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The World of the Female Miner in Japan: Sites of Compliance and Resistance

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Coal Mining Communities and Gentrification in Japan

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to utilize a gendered lens to understand the socio-cultural and historical contexts and working conditions under which Japanese women miners laboured, and, consequently, to analyse points of resistance, if any, that women displayed within this environment. By concentrating on social history and community relations and dynamics, gender relations can be better understood within their relevant contexts. The increasing acceptance of gender analyses is part of a greater change in the presentation and understanding of history, which places emphasis on the advancement of counter-narratives that showcase aspects of history that depart from or add to existing official records maintained by the state or large corporations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, introduction to Gendering Modern Japanese History, eds. Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 2.

  2. 2.

    Jean-Francois Lyotard’s grand narratives or master narratives were introduced in his 1979 publication The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. The concept critiques dominant ideologies and forms of knowledge in order to understand how they are legitimized and sustained.

  3. 3.

    Some examples include publications by Hideko Idegawa, Mikiso Hane, Sachiko Sone, Tatsuichi Horikiri, Regine Mathias, Matthew Allen, W. Donald Smith, Laurier Mercier, and Angela V. John.

  4. 4.

    Vera Mackie, “Gender and Modernity in Japan’s ‘Long Twentieth Century,’” Journal of Women’s History 25, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 62.

  5. 5.

    Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, “The Megaproject of Mining: A Feminist Critique,” in Engineering Earth, ed. Stanley D. Brunn (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 329.

  6. 6.

    Laurier Mercier and Jaclyn J. Gier, introduction to Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670–2005, eds. Laurier Mercier and Jaclyn J. Gier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 3.

  7. 7.

    Matthew Allen, Undermining the Japanese Miracle: Work and Conflict in a Coalmining Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 33.

  8. 8.

    Dhiraj Kumar Nite, “Archives, Being and Representation: Studies into the Formation and Usage of Grassroots Archives,” Waseda RILAS Journal, no. 6 (October 2018): 576.

  9. 9.

    Chelsea Szendi Schieder, “From Coal Miner’s Wife to Historical Actor: The Personal Archive of Matsuo Keiko,” Waseda RILAS Journal, no. 6 (October 2018): 546.

  10. 10.

    It must be stressed that Hokkaido also had women who worked underground, primarily as atoyamas (hauliers who transported coal after it had been extracted from the coal face). In fact, these female miners in Hokkaido may be said to be even more marginalized in terms of the lack of discussion and study about them.

  11. 11.

    Sachiko Sone, “Japanese Coal Mining: Women Discovered,” in Women Miners in Developing Countries: Pit Women and Others, eds. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Martha Macintyre (New York: Routledge, 2006), 57.

  12. 12.

    Allen, Undermining the Japanese Miracle, 54.

  13. 13.

    Yutaka Nishinarita, “The Coal-Mining Industry,” in Technology Change and Female Labour in Japan, ed. Masanori Nakamura (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1994), 60.

  14. 14.

    Regine Mathias, “Female Labour in the Japanese Coal-Mining Industry,” in Japanese Women Working, ed. Janet Hunter (London: Routledge, 1993), 100.

  15. 15.

    Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Martha Macintyre, introduction to Women Miners in Developing Countries: Pit Women and Others, eds. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Martha Macintyre (New York: Routledge, 2006), 7.

  16. 16.

    Mikiso Hane, Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 154.

  17. 17.

    W. Donald Smith, “Sorting Coal and Pickling Cabbage: Korean Women in the Japanese Mining Industry,” in Gendering Modern Japanese History, eds. Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 395–6.

  18. 18.

    Allen, Undermining the Japanese Miracle, 55.

  19. 19.

    Mathias, “Female Labour,” 100.

  20. 20.

    Mathias, “Female Labour,” 100.

  21. 21.

    Allen, Undermining the Japanese Miracle, 57.

  22. 22.

    Sachiko Sone, “Coal Mining Women Speak Out: Economic Change and Women Miners of Chikuhō, Japan,” in Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670 to 2005, eds. Laurier Mercier and Jaclyn J. Gier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 154.

  23. 23.

    Mathias, “Female Labour,” 104.

  24. 24.

    Sone, “Japanese Coal Mining,” 51.

  25. 25.

    Sone, “Japanese Coal Mining,” 51.

  26. 26.

    Kayoko Yoshida and Reiko Miyauchi, “Invisible Labour: A comparative Oral History of Women in Coal Mining Communities of Hokkaidō, Japan, and Montana, USA, 1890–1940,” in Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670 to 2005, eds. Laurier Mercier and Jaclyn J. Gier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 138.

  27. 27.

    Angela V. John, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Women Workers at Victorian Coal Mines (New York: Routledge, 1980), 20.

  28. 28.

    Nishinarita, “The Coal-Mining Industry,” 59.

  29. 29.

    Hideko Idegawa, interview by Matthew Allen, 1987, quoted in Undermining the Japanese Miracle, 52.

  30. 30.

    Allen, Undermining the Japanese Miracle, 31.

  31. 31.

    See, for example, Matthew Allen’s discussion of the presentation of history in the Tagawa museum in Undermining the Japanese Miracle.

  32. 32.

    Sone, “Coal-Mining Women Speak Out,” 154.

  33. 33.

    Mathias, “Female Labour,” 103.

  34. 34.

    Sone, “Japanese Coal Mining,” 63.

  35. 35.

    W. Donald Burton, Coal-Mining Women in Japan: Heavy Burdens (New York: Routledge, 2014), 17.

  36. 36.

    Mathias, “Female Labour,” 104.

  37. 37.

    Sone, “Japanese Coal Mining,” 55.

  38. 38.

    Mathias, “Female Labour,” 105.

  39. 39.

    Nishinarita, “The Coal-Mining Industry,” 90.

  40. 40.

    Andrea Germer, Vera Mackie and Ulrike Wöhr, introduction to Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan, eds. Andrea Germer, Vera Mackie and Ulrike Wöhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 8.

  41. 41.

    Mathias, “Female Labour,” 105.

  42. 42.

    Regine Mathias, “The Nation at Work: Gendered Working Patterns in the Tashō and Shōwa Periods,” in Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan, eds. Andrea Germer, Vera Mackie and Ulrike Wöhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 146.

  43. 43.

    Mathias, “The Nation at Work,” 147.

  44. 44.

    Sone, “Japanese Coal Mining,” 57.

  45. 45.

    Sachiko Sone, “The Reversible World of Japanese Coalmining Women,” The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 18, no. 2 (2007): 212.

  46. 46.

    Allen, “Undermining the Occupation.”

  47. 47.

    Yoshida and Miyauchi, “Invisible Labour,” 137.

  48. 48.

    Burton, Coal-Mining Women in Japan, 109.

  49. 49.

    Matthew Allen, “Undermining the Occupation: Women Coalminers in 1940s Japan,” PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 7, no. 2 (July 2010): 4.

  50. 50.

    Burton, Coal-Mining Women in Japan, 105–6.

  51. 51.

    Mae Michiko, “The Resistance of Kanno Sugako and Kaneko Fumiko,” trans. Leonie Stickland, in Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan, eds. Andrea Germer, Vera Mackie and Ulrike Wöhr (New York: Routledge, 2014), 74–5.

  52. 52.

    Michiko, “Resistance,” 75.

  53. 53.

    Hane, Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcastes, 79.

  54. 54.

    Sone, “Japanese Coal Mining,” 64.

  55. 55.

    Burton, Japanese Coal-Mining Women, 111.

  56. 56.

    Mathias, “The Nation at Work,” 144.

  57. 57.

    Smith, “Sorting Coal and Pickling Cabbage,” 403.

  58. 58.

    Mathias, “The Nation at Work,” 143.

  59. 59.

    Christopher Gerteis, Gender Struggles: Wage-Earning Women and Male-Dominated Unions in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 126.

  60. 60.

    Allen, “Undermining the Occupation,” 6.

  61. 61.

    Mercier and Gier, introduction to Mining Women, 5.

  62. 62.

    Mercier and Gier, introduction to Mining Women, 5.

  63. 63.

    Not all personal stories shared by female miners featured in this chapter have been acquired from primary sources due to the unavailability of certain publications in English.

  64. 64.

    Lahiri-Dutt and Macintyre, introduction to Women Miners in Developing Countries, 7.

  65. 65.

    Echoes from the Miike Mine, directed by Hiroko Kumagai (2005; Omuta, Fukuoka: SIGLO, Ltd., 2008). DVD.

  66. 66.

    Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).

  67. 67.

    Allen, “Undermining the Occupation,” 11.

  68. 68.

    Gill Burke, “Women Miners: Here and There, Now and Then,” in Women Miners in Developing Countries: Pit Women and Others, eds. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Martha Macintyre (New York: Routledge, 2006), 46–7.

  69. 69.

    Burton, Coal-Mining Women in Japan, 99.

  70. 70.

    Allen, Undermining the Japanese Miracle.

  71. 71.

    Allen, “Undermining the Occupation,” 10.

  72. 72.

    Burton, Coal-Mining Women in Japan, 109. Do note that not all women chose this route as very often; two incomes (husband and wife team) were needed to support a family.

  73. 73.

    Sakubei Yamamoto, “Mukashi no Yama no Onna #14 (Tanju no Seikatsu; Fufu no Shokuji) [Women at Coal Pits (Yama) in the Old Days #17 (Life in Row Houses; Meals of a Husband and Wife)] 1958–1963,” trans. Nathan Johndro, accessed October 24, 2018, http://www.y-sakubei.com/world_appl_e/gallery.html?mode=view&pnum=143&cat=0

  74. 74.

    Yoshida and Miyauchi, “Invisible Labour,” 142.

  75. 75.

    Hane, Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcastes, 233.

  76. 76.

    Sone, “Coal Mining Women Speak Out,” 160.

  77. 77.

    Sakubei Yamamoto, “Mukashi Yama no Onna #12 (Kantera o Sagete Nyuko Suru Boshi) [Women at Coal Pits (Yama) in the Old Days #12 (Mother and Children Entering the Pit with Lamps in Hands)] 1958–1963,” trans. Nathan Johndro, accessed October 24, 2018, http://www.y-sakubei.com/world_appl_e/gallery.html?mode=view&pnum=134&cat=0

  78. 78.

    Sakubei Yamamoto, “Meiji Chuki Asa no Kofu [Miners Having Breakfast in the Mid-Meiji Era (1868–1912)] October 1967,” trans. Nathan Johndro, accessed October 24, 2018, http://www.y-sakubei.com/world_appl_e/gallery.html?mode=view&pnum=1&cat=11

  79. 79.

    Sone, “Coal Mining Women Speak Out,” 159.

  80. 80.

    Tatsuichi Horikiri, The Stories Clothes Tell: Voices of Working-Class Japan, ed. and trans. Rieko Wagoner (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 61.

  81. 81.

    Sakubei Yamamoto, “Itcho Kiriha [Single Coalface] June 1966,” trans. Nathan Johndro, accessed October 24, 2018, http://www.y-sakubei.com/world_appl_e/gallery.html?mode=view&pnum=13&cat=13

  82. 82.

    Sakubei Yamamoto, “Meiji, Taisho, Showa Ki-kozumi (Fufu de no Sagyo) [Wooden Cribbing in the Meiji (1868–1912), Taisho (1912–1926), and Showa (1926–1989) Eras (Work by a Husband and Wife)] 1964–1967,” trans. Nathan Johndro, accessed October 24, 2018, http://www.y-sakubei.com/world_appl_e/gallery.html?mode=view&pnum=11&cat=5

  83. 83.

    Yoshida and Miyauchi, “Invisible Labour,” 140.

  84. 84.

    Sakubei Yamamoto, “Mukashi Yama no Onna #17: Makitate de Kujibiki (Hako-tori no Kujibiki; Onna no Kamigata) [Women at Coal Pits in the Old Days #17: Lottery Draw at the Landing (Lottery Draw for Empty Mine Cars; Women’s Hair Style)] 1958–1963,” trans. Nathan Johndro, accessed October 24, 2018, http://www.y-sakubei.com/world_appl_e/gallery.html?mode=view&pnum=80&cat=0

  85. 85.

    Sakubei Yamamoto, “Mukashi no Yamabito (Yufu no Kiridashi) [People at Coal Pits (Yama) in the Old Days (Brave Woman Miner Cutting Coal Alone)] 1964–1967,” trans. Nathan Johndro, accessed October 24, 2018, http://www.y-sakubei.com/world_appl_e/gallery.html?mode=view&pnum=5&cat=13

  86. 86.

    Refer to Kawaradake kara Mioroseba – Tankou Bushi no Genryu [Looking Down from Kawaradake Mountain – The Origin of the Coal-mine Songs] for examples of these mining songs.

  87. 87.

    Yoshida and Miyauchi, “Invisible Labour,” 141.

  88. 88.

    Hane, Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcastes, 235.

  89. 89.

    Sone, “Reversible World,” 219.

  90. 90.

    Refer, for example, to discussions by scholars (e.g. Takashi Miyamoto, Dhiraj Kumar Nite, and Chelsea Szendi Schieder) regarding the public archive in Japan and how the Internet and technology have aided activists and historical actors to share their narratives and to raise awareness.

  91. 91.

    Account of personal life on Ikeshima Island by Rie Miyahara in Hisaki Kurosawa, Ikeshima Zenkei Ritoh no <Ikuukan> [A Complete View of Ikeshima: The “Strange” Atmosphere of the Remote Island], ed. Isamu Sekiguchi (Tokyo: Masataka Shiomi, Sansai Books, 2017), 140–143.

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  1. Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore, Singapore

    Tai Wei Lim & Yiru Lim

  2. Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Naoko Shimazaki

  3. Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yoshihisa Godo

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Lim, T.W., Shimazaki, N., Godo, Y., Lim, Y. (2019). The World of the Female Miner in Japan: Sites of Compliance and Resistance. In: Coal Mining Communities and Gentrification in Japan. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7220-9_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7219-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7220-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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