Coal-Mining Women in Japan: Heavy Burdens by W. Donald Burton (review)

Coal-Mining Women in Japan: Heavy Burdens by W. Donald Burton is a compilation of interviews and detailed accounts of women miners' lives that have been documented in the published works of several Japanese authors, namely Hi o Unda Haha-tachi (Mothers Who Spawned the Fires) by Yasuko Idegawa, and Makkura: Jokōfu kara no Kikigaki (Pitch Black: Interviews with Women Miners) by Kazue Morisaki.

The book details the difficult conditions experienced by women working in several coal mines located in Fukuoka prefecture in southern Japan between the beginning of the Meiji era in 1868 and the early years of industrialization in the 1930s. Burton sets the tone from the outset in saying that the book is "a story about the exploitation of human labor," and that it "aims to pay tribute both to the women who worked underground" and also to the two Japanese authors Idegawa and Morisaki "who became recognized scholars on the exploitation of women in the Japanese workforce" (1).

While the volume is among many that have used the two Japanese authors' works extensively, it nonetheless presents a comprehensive, well-organized, and detailed account in English that brings to life the experiences of an understudied sector of the population in Japan whose significant labor contributions would otherwise be ignored, and the harsh conditions they encountered misunderstood. By giving voice to these mine workers, the book becomes an important addition to diverse bodies of literature on labor, modernization, Japan, and East Asia.

Women's participation in Japan's labor force has historically been rather high, in excess of 70 percent of the total national workforce. While many works have documented women's participation in the agricultural sector of the economy since the Meiji period, little is known about the everyday challenges and difficulties encountered by women working in the mining industry, despite the increasing availability of sophisticated machinery and mining methods.

The themes and discussions are organized thoughtfully. The book begins with an overview in the introduction of the key issues to be elaborated in subsequent chapters. It explains that the coal-mining industry was managed by labor gangs that "notoriously underpaid" miners (4), "arbitrarily cut" wages (4), and made life for the miners "an unrelenting struggle" (6). In addition to highlighting the grouping by Idegawa and Morisaki of women miners from "ordinary" backgrounds and those who were "outcasts" known as the burakumin (8), the chapter also distinguishes the tasks performed by women in extracting coal from the seam—such as hewing, digging, and hauling—from general underground work. These distinctions serve to draw the reader's attention to the possible underreporting of the number of female miners, and also to the degree of difficulty in the women's work.

A meaningful account of the broader political, economic, and sociocultural backgrounds is clearly laid out in the next chapter, in which the author explains the gender disparity in the coal-mining industry, the age and marital profiles of female miners, and the racial and social discriminations that pervaded the industry during the period of the study.

Burton devotes the next two chapters to the most important topics in the book: the types of work, wages, and working conditions of the women miners. He pays close attention to how miners were forced by gang bosses to work in man-and-wife teams for a "piece-rate family pay package" (29), which at times involved having their children help without additional remuneration. Many women miners were said to work half-naked in hot, narrow underground tunnels, having to crawl on all fours while hauling immensely heavy baskets of coal from underground despite limited lighting. Other heart-wrenching accounts include accidents due to gas fires and explosions, and the lack of welfare systems to provide adequate medical care and compensation to women who were injured or seriously ill.

The dark and gloomy world of women miners above ground is the subject of the next chapter. It...