Modern Girls on the Go Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan [Paperback]

This spirited and engaging multidisciplinary volume pins its focus on the lived experiences and cultural depictions of women's mobility and labor in Japan. The theme of modern girls continues to offer a captivating window into the changes that women's roles have undergone during the course of the last century.Here we encounter Japanese women inhabiting the most modern of spaces, in newly created professions, moving upward and outward, claiming the public life as their own: shop girls, elevator girls, dance hall dancers, tour bus guides, airline stewardesses, international beauty queens, overseas teachers, corporate soccer players, and even female members of the Self-Defense Forces. Directly linking gender, mobility, and labor in 20th and 21st century Japan, this collection brings to life the ways in which these modern girlshistorically and contemporaneouslyhave influenced social roles, patterns of daily life, and Japan's global image. It is an ideal guidebook for students, scholars, and general readers alike. Modern Girls on the Gotakes us around Japan and around the world to discover how Japanese women have represented and shaped the technologies of modernityamong them capitalism, print culture, consumerism, and transportation systemsthroughout the twentieth century and beyond . . . This is a book not only important to scholars engaged in the study of Japanese women's and gender history, but also excellent for classroom use at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Alisa Freedman is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University of Oregon.Laura Miller is the Ei'ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.Christine R. Yano is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. [A] serious contribution to intercultural studies and gender sensitivitiesscholarly, well written, and often moving. . . . Highly recommended. BroalS(