Description
This book is the 6th volume of the Monograph Series of the Socio-Economic History Society, Japan. The book focuses on how economic developments changed the everyday lives of ordinary women in early-modern and modern Japan. Different from precedent gender studies, the spotlight here is on the daily activities and structural positions of women rather than feminist movements or activities of elite women. Using demography, anthropometrics, and labour economics, this book explicates childcare, physical development of girls, and womenâs labour migration. The dynamics of ordinary women in prewar Japan may change deep-rooted images of women as oppressed beings. Using quantitative data multi-dimensionally with the latest statistical analysis methods, this book shows how Japanese economic historians can contribute to historians of gender and family who are interested in early-modern and modern Japan.
The first part consists of four chapters that discuss women migrant workers in the Tokugawa period, womenâs work, and family strategies in the underdeveloped regions of the country, conflicts between child-rearing and womenâs work on family farms, and living standards of teenaged girls in early twentieth-century Japan. Those chapters provide a bridge between economic historians and feminist historians and articulate new research fields for both. The second part, comprising four book reviews, illustrates how the gender concept has been adopted in family and gender historiography in Japan.
Table of Contents
Part I Perspective on the History of Women and Family in Japanese Economic Development.- 1 The Labour Market and Labour Migration in Small Post Towns in Early Modern Japan: The Relationship between a Town and its Outlying Villages in the Northeastern Domain of Nihonmatsu in the Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries(Miyuki Takahashi).- 2 Economic Development and Labour Supply in Underdeveloped Regions: An Analysis of the Labour Supply of Domestic Servants in Northern Akita Prefecture, Japan, 1910â1924(Masahiro Ogiyama).- 3 Childrearing Methods and Decreased Growth: An Examination of Infant Health in the Farming Communities of TaishÅ Japan (1912-1926)(Kazunori Murakoshi).- 4 Changes in Female Height and Age of Menarche in Modern Japan, 1870s-1980s: Reconsideration of Living Standards during the Interwar Period (Kenâichi Tomobe).- Part II Book Reviews.- 5 Review of Satomi Kurosu (ed.), Rekishi JinkÅgaku kara mita Kekkon, Rikon, Saikon (Marriage, Divorce and Re-marriage from the Perspective of Historical Demography) (Motoyasu Takahashi).- 6 Review of Chikako KatÅ, Kindai Nihon no Kokumin TÅgÅ to JendÄ (National Integration and Gender in Modern Japan (Kazue Enoki).- 7 Review of Hiroko Nagano and YÅ«ko Matsumoto (ed.) JendaÌshi SoÌsho 6 Keizai to ShoÌhi Shakai (Gender History Series, Vol. 6: Consumer Society and the Economy)(Manabu Ozeki).- 8 Review of Toshiko Himeoka, Mayuho Hasegawa, et al., JendaÌ (Kindai YoÌroppa no TankyuÌ 11)(Gender: In Search of Modern Europe 11)(Nobuko Okuda).- Index.
