| Abstract |

Feminisms in Japan are still largely ignored in public or academic debate internationally. Also, feminism is often termed as ‘Western’ and framed as a contradiction or threat to ‘traditional’ domestic values as in present antifeminism worldwide. Thus, feminisms in Japan have a singular and crucial meaning in international perspective: They developed as an autonomous force selecting international impulses (for example equality, participation and female eros) and locating them in their context. And they were confronted with Japan’s singular development which was threatened by Western colonialism and transformed into a colonizing imperialist nation. They raise the issues of feminist autonomy in diverse cultural contexts and postcolonial critical memory. This lecture will look at the diverse currents and transformations of feminisms in Japan in transnational longterm perspective aiming to overcome hegemonic eurocentric and nipponcentric views. They have developed over 140 years in a continual line which is different from the Western model of the first, second and third wave. But they have proceeded with radical self-reflexive transformations reacting to fundamental challenges. From their start in the 1880ies, they were confronted with defining new concepts of women and gender, with intersectional inequality and with locating themselves in the nation and world society. In this changing context, they developed different discourses and practices between establishing new legitimate gender terms or deconstructing feminity / gender or between cooptation to nationalism or radical critiques of imperialism. Following a short summary until the 1970ies, I will focus on the trajectories of new feminisms after the lib movement. This will be concretised by looking at the debates around gender and women, intersectionality and the postcolonial critique of Japan’s international responsibility and feminist exchange in East Asia as in the comfort women issue.

| Bio |

Ilse Lenz is professor emerita for social structure /gender at the Faculty of Social Science, Ruhr University in Bochum. Her doctoral thesis 1983 at the Free University of Berlin analyzed women's work in Japanese industrialization from a development sociology perspective. In her habilitation in 1989 at the University of Münster, she did empirical research on the gendering of computerization in Japanese industry. She has published on intersectionality in work, social movements and feminism in comparative perspective. She has a singular profile comparing Western and East Asian societies, especially German and Japan. She published standard works on feminism in Germany (2010) and in Japan (2023). Her new research focusses the present transformation of the intersectional and gender orders in welfare states including the change of gender, capitalism and work. Together with Michiko Mae, chair of the Institute for Modern Japan at the University of Düsseldorf, she coordinated an annual workshop on gender research on Japan (now held by Andera Germer and Annette Schad-Seifert). Ilse Lenz is a co-editor of the book series Gender & Society (Springer publications) and was spokesperson for the gender section in the German Society for Sociology.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e11
Thursday 2024-06-13, 18:00~19:30

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e11.