narrating History	127	(5)
Reflexive Women's History	132	(5)
Going Beyond the Nation-State	137	(6)
Can Feminism Transcend Nationalism?	143	(6)
Part IV - Hiroshima from a Feminist Perspective: Between War Crimes and the Crime of War	149	(30)
Feminism, Peace Studies and Military Studies
Hiroshima as a Symbol	151	(3)
Hiroshima as seen from an American Perspective	154	(3)
The Hague International Court of Justice and the	157	(2)
De-Criminalization of Nuclear Weapons
The Split in the Peace Movement	159	(2)
The De-Criminalization of State Violence	161	(2)
Two Lawless Zones	163	(2)
Who is a Citizen?	165	(2)
Public Violence and Gender	167	(3)
Women's Participation in the Military	170	(1)
The Nationalisation of Women	171	(3)
Between War Crimes and the Crime of War	174	(5)
Epilogue	179	(9)
Chronology of Related Events	188	(9)
Notes	197	(30)
References	227	(20)
Index	247