This volume is an engrossing collection of autobiographical essays by thirty-one women who earned PhDs in the humanities and social sciences between 1950 and 1980 at North American universities. Most went on to have careers conducting research and teaching at university; others became curators, librarians, or translators. Four are no longer with us (Ellen P. Conant, Joyce Chapman Lebra, Mae Smethurst, and Barbara Sato). To the best of my knowledge, none of the contributors has been honored with a festschrift, so this collection serves to commemorate their many lasting achievements. The whole has been heroically compiled by Alisa Freedman. In a lucid introductory chapter, she sets out the raisons d’être of the collection and connects individuals’ experiences with a potted history of the growth of the study of Japan in the post-World War II period. A longer version of that history – 40 pages including notes – forms the last chapter of the volume. There is also a 66-page bibliography, a full index, and a list of discussion questions for classroom and book group use. The volume is nothing if not thoroughgoing.
At the online book launch on December 6, 2023, Phyllis I. Lyons described Japan as the “searing event of our lives.” Those who were born in Japan may feel differently, but Lyons’ sense that “chance stepped in” (p. 132) serves well as the leitmotif of all contributors’ essays. Many begin as English majors until serendipity – a chance Occupation posting to Tokyo, a boyfriend's suggestion, a judo class, an inspiring professor – sparks their decision to study Japanese art, history, literature, or sociology at graduate level instead. Few think of themselves as choosing a career by continuing their studies, sensing that it is wrong, or at least immodest, for a woman to take herself so seriously, but one stroke of luck leads to another – or so they claim, despite the prodigious capacity for hard slog that is surely the principal reason for their success – and by “following where those bits of serendipity led” (Patricia G. Steinhoff, p. 198), they “ended up becoming a university professor” (Sonja Arntzen, p. 256).
Perhaps most of us could say the same. And yet the difficulties they face and successfully overcome are immense. In the 1950s, when they study at Tokyo University, there are no women's bathrooms on the campus and they have to take their chances in the men's rooms. In the 1970s, when they venture to distant temples researching women and men engaged in etoki, “the telling of pictures,” the Japan Travel Bureau and other agencies refuse to handle reservations for women travelling alone. If things are difficult in Japan, they are no easier in North America. They propose writing a PhD dissertation on Hōjō Masako (1156–1225), but their advisor is “furious.” If they really want to pursue women's history, which is nothing but a fad, they'd better go someplace else. They express milk, but their baby is not interested in the bottle, and they must rush back from their PhD defense to make their daughter's breastfeeding time. They arrive at the gallery to work on an exhibition they are cocurating and are greeted “I think this is the first time I have seen you not pregnant!” They are groped, raped, and stalked. Somehow, they endure.
On their years in Japan, contributors bear grateful testimony to the commitment shown by many elite Japanese male scholars to training non-Japanese women. As Steinhoff observes, “we were treated as a non-gendered category and enjoyed many otherwise male privileges” (p. 191). Examples include Kristina Kade Troost's account of what she learned from Nagahara Keiji's seminar in medieval documents at Hitotsubashi University: “to view…research materials as more than collections of factoids…and to see the question you were not asking” (p. 405); Uchikawa Yoshimi's invitation to Barbara Sato to join the PhD program at Tokyo University (p. 433); and the seminars created by Kaneko Kinjirō at Tōkai University for Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen (pp. 462–464). Scholars also form lifelong bonds with their host families and roommates; with the tutors their professors assign to help them read texts, shop for books, understand the discipline's genealogies; and with friends. Helen Hardacre's indebtedness to her “friend in the field” is typical: Suemoto Yōko helps gather and analyze materials, puts her up during sabbatical visits, and rescues her from “misunderstandings of both texts and human interactions countless times” (pp. 427–428).
There is the occasional discordant note as slights are repaid, and unjust treatment called out. Overwhelmingly that anger is reserved for the institutional and personal misogyny that contributors experience in North America – the tenured faculty makeup that had not changed in the twenty-some years since the author retired, for example (p. 83). For the most part, however, the essays are remarkably free of rancor. I confess that at times I wanted the authors to be a little less accommodating. And yet, of course, that is one major lesson living in Japan teaches: don't be disagreeable. One after another, contributors look back and realize how fortunate they have been and are thankful (pp. 127, 152, 198, 287, 338, 358, 428).
This is a nourishing collection, full of embarrassing errors owned up to, debts generously acknowledged, and advice warmly offered. To single out one essay for special praise goes against the spirit of the collection, but allow me to commend to readers Mary Elizabeth Berry's courageous account of a personal and intellectual journey that culminates in the realization that “work and being can fuse.”
