| Lecturer | Dr. Yukari Takai (Research Associate, York Centre for Asian Research, York University /Visiting Research Fellow, International Research Center for Japanese Studies) |
|---|---|
| Date | 25 May 2023, 17:30-19:00 |
| Venue | Room 921, 9F Central Library , Sophia University Yotsuya Campus *Visitors from outside the university are kindly asked to register at the library entrance. |
| No registration necessary, In-person only | |
| Abstract: | Japanese immigrant women have long been portrayed as a lynchpin for the building of the family-centred, community-oriented Japanese immigrant society. My research proposes a new and refreshing way to understand the social and gendered world that Japanese immigrant women and men constructed in Hawaiʻi and the broader space in the Japanese Transpacific world. In this presentation, I examine the hitherto understudied practices surrounding marriage and divorce, in particular, temporary marriage, wife sale and marriage brokerage among Japanese women and men in Hawaiʻi I suggest that marriage and gender relations of issei men and women were far more complex and, at times, more disruptive than previously understood. I highlight the enduring links and shifting traditions that shaped gendered lives of working class women and men in one of the key locations in the Japanese transpacific. Ultimately, I reflect on the ways in which marriage, money and migration became a locus where immigrant women and men assumed greater agency over their lives by exploiting or defying the very links between marriage and migration that nation-states, Japanese and American, sanctioned and privileged. |
| Language | English |
