Telling Lives : Women's Self-Writing in Modern Japan / Ronald P. Loftus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Loftus, Ronald P., author.

Contributor:

Loftus, Ronald P.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women and literature--Japan.

Women and literature.

Women--Japan--Biography--History and criticism.

Women.

Autobiography--Women authors.

Autobiography.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (329 p.)

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, [2004]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this fascinating collection of translations, Telling Lives looks at the self-writing of five Japanese women who came of age during the decades leading up to World War II. Following an introduction that situates women's self-writing against the backdrop of Japan during the 1920s and 1930s, Loftus takes up the autobiographies of Oku Mumeo, a leader of the prewar women's movement, and Takai Toshio, a textile worker who later became a well-known labor activist. Next is the moving story of Nishi Kyoko, whose Reminiscences tells of her life as a young woman who escapes the oppression of her family and establishes her financial independence. Nishi's narrative precedes a detailed look at the autobiography of Sata Ineko. Sata's Between the Lines of My Personal Chronology recounts her years as a member of a proletarian arts circle and her struggle to become a writer. The collection ends with the Marxist Fukunaga Misao's frank and explosive text Memoirs of a Female Communist, which is examined as a manifesto condemning the male chauvinism of the prewar Japanese Communist Party.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Producing Writing Subjects: Women in the Interwar Years

2. Politics Rooted in Everyday Life: Oku Mumeo's Fires Burning Brightly (Nobi aka aka to)

3. Changing Consciousness Takai Toshio's My Own Sad History of Female Textile Workers (Watashi no jokō aishi)

4. Her Mother's Voice Nishi Kiyoko's Reminiscences (Tsuioku)

5. Re-presenting the Self Sata Ineko's Between the Lines of My Personal Chronology (Nen'pu no gyōkan)

6. Resisting Authority Fukunaga Misao's Recollections of a Female Communist (Aru onna kyôsanshugisha no kaisô)

7. Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-303) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Aug 2019)

ISBN:

9780824864569

0824864565

OCLC:

923491650