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Songs as Weapons: The Culture and History of Komori (Nursemaids) in Modern Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Mariko Asano Tamanoi
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Komori is a generic term that consists of a noun, ko (a child), and a verb, moru (to protect or to take care of); Japanese use it to refer to any person, male or female, old or young, who takes care of children. This article will focus on the young girls, hired by families in need of child care in the so-called modern Imperial period (1868–1945), who were called komori. Like their European counterparts, nursemaids and nannies, komori began to appear in what Michel Foucault has called the “discourse of power” in the late nineteenth century, i.e., in the formative period of the Japanese modern nation state. The komori's appearance in Japan's discourse of power corresponded to the emergence of a subculture among the komori that is the focus of my analysis in this article.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , November 1991 , pp. 793 - 817
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1991

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