Women and Democracy in Cold War Japan [Paperback]

Women and Democracy in Cold War Japanoffers a fresh perspective on gender politics by focusing on the Japanese housewife of the 1950s as a controversial representation of democracy, leisure, and domesticity. Examining the shifting personae of the housewife, especially in the appealing texts of women's magazines, reveals the diverse possibilities of postwar democracy as they were embedded in media directed toward Japanese women. Each chapter explores the contours of a single controversy, including debate over the royal wedding in 1959, the victory of Japan's first Miss Universe, and the unruly desires of postwar women. Jan Bardsley also takes a comparative look at the ways in which the Japanese housewife is measured against equally stereotyped notions of the modern housewife in the United States, asking how both function as narratives of Japan-U.S. relations and gender/class containment during the early Cold War.

???[This] valuable book ??? will be a great read for both students and scholars of postwar discourses on gender in Japan.??? ???Journal of Japanese Studies

???Through close readings of popular media-from contentious letters to newspaper editors to debates covered in women's magazines, from tales of flawed fashionistas to satirical cartoons-Women and Democracy in Cold War Japantakes an innovative approach to the gender politics shaping Japan in the 1950s. Jan Bardsley effectively challenges the notion that the liberation of Japanese women was primarily the result of the American occupation of Japan after World War II. In addition, her analysis of the media construction of housewives, princesses, and beauty queens places Japan's postwar era squarely in the geopolitics of the Cold War. Accessible and provocative,Women and Democracy in Cold War Japanwill be a very useful bolS