Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams

Karen Kelsky

Published by Duke University Press 2001

Women on the Verge

Japanese Women, Western Dreams

Karen Kelsky
Edited by: Rey Chow , Harry Harootunian and Masao Miyoshi

In the series Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383277

Overview
Contents

About this book

Explores issues of gender, race and national identity in Japan, by taking up for critical analysis an emergent national trend, in which some urban Japanese women turn to the West--through study abroad, work abroad, and romance with Westerners-- in order

Author / Editor information

Karen Kelsky is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon.

Reviews

“Taking cover under her more innocuous theme of the recent internationalization of Japanese women’s lives and careers, Karen Kelsky bluntly asks one of the great taboo questions in Japanese studies: why do so many Japanese women, if given the chance, prefer white husbands over those of their own ethnicity? What are the historical and psychological reasons for a powerful attraction enshrined in popular culture since Madame Butterfly but until now never critically examined, certainly not from a modern feminist perspective? Kelsky’s provocative answers to these questions make her Women on the Verge the first study we have of Japan’s eroticization of the West, in a world already so full of books that would tell us how the West has eroticized Japan.”—John Whittier Treat, Yale University

“Kelsky insightfully treats desire as a complicated and contradictory complex, something inspired as much by pragmatic as erotic concerns. The narratives she offers are rich and impressive and her skills as a fieldworker as well as command of the ethnographic scene in Japan are striking. This is a compelling, engaging, and important work.”—Anne Allison, author of Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Note on Japanese Names and Terms Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Promised Land: A Genealogy of Female Internationalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
2. Internationalism as Resistance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
3. Capital and the Fetish of the White Man Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
4. (Re)Flexibility in Inflexible Places Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
Conclusion: Strange Bedfellows Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 309
Illustrations
- Other: 23 b&w photos, 9 figures

eBook

Published: November 21, 2001
ISBN: 9780822383277