Women and Democracy in Cold War Japan, by Jan Bardsley

Jan Bardsley’s richly evidenced and engrossing book explores the shifting persona of the housewife as a controversial representation of democratic progress, domesticity and gender politics in 1950s Japan. As such, this volume presents an important contribution to a topic that has not received much historiographical attention. Limiting the discussion to the 1950s provides a useful focus that enables an in-depth examination of gender roles in Japan in the post-war era. Bardsley has organised her analysis as a chronology of controversies between 1949 and 1959, whereby each chapter presents a consideration of a particular debate through close readings of, primarily, print media (newspapers and magazines) directed towards and purchased by Japanese women. Through these controversies, Bardsley explores how Japanese housewives tried to open up definitions of the housewife’s role. In Chapter Two she analyses the 1949–50 ‘kitchen debate’ in the English-language Nippon Times newspaper. Chapter Three discusses the 1955 ‘housewife debate’, and Chapter Four the debate on ‘women’s desires’ in 1956. Chapter Five analyses the responses to the Royal Wedding of 1959 and the transformation of Shōda Michiko into a ‘people’s princess’ and model housewife. Chapter Six explores the crowning of Kojima Akiko as Miss Universe in 1959. The volume is rounded off with an analysis of the 1959 novel Onnamen (masks) by Enchi Fumiko as a critique of the dominant themes which shaped post-war womanhood and housewifery in Japan.

Art · Democracy · Historiography · Housewife · Humanities · Media studies · Newspaper · Persona · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics) · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law