Japanese Feminists After Versailles: Between the State and the Ethnic Nation

One of the striking effects of the end of WWI and the Paris Peace Conference on Japanese society was the renewed impetus it gave to women's rights discourses and feminist organizing in the 1920s. These events spurred a new consciousness and assertive attitude of women who began to frame themselves as full members of the nation-state. They also fuelled developments in cultural feminist theories that called for an ethnic awakening to womanhood. In this article, I introduce various feminist stances towards the Japanese state, the family, and by extension the ethno-cultural nation at the end of World War I and argue that these help explain Japanese feminists' varied reactions towards the League of Nations and eventually towards Japan's withdrawal from the international system founded in Versailles.