Sex in Japan's Globalization, 1870–1930:
Prostitutes, Emigration and Nation-Building
Bill Mihalopoulos
Perspectives in Economic and Social History
978 1 84893 201 2: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 84893 202 9
Based on archival research undertaken in Japan and Britain, Mihalopoulos offers a new perspective on the relations between gender hierarchies and the political economy in a newly modernized Japan. The industrialization of Japan in the late nineteenth century coincided with attempts to establish new trade links abroad. The peasant class were sent overseas as ‘free labourers’ in a state-sponsored programme that also sought to maintain traditional codes of behaviour and morally acceptable forms of work. This study examines the particular impact of these restrictions on Japanese prostitutes abroad and reveals how the freedom offered to the poor by the state was limited and highly selective.
Sample pages
Readership
History of Japan, Gender Studies and Economic and Political History
Contents
Introduction: In the Beginning was the Prostitute
1 Another Japan: Sex and Women’s Work
2 Creating the Archive: The Power of the Pen
3 Sexuality and Class: Prostitution and the Japanese Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
4 Sex as Progress: Fukuzawa Yukichi on Trade and Overseas Prostitution
5 Disciplining Globalizing: The Colonial Singapore Example
Conclusion: Globalization and the Poor
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