Coeds ruining the nation : women, education, and social change in postwar Japanese media / Julia C. Bullock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bullock, Julia C., author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

Center for Japanese Studies Monograph.

Center for Japanese Studies Monograph

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coeducation--Japan--20th century.

Coeducation.

Education--Japan--20th century.

Education.

Japan.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (199 pages).

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2019.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

"In the late 1800s, Japan introduced a new, sex-segregated educational system. Boys would be prepared to enter a rapidly modernizing public sphere, while girls trained to become 'good wives and wise mothers' who would contribute to the nation by supporting their husbands and nurturing the next generation of imperial subjects. When this system was replaced by a coeducational model during the American Occupation following World War II, adults raised with gender-specific standards were afraid coeducation would cause 'moral problems' even societal collapse. By contrast, young people generally greeted coeducation with greater composure. This is the first book in English to explore the arguments for and against coeducation as presented in newspaper and magazine articles, cartoons, student-authored school newsletters, and roundtable discussions published in the Japanese press as these reforms were being implemented. It complicates the notion of the postwar years as a moment of rupture, highlighting prewar experiments with coeducation that belied objections that the practice was a foreign imposition and therefore 'unnatural' for Japanese culture. It also illustrates a remarkable degree of continuity between prewar and postwar models of femininity, arguing that Occupation-era guarantees of equal educational opportunity were ultimately repurposed toward a gendered division of labor that underwrote the postwar project of economic recovery. Finally, it excavates discourses of gender and sexuality underlying the moral panic surrounding coeducation to demonstrate that claims of rampant sexual deviance and other concerns were employed as disciplinary mechanisms to reinforce an ideology of harmonious gender complementarity and to dissuade women from pursuing conventionally masculine prerogatives."

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Permissions for Image Use and Quotations

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Chapter 1. From Sex Segregation to Coeducation

Chapter 2. Coeducation in the News: From Hokkaidō to Kyūshū

Chapter 3. Female Bodies in Male Spaces: Coeducation as Portrayed in Occupation-Era Comics

Chapter 4. "Separate but Equal": Negotiating the Meaning of "Equality" within Gender Difference

Chapter 5. Mixed Messages: Mediating Coeducation through Student Roundtables

Chapter 6. "Coeds Ruining the Nation": Coeducation and Moral Panic

Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 186-198).

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472125593

0472125591

9780472074174

0472074172

9780472054176

0472054171

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.