EADS Reading Session—“Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire: Fragmenting History” (Nobuko Yamasaki, 2023)

The East Asian/Asian Diaspora Studies Working Group (EADS) invites you to attend a discussion of Nobuko Yamasaki’s book Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire: Fragmenting History (Routledge, 2023).

Additionally, EADS encourages everyone to attend an online talk by the author, Nobuko Yamasaki, on Monday, November 4, organized by the Modern Japan History Association.

About the book:

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Analyzing materials from literature and film, this book considers the fates of women who did not or could not buy into the Japanese imperial ideology of "good wives, wise mothers" in support of male empire-building. Although many feminist critics have articulated women’s active roles as dutiful collaborators for the Japanese empire, male-dominated narratives of empire-building have been largely supported and rectified. In contrast, the roles of marginalized women, such as sex workers, women entertainers, hostesses, and hibakusha have rarely been analyzed.

This book addresses this intellectual lacuna by closely examining memories, (semi-)autobiographical stories, and newspaper articles, grounded or inspired by lived experiences not only in Japan, but also in Shanghai, Manchukuo, colonial Korea, and the Pacific. Chapters further explore the voices of diasporic Korean women (Zainichi Korean women born in Japan, as well as Korean American women born in Korea) whose lives were impacted, intervening in ethnocentric narratives that were at the heart of the Japanese empire.