Bill Mihalopoulos
London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011
ISBN-10: 1848932014
ISBN-13: 978-1848932012

www.pickeringchatto.com/nationbuilding

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 peasant women who become marked by the government as ‘voluntary criminals’ because of their work as prostitutes. Sex in Japan’s Globalization reveals how the ‘freedom’ offered to the poor by the market and the state was highly selective and limited. It will be an invaluable tool for those studying Japanese history, politics and economics as well as gender studies and anthropology.

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