Transnational women's activism : the United States, Japan, and Japanese immigrant communities in California, 1859-1920 / Rumi Yasutake.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yasutake, Rumi, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Women social reformers--Japan.

Women social reformers.

Women social reformers--California.

Women missionaries--Japan.

Women missionaries.

Women in church work--Japan.

Women in church work.

Women in church work--California.

Women--Japan--Social conditions--19th century.

Women.

Women--Japan--Social conditions--20th century.

Japanese--California--Social conditions--19th century.

Japanese.

Japanese--California--Social conditions--20th century.

Social conditions.

California.

Japan.

Physical Description:

x, 187 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2004]

Summary:

Following landmark trade agreements between Japan and the United States in the 1850s, Tokyo began importing a unique American commodity: Western social activism. As Japan sought to secure its future as a commercial power and American women pursued avenues of political expression, Protestant churchwomen and, later, members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), traveled to the Asian coast to promote Christian teachings and women's social activism. Rumi Yasutake reveals in Transnational Women's Activism that the resulting American, Japanese, and first generation Japanese-American women's movements came to affect more than alcohol or even religion. While the WCTU employed the language of evangelism and Victorian family values, its members were tactfully expedient in accommodating their traditional causes to suffrage and other feminist goals, in addition to the various political currents flowing through Japan and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Exploring such issues as gender struggles in the American Protestant church and bourgeois Japanese women's attitudes towards the "pleasure class" of geishas and prostitutes, Yasutake illuminates the motivations and experiences of American missionaries, U.S. WCTU workers, and their Japanese proteges. The diverse machinations of WCTU activism offer a compelling lesson in the complexities of cultural imperialism.

Contents:

Tilling the ground

Sprouting feminist consciousness

Managing WCTU activism

Beyond Japan to California.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-178) and index.

ISBN:

0814797032

OCLC:

54966384