Changing Lives ? The "Postwar" in Japanese Women?s Autobiographies and Memoirs (Asia Past & Present)

CHANGING LIVES: The ‘Postwar’ in Japanese Women’s Autobiographies and Memoirs presents the reader with substantial translations from memoirs and autobiographies by Japanese women. The women who appear in the book are far from household names in Japan: Okabe Itsuko (nonfiction writer and cultural critic), Shinya Eiko (stage and screen actress), Yoshitake Teruko (activist, historian), Kishino Junko (newspaper reporter, adjunct professor of African-American literature), and Kanamori Toshie (reporter, Kanagawa Prefecture grass roots activist) to name but a few. The voices found in Changing Lives touch upon key moments in a dynamic and tumultuous era in Japanese history as witnessed by these women. These events include the emperor’s radio address at the end of World War II, the first Japanese election in which women could vote, the Ampo Movement, and the Women’s Lib Movement of the 1970s where we encounter two of the women speaking directly about the process of developing their “feminine consciousness.” Changing Lives will be of interest to students and teachers in multiple disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and women’s self-writing.

RONALD P. LOFTUS is Director of the Center for Asian Studies at Willamette University in Salem, OR. He grew up in various parts of the world including India, France, Italy and Thailand. He graduated high-school from the International School of Bangkok and returned to Washington, D.C., to attend George Washington University. After graduating and earning a Master’s Degree from Johns Hopkins SAIS, Loftus entered the Ph.D. program in modern Japanese history at Claremont Graduate School. Since 1977, he has been teaching Japanese language, literature, film, and history at the university level. Research interests include late Meiji social and intellectual history and "self-writing" --- autobiographies and memoirs -- by 20th century Japanese women. He has published two books on the subject: Telling Lives (University of Hawaii press, 2004) on the interwar years and Changing Lives (Association of Asian Studies, 2013) on postwar Japan. In 2013, he was a participant in "Sex, Gender, and Society: Rethinking Modern Japanese Feminisms," a conference held at Emory University on April 19-20, 2013. The conference featured presentations by Japanese Studies specialists engaged in innovative research intended to further our understanding of the diversity and evolution of Japanese feminist thought and activism from the Meiji period to the present day.