Book

Coeds ruining the nation : women, education, and social change in postwar Japanese media

Bullock, Julia C., author

Overview

\"In the late 1800s, Japan introduced a new, sex-segregated educational system. Boys would be prepared to enter a rapidly modernizing public sphere, while girls trained to become \"good wives and wise mothers\" who would contribute to the nation by supporting their husbands and nurturing the next generation of imperial subjects. When this system was replaced by a coeducational model during the American Occupation following World War II, adults raised with gender-specific standards were afraid coeducation would cause \"moral problems\"--even societal collapse. By contrast, young people generally greeted coeducation with greater composure. This is the first book in English to explore the arguments for and against coeducation as presented in newspaper and magazine articles, cartoons, student-authored school newsletters, and roundtable discussions published in the Japanese press as these reforms were being implemented. It complicates the notion of the postwar years as a moment of rupture, highlighting prewar experiments with coeducation that belied objections that the practice was a foreign imposition and therefore \"unnatural\" for Japanese culture. It also illustrates a remarkable degree of continuity between prewar and postwar models of femininity, arguing that Occupation-era guarantees of equal educational opportunity were ultimately repurposed toward a gendered division of labor that underwrote the postwar project of economic recovery\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Subject: Coeducation Japan History 20th century. / Coeducation Press coverage Japan. / Coeducation Japan Public opinion. / Women Japan Social conditions 20th century. / Japan Social conditions 1945-
• ISBN: 9780472074174, 9780472054176

Item info:

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
LB3067.J3 B85 2019	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE