The Development of Women’s History in Japan

Abstract

Research on women’s history really began in Japan during the period 1945 through the early 1960s, although a few eminent researchers such as Takamure Itsue were at work prior to that time. The main achievements of this period were two general histories of women. Inoue Kiyoshi, a historian of modern Japan, published his book on women’s history in Japan in 1948; in it he described the history of women since ancient times from a perspective of women’s liberation based on class struggle.¹ In the preface he pointed to the absence of women from almost all the published accounts of Japanese history and remarked that the few existing books on women’s history had been written from a male perspective that took women’s subordination for granted. His own declared purpose in writing women’s history was to show how women were to be liberated from their subjection to men, which had been structured by the emperor system. This book greatly influenced a large number of women who had had experience with ideas of democratic reform, such as the demand for women’s suffrage, and who longed for their own emancipation.