Gambling with Virtue: Japanese Women and the Search for Self in a Changing Nation

Notes

241 Notes Introduction 1. I assume that self or personhood denotes self-awareness emerging from interaction with the world and with other people. Built through social, cultural, historical, and political interplay, definitions of self or personhood vary between groups and over time as to the boundaries and relations that are established between self-awareness and other-awareness or between self and the world (Lebra 1992). Thus, self or personhood must be defined “ethnographically”—through a detailed study and description of a group of people. Throughout this book, gender implies a cultural construction built through history and contemporary practices, both personal and political. Gender is learned and is maintained or changed by everyday performances (Butler 1990). 2. The nation–state consists not only of the state, a political entity with institutions , bureaucracies, and policies, but also a nation, an “imagined political community ” (Anderson 1991, 5–6) that has been persuaded to share an “invented tradition” of common rituals, values, norms of behavior, ideas of the past, language, and ethnic group membership (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983, 1). Part I: Glimpses into the ’70s: Reworking Traditions 1. This quote is from the Mainichi Newspaper, October 1, 1969 (K. Hara 1995, 104). By 1994, however, a law was implemented that made courses in home economics mandatory for both boys and girls (Kameda 1995, 112). 2. Harootunian suggests that the Japanese took on America’s image of Japan as an economic miracle to legitimize the status quo (1993, 215). 3. Wages rose an average of 4.1 percent per year from 1955–1965; 7.8 percent per year in 1965–1975; and 6.4 percent in 1970–1975; but they plateaued at just over 1 percent growth from 1975–1983 (Kurokawa 1989, 145). 4. In 1960 only 55.9 percent of girls were going on to high school and 5.5 percent to higher education, but by 1970, 82.7 percent matriculated to high school and 17.7 percent beyond that. In 1960, 3 percent of girls matriculated to junior college and 2.5 percent to university, but ten years later these numbers were 11.2 percent and 242 Notes to Pages 16–31 6.5 percent respectively (Kameda 1995, 111; Fujimura-Fanselow 1995, 127). A high percentage of women went to junior colleges rather than four-year universities because parents put resources into sons, and women graduates of universities had trouble finding jobs. For the whole country, in 1970, 59.9 percent of women university graduates got jobs (compared to 82.8 percent of men). By 1980 proportions of graduates with jobs had risen to 65.7 percent for women, 78.5 percent for men; and by 1991 to 81.1 percent for women, 81.8 percent for men (Bando 1992, 31). 5. The average number of children born to women between 15 and 49 years of age was 4.27 in 1940 (Keizai Kikakuchò 1995, 94). The fertility rate fell sharply in 1965 when the average was 2.14. In 1973, it was still 2.14, but dipped in 1977 to 1.8 (Keizai Kikakuchò 1992, 5). In 1970 the average age at first marriage for women was 24.2 (and for men 26.9) (Bando 1992, 4, 5). The average age of women at the birth of the first child was 25.6 in 1970. 6. Women over 15 made up 49.9 percent of the workforce by 1970, though this dipped to 45.7 percent in 1975 (Bando 1992, 43). 7. Japan has a relatively high abortion rate because abortion is used for birth control purposes. In 1975, the average number of abortions per 100 women of childbearing age was about 22. For women aged 30–34 and 35–39 the rates were 95 and 80 respectively in 1955; these decreased to 18 and 16 in 1996 (Kòseishò 1998, 65). Abortion is legal, but not paid for by health insurance. Chapter 1: Institutional Selves: Women Teachers 1. I have composed this chapter from observations, experiences, and conversations gathered during my tenure at a regional girl’s public (prefectural) high school in 1971–1973. 2. The rate for women going on to four-year universities was quite low but steadily increasing in the regional areas of Japan (outside the large city areas of Tokyo and Osaka) at this time. In 1972 about 5 percent of women (12 percent of men) were matriculating to university from the regions, and by 1976, 8 percent of women (23 percent of men) were doing so...