The Japanese state has long attempted to control the choices and behaviors of women through campaigns of moral suasion and social management. These campaigns have varied in terms of their efficacy but have all endeavored to encourage women to embrace the “good wife, wise mother” ideals espoused in ryosai kenbo ideology, often for the purported good of the nation. Leading up to WWII, these campaigns were effective in undermining the Modern Girl and eventually squeezing her out of existence. The bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in the early 1990s, however, created the Post-Modern Girl, who, like the Modern Girl, has particular attitudes about marriage, children, work, and sexuality. Unlike the Modern Girl, however, the Post-Modern Girl has survived nearly three decades since her emergence. This thesis examines these two figures and their converging and diverging trajectories and explores the limits of state control in the lives of modern Japanese women. / 10000-01-01

My research is centered around the questions: How can such a modernized country, considered by many to be the cleanest, friendliest, most welcoming place to visit (certainly surpassing the United States on such standards), not be more welcoming of women in employment? Further, what are the main problems hindering women in employment today, and from where do these problems originate? That is, how did the present situation for women’s employment in Japan come to light? I endeavor to answer these questions, beginning by uncovering the major issues in women’s employment and then tracing their origins back in history to discover when and why they developed into what they are today.

The history of Japanese women who love women is often either ignored by or inaccessible to English speakers. To address this lacuna, I will lay out two case studies of women whose Queerness is potentially useful as models of Queer Japanese womanhood. I examine the narratives surrounding two women, Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973 or 978 – c. 1014 or 1031), the author the Tale of Genji, and Otake Kōkichi (1893-1966), an author, artist, and first wave feminist activist, in order to see how narratives surrounding their Queerness, known or posited, affect or are affected by cultural and religious narratives of identity and sexual values. The only major reading of Murasaki Shikibu as a woman who loved women is that of literary scholar and lesbian feminist Komashaku Kimi in Murasaki Shikibu’s Message (Murasaki Shikibu no Messeji), written in 1991. Her argument is that the interest in women’s bodies Murasaki shows in her diary and Poetic Memoirs was a kind of same-sex desire and that that desire was integral to her message in the Tale of Genji. This argument has never been given significant scholarly attention. As such, I examine this argument and present it in English. Otake Kōkichi, born Otake Kazue, is one of a handful of Queer women from the early 20th century who are regularly discussed in academic literature on Japanese feminist history, but most narratives surrounding her tend to center on a same-sex relationship she had in her youth and ignore the radical nature of her life after marriage. I will present aspects of her life that worked with and resisted various religions and systems of value creation that were competing for influence in twentieth-century Japan. The narratives surrounding Otake and Murasaki as Queer people center the radical nature of their work and lives. Both are discussed as having a kind of embodied politics that resists dominant images of womanhood and sexuality in favour of more liberatory constructions of value and identity. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)