Imai Utako and Her Contemporaries: A Survey into Intellectual Allegiance in the Early Feminist Movement in Late Meiji Japan, ca. 1900-1910
Date
2017
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Haverford College. Department of History
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Thesis
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
The current paper explores the life, writings, and the social milieu of Imai Utako 今井歌子 (1877-1968), a friend of the Heiminsha, editor of Nijū Seki no Fujin, and the leader of the first three petitions for women’s right to political association during 1904-8. Frequently neglected or mistakenly conflated with other Heiminsha members, Imai Utako during her active years was, in fact, a complex amalgam of competing ideas of her era: she is a feminist, pro-militarist, statist, sympathetic to socialist causes, yet unapologetic for her defense of Japan aristocracies. Particularly, the current paper not only unearths Imai Utako’s ideas and achievements but also intends to extrapolate her encounters to the milieu of her contemporary late Meiji intellectuals. By presenting and accounting for her intellectual allegiance in the formative age of modern Japanese intellectual community, the current paper intends to highlight her seemly-conflicting intellectual allegiance as an example of a norm rather than an exception amongst Japanese intellectuals in last decade of the Meiji era.