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Women in Japanese Studies: Memoirs from a Trailblazing Generation brings together trailblazing women scholars from diverse disciplines in Japanese Studies to reflect on their careers and offer advice to colleagues.
Most books present research and pedagogies. We do something different: We share lives—personal stories of how women scholars earned graduate degrees and began careers bridging Japan and North America between the 1950s and 1980 and balanced professional and personal responsibilities. We challenge the common narrative that Japanese Studies was established by men who worked for the US military after World War II or were from missionary families in Japan. This is only part of the story—the field was also created by women who took advantage of postwar opportunities for studying Japan. Women of this generation were among the first scholars to use Japanese source materials in research published in English and the first foreigners to study at Japanese universities. Their careers benefitted from fellowships, educational developments, activist movements to include the study of women and Asia in university curricula, and measures to prevent gender discrimination. Yet there were instances when, due to their gender, women received smaller salaries, faced hurdles to tenure, and were excluded from, or ignored, at conferences.
Our book pioneers a genre of academic memoirs, capturing emotional and intellectual experiences omitted from institutional histories. We offer lively, engaging, thoughtful, brave, empowering stories that start larger conversations about gender and inclusion in the academy and in Japan-American educational exchange.
Alisa Freedman, “Introduction, or the Professional is Personal”
Ellen P. Conant, “The Implausible Origins of Becoming an Art Historian”
Joyce Lebra, “An Asian Affiliation”
Marlene J. Mayo, “Against the Odds, Persisting”
Barbara Ruch, “In Search of Flowers Yet Unseen”
Margaret Lock, “On Becoming a Medical Anthropologist”
Takako Lento, “Life on Two Tracks”
Phyllis I. Lyons, “A Record of Puzzlement”
Susan B. Hanley, “An Accidental Pioneer”
Susan Matisoff, “Another Girl Studying Japanese!”
Mary Elizabeth Berry, “Becoming a Historian”
Patricia G. Steinhoff, “Serendipity and Sociology”
Sumie Jones, “I Came, I Saw, I Stayed”
Richard Smethurst, “Mae as a Professional Scholar”
Amy V. Heinrich, “Margins”
Sonja Arntzen, “The Presence of the Past in Life and Scholarship”
Christine M.E. Guth, “Two Children…and a PhD”
Maureen Donovan, “Memories of Becoming a Japanese Studies Librarian”
Janine Beichman, “The Open Gate”
Phyllis Birnbaum, “Confessions of a Biographer”
Merry White, “Backwards and in High Heels”
Susan Pharr, “Night Train to Tokyo”
Margaret McKean, “From Chūshingura to Commons”
Kate Wildman Nakai, “Encounters”
Anne Walthall, “I Owe My Career to Men”
Anne E. Imamura, “Embracing the Unexpected and Weaving a Life”
Juliet Winters Carpenter, “Translating in Japan”
Eleanor Kerkham, “Still on the Way”
Kristina Kade Troost, “Growing Up, or How I Learned to Be a Japanese Studies Librarian”
Helen Hardacre, “With a Lot of Help from My Friends”
Barbara Sato, “On Being an Outsider-Insider”
Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen, “Japanese Literature as a Refuge”