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Geographies of Gender

Geographies of Gender

Geographies of Gender

Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan
Tadashi Ishikawa, University of Central Florida
January 2025
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
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9781009534208
$120.00
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    Tadashi Ishikawa traces perceptions and practices of gender in the Japanese empire on the occasion of Japan's colonisation of Taiwan from 1895 . In the 1910s, metropolitan and colonial authorities attempted social reform in ways which particularly impacted on family traditions and, therefore, gender relations, paving the way for the politics of comparison within and beyond the empire. In Geographies of Gender, Tadashi Ishikawa delves into a variety of diplomatic issues, colonial and anticolonial discourses, and judicial cases, finding marriage gifts, daughter adoption, and premarital sexual relationships to be sites of tension between norms and ideals among both elite and ordinary men and women. He explores how the Japanese empire became a gendered space from the 1910s through the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, arguing that gender norms were both unsettled and reinforced in ways which highlight the instability of metropole-colony relations.

    • Spotlights gender at the interplay of family and law in imperial Japan and colonial Taiwan
    • Challenges the national boundaries of area studies in Japan, Taiwan and East Asia
    • Demonstrates the possibilities and limits of using metropole/colony, or any binary historical framework

    Reviews & endorsements

    ‘Geographies of Gender makes a compelling case that Japan’s empire should not be analyzed only through the traditional lenses of diplomacy, war, and identity. This pathbreaking work shows that Japan’s colonialism in Taiwan was also molded by new conceptions of the family, women, marriage, and masculinities in official policies and social visions in both Japan and Taiwan, offering an insightful new paradigm for understanding colonial-metropolitan relations. I highly recommend it for scholars and students of empire, gender, and the modern state.’ Barbara Molony, Santa Clara University

    ‘A fascinating study of family life, legal culture, and gender politics during a period of rapid and uneven social change in East Asia. Ishikawa's meticulous examination of public discourse, court documents, and the imperial archive deepens our understanding of everyday life in colonial Taiwan during the early twentieth-century, while bringing to light hitherto ignored stories and historical actors.’ Paul Barclay, Lafayette College

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    Product details

    January 2025
    Adobe eBook Reader
    9781009534208
    0 pages
    This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction
    • 1. The woman question and interwar Japan's international engagements
    • 2. Empire apart, empire together
    • 3. Becoming a Taiwanese man
    • 4. When the hearth was at once warm and cold
    • 5. Freedom in a state of flux
    • 6. Stories marginal women wove
    • Conclusion
    • Bibliography
    • Index.
      Author
    • Tadashi Ishikawa , University of Central Florida

      Tadashi Ishikawa is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Central Florida.