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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9* black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and teaming 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 UMI' DISMEMBERED REMEMBRANCE: FEMALE ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE CONSTRUCTION AND MARKETING OF JAPANESE MODERN IDENTITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University % C hristiènne L. Hinz, B.A., B.A. The Ohio State University 2001 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor James Bartholomew, Adviser Professor Mansel Blackford C_J Adviser Professor Philip Brown Department of History UMI Number: 3022499 UMI' UMI Microform 3022499 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and teaming Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 Copyright by Christiènne L. Mnz 2001 ABSTRACT This work examines female entrepreneurship in Japan from approximately 1870 to the present. The methods that I have employed include statistical analyses of the census, a large-scale, cross­ industrial surv^, analysis of autobiographical and biographical texts, oral histories, intensive interviews, and participant observation. 1 have concluded that entrepreneurship among Japanese women emerged concurrently with the commercialization of the Japanese economy of the 17th century; furthermore, entrepreneurship among Japanese women still plays an important role in the contemporary Japanese economy and culture. However, entrepreneurship among Japanese women was strongly impacted by the evolution of modem industrial capitalism. Japan's 19*^ century 'modernization* required a socio cultural revolution, driven by elites, which by the postwar period, had successfully and severely circumscribed the normative roles that women were allowed to play in the “modem* economy and society. To the extent that the new, elite, universal gender norm was absorbed by the Japanese middle class of ii the postwar period, entrepreneurship among women vanished, and would not return until women who had adopted such norms as their own reached post menopausal age, when they reappeared in the mid- 1980s and demand access to the male-gendered realm of the modem business system. However, the elite construct was inapplicable to the realities of working class women, and to middle class women who had married into the working class. Among these women, the pre-modem gender norm survived, as did many elements of the pre-modem business ^stem in which a women’s economic agenqr was both normal and normative. Such women have either rejected the elite norm, or employ various methods to erase or minimize their norm-aberrant economic behaviour. Ultimately, the existence of premodem business structures in which women are fully integrated as owners, decision-makers, and economic agents is of vital importance to Japanese constructions of an authentic, •traditional” Japanese Self. Importantly, the erasure and invisibility of Japanese women entrepreneurs has also been part and parcel of the construction of modem Japan’s national identity. ui This work is dedicated to Mother who paved the way for me to begin, and to Phillip and Nathaniel who paved the way for me to finish. IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The research for this project was supported by the generous financial support of the Pulbright Foundation, the Bradley R. Kastan Fellowship Foundation, the Elizabeth Gee Fellowship Foundation, the CIC Minority Doctoral Fellowship Foundation, the Ohio State University Department of History, and by the Fukuoka University Faculty of Commerce. The completion of a project of this magnitude would not have been possible without the intellectual support and insight of people fàr too numerous to list. However, it is imperative that I mention: Professor Richard Moore who introduced me to Japan, and who has remained my staunch supporter and fiiend, my advisor, James Bartholomew for inviting me to graduate school so many years ago, although I am not yet certain that it was as fine of an idea as his faith and patience seems to indicate. 1 wish to thank Professor Richard Torrance who was unstinting in the use of his time to teach another department’s graduate student to read Japanese documents. I wish to thank Professor Mansel Blackford for a rare and much cherished example of humane graduate training. I wish to thank Professor Randy Roth for introducing me to quantitative analysis, and for providing such a wonderful example of teaching, learning, ethics, and values for life, as well as for life in the Academy. Last, but not least, I wish to thank Professor Gail L. Bernstein who provided desperately needed feedback on various drafts of chapters of this dissertation. We will, I hope, meet face to face sometime soon. It is also important that I thank those individuals in Fukuoka who made this project possible. First of all, I must thank Professor Nakagawa Seishi for sponsoring my research at the Fukuoka University’s Faculty of Commerce, for undertaking many thankless, bureaucratic tasks on my behalf, for taking good care of my material and emotional well-being while I resided in Fukuoka, and for teaching me many interesting vocabularies that 1 otherwise would have not been able to learn. I also must thank my seven research assistants, Ms. Matsuda Junko, Ms. Matsumoto Yuka, Ms. Nao Fujisaki, Mr. Utsumi Ken, Ms. Fukutomi Yuko, Ms. Nakayama Fumi, and Ms. Takahashi Kahori, whose nearly 800 (wo)man hours of labour resulted in the survey portion of this research project. Most importantly, I must thank the hundreds of Japanese informants who took the time to answer a rumpled, awkwardly phrased questionnaire mailed to them by a foreign researcher of whom they had vi never heard. Furthermore, I must thank the forty informants who agreed to allow a total stranger into their lives to share their private shames, and their erased, ignored, or forgotten triumphs. More than contributing to a body of academic scholarship, their life stories have been indelibly printed in my heart. They remind me every day of the infinite nature of possibility. vu VITA 1987-88: Exchange Student, International Christian University, Tolgro, Japan; 1989: B.A. with University Honours, Japanese, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio; 1989: B.A. East Asian International Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio; 1991-92: Stanford University’s Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, Yokohama, Japan; 1994: Ph.D. candidacy requirements completed, Japanese History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1993 -2000: Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University 2000 -2001: Visiting Lecturer, University of Notre Dame du Lac PUBLICATIONS Abstract:: Yuko Ogasawara. Office Ladies and Salaried Merit in The Journal o f Women*sStudœs. Leila Rupp, et. al., eds. Review: "Reconcilable Differences? United States-Japan Economic Conflict,* in Business Library Retriew, David O. Whitten and Bess E. Whitten, eds. Vol. 19 No. 2 (1994), pp. 87-90. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chmoter Fmg Abstract.................................................................................................ii Dedication ............................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements .............................................................................. v V ita....................................................................................................... viii Table of Contents ............................................................................... ix List of Figures ...................................................................................... xiii List of Tables ....................................................................................... xiv Prologue: The Bliudness of Knowing ..................................... 1 Aa lBti94içti9a......................................................................? I. First Person Singular .......................................................7 II. A Brief Historiographical and Methodological Commentary ....................................................................