The 2017-2018 Academic Year sees the 150th anniversary of Japan’s 1868 “Meiji Restoration\,” an epochal po
litical revolution that sparked Japan’s remarkable modernization\, dramatic
cultural transformation\, and rapid emergence onto the global stage.
One legacy of the Meiji Restoration was Japanese imperialist expansion in East Asia in the late-19th century\, breeding a culture of milit arism that pervaded Japanese society in the early 20th and that led Japan into war with China and the Western powers from 1937-1945. Feari ng the encroachment of Western imperialist nations into East Asia\, Japanes e government leaders and military strategists cast their expansionary gaze to the mainland of Asia in the name of securing autarky and territorial buf fers. Victories in war over China in 1895 and Russia a decade later in 190 5\, along with the forceful colonial acquisition of Taiwan and Korea\, anno unced Japan as a first-rate imperial power. Yet this new military might al so aroused the ire of those Western countries entertaining their own imperi al ambitions\, particularly the United States. A decade of international c ooperation following WWI gave way in the mid-1920s to renewed Japanese aggr ession in China as defensive strategists resolved to strengthen Japanese in terests through any means necessary\, including political assassination\, c oup d’état\, and independent military action. All the while\, Japan’s incr easing international isolation accelerated the emergence of a fervent natio nalism at home that by the 1930s grew into a popular culture that demanded unquestioned patriotism\, unwavering support of the military\, and unswervi ng loyalty to the “eternal great cause” of the empire. War against the Uni ted States brought devastation and defeat in 1945\, when the empire and the militarist culture that fueled its creation were stripped away. In their place\, the Japanese people embraced democracy and demilitarization\, and p ledged themselves to rebuilding Japan as a nation committed to peace.
At the fulcrum of this dramatic oscillation between war and peace\, milita rism and democracy\, were the women and children of Japan. Women bore a si ngularly heavy burden. Not only were they expected to be the human factori es of the empire\, giving birth to future imperial soldiers\, they were obl iged to willfully send off their sons to war alongside their fathers\, husb ands\, and brothers\, watch their daughters march off to work in munitions factories\, and evacuate their younger children to the rural countryside — all while cheering for the success of the military and the long life of the emperor. After the war\, women again were asked to put aside personal gri ef and anguish as they bore the weight of rebuilding their families\, their homes\, and their nation. Demands put on children\, meanwhile\, shifted f rom devoting their lives to the defense of the empire to tirelessly dedicat ing their labor to the economic reconstruction of the nation.
“Gender ing War and Peace in Modern Japan” convenes scholars of Japanese history an d literature to consider the transwar positionality of women and children\, resisting the tendency to see 1945 as a breakpoint and to instead analyze longer-term developments in years of both war and peace.
