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Conclusion T he writer Nogami Yaeko (1885–1985) wrote the passage in this epigraph in her short essay for Japanese Women. Nogami toured the world between 1938 and 1939. She made the trip at a critical time in history , with China and Japan fighting a war and the world lurching into the chaos of World War II. Her trip ranged through Asia, Egypt, and southern and northern Europe and included evacuating from Europe to America. Nogami’s experiences of kindly shared fellowship with the men and women she met convinced her that “what I deemed good was also upheld by them, and what is bad in my opinion was also disapproved by them.” She was one of a number of feminists worldwide in the first half of the twentieth century who believed that the goal of the feminist movement was to achieve one just and humanitarian society. Nogami knew well that the sociopolitical and cultural conditions of her era hindered this goal, yet she refused to be cowed, saying, “Why not change the whole desert of the human world into a verdant oasis, no matter how long it may take?”2 Nogami’s words represent the determination of the women in this study to overcome the contradictions and tensions in feminism that emerged in the period up to 1941. They struggled to resolve the tension between the desire for universal equality through shared values and the desire to protect the rich specificity of national cultures, and the tension between internationalism and the sometimes severe limitations of our location in time and place. These tensions are especially apparent where modern ideas about equality clash directly with nationalism and deep-seated tradition. Parallels with Mankind is divided by difference in race, climate, customs, manners, and political and social systems, but humanity is essentially one in its fundamental needs, desires and aspirations. . . . What is so badly needed by us today is to place our hope in the future and never get disheartened by the endless dark road that might stretch before us. All that matters is to go on. Nogami Yaeko,1 “Reminiscences of My Trip Abroad” 128 Conclusion twenty-first-century struggles around the world and in Japan spring readily to mind, making Japan’s feminism and its interactive exchange of ideas with Western counterparts between 1871 and 1941 a useful paradigm worthy of continued study and reflection. Undoubtedly most of the middle-class Japanese women in this book, like their Western counterparts before them, failed to address their nation’s colonialism or escape from the rhetoric of war cooperation. But to achieve a properly nuanced study of feminism, it is necessary to take a view that is international and takes full account of the national cultural and political conditions of the time. It is fair to say that Japanese women created a unique Japanese style of feminism that utilized the specific contradictions in Japan’s modernization. In this book, I have examined the development of feminist consciousness among Japanese urban middle-class women, which was largely forged through contacts with American women reformers, by providing analytical and historical overviews and three case studies: the peace, birth control, and suffrage movements. As I have shown in Chapter 1, beginning in the late nineteenth century Japan aggressively implemented Westernization policies and hoped to gain swift recognition as a modern, “civilized” nation on the model of the Western powers, including Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United Sates. However, despite nominal acceptance that the social status of women was an indication of the degree of the civilization of nations , the women of both the Western powers and Japan occupied secondary positions in society. Restricted from fully participating in society, both Western and Japanese women argued strongly for equality using the premise that equality between the sexes was a prerequisite for civilization. Western women had made progress and were forming women’s networks across national borders to expand the range of the movement worldwide. Japanese women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were more rigidly situated as males’ dependents by law and custom, making it difficult for them to promote a strong and flourishing women’s rights movement. Nevertheless, in the early twentieth century, Japanese middle-class feminists began a full-scale feminist movement in Japan. In Chapter 2, I have offered a broad historical overview of the international feminist movement that catalyzed the development of a Japanese feminist movement up to 1930. For example, in the 1928 Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference...

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