H199 Changing Lives, Ch.4 "Creating a Feminine Consciousness"

Just as a parent should never favor one child over another, a book author probably should not say s/he has a favorite chapter or chapter subject. But Kishino Junko's story has always occupied a special place in my heart. I stumbled upon her autobiography without knowing anything about her but she really wrote so honestly and openly that I was captivated. And the more I read, the deeper she took me.

Obviously, Yoshitake Teruko's story was powerful too. After all, my translations and analysis of her autobiography took up two whole chapters plus part of the Introduction. I was fortunate to get to meet Ms. Yoshitake and sit down with her for a conversation. I arrived st her apartment later than I wanted to, needing to call her to get directions and then getting lost! Understandably, she was not terribly happy and, also understandably, American males were probably not among her favorite people. Yet, she managed to be kind, gracious, and respond generously to my questions. She carried her own oxygen bottle with her and sadly, by the time I sent her a copy of my completed book, she had passed away.

Yoshitake had been through a humiliating interview processd but found an ally, a mentor, who helped her. Kishino, who worked as a reporter for a financial newspaper, was not as disrepected in the interview process as Yoshitake, but she became active in the company union and suffered some harsh treatment from her employer as a result.

She also had to endure more than her fair share of discrimination in the workplace. And like Yoshitake, Kishino was also deeply affected by the Ampo protests and then she was led from those demonstrations towards the "Women's Lib" movement. Her experience was just as deep and transformative as Yoshitake's was. These two women were so similar in many respects it is almost unbelievable that their paths never crossed!

One difference in the two texts, though, is the role a certain Japanese film had on Kishino, one she wandered into a movie theatre to watch in the midst of a personal crisis. It seems as though the film changed her way of thinking and of looking at the world and her place in it. Her language in these passages is rich and evocative and it takes us very deep.

We should also consider for a moment the title of her memoir. Like Yoshitake's, it merits a little unpacking:

Onna no chihei kara miete-kita mono: Josei kisha nn Jibunshi. Or,

[女の地平から見えて来たもの: 女性記者の自分史]

Let's start from the back: she refers to her work as a jibunshi (自分史) or a "Self-History." But it is a "Self-History" of a "Female Reporter" (Josei Kisha 女性記者). Her job, her professional identity and her gender were obviously important to her overall sense of self and her identity.

It's the next part that is a little tricky:

Onna no chihei kara miete-kita mono (女の地平から見えて来たもの) or

"Things Visible from a Woman's Perspective." Perhaps more accurately, "Things that became visible..." or "came into view from...." because "Mieru" [見える] is the "potential form" (can) of "Miru," [見る] or a transitive verb "see." So, "Mieru"means one is "able to see," or something is "visible."

The biggest challenge comes with the word "Chihei" 地平 which literally means "level ground" but also extends to refer to "field of view" or "horizon." In my rendering, I took a little liberty and went with "Perspective."

So, when we put all of this together we wind up with a title that reads:

Things Visible from a Woman's Perspective: My Self-History as a Woman Reporter.

Like Yoshitake, Kishino enjoys filling in the background of the time and place in which she was an historical actor. While she covers a lot of ground in terms of what was taking place around her, she also makes some amazing, deeply personal revelations. This, to me, is what makes her narrative so moving and compelling.

She opens her text with a segment called:

Prologue: The Dream of Postwar Democracy (108-117)

She begins with a recitation of the timeline, kind of a litany.

1952 Start of the Korean War

1952 Bloody May Day

1953 the year she joined the staff of the Sangyô keizai shinbun, only 5 among 30 were women

1954 The establishment of the Self Defense Forces signalling Japan's move toward rearmament

1960 the Ampo Protests

1969 Kishino quits the newspaper and becomes an adjunct college professor;

Accepted Two Fundamental Pillars for her life:

1. Make the most of her situation as the first wave of postwar women to graduate 4-year universities and enter the workplace----> search for equality and equity;

2. Report the Truth - The War had demonstrated what happens when the press is not free to report the truth.

For Kishino these two pillars were equivalent to "The Spirit of Postwar Democracy"

She was disappointed by how Japan was not living up to its ideals, while she herself was just becoming another cog in the engine that fueled Japan's postwar high-speed economic growth.

1969 (or 1970?) She saw a film by the director Urayama Kirio, The Woman I Abandoned, in which she saw her own "disrupted self" in face of the lead female character who was deceived by a man intent on climbing the corporate ladder--even though he was a man who in college had been fully engaged in the Ampo Protests, a background which he must hide in order to be a good corporate citizen.

--She realizes Women were forfeiting a part of themselves, their gentleness or feminnity (yasashisa) much as the young waom in the film had.

1975 Kishino writes a long essay for a small journal called Atarashhi chihei (New Perspectives) which is the jumping off point for her later memoir that we are reading. In this essay, she broaches the topic of feeling that her life is permeated by a "duality," a nijûsei (二重性). She felt strongly that she was abandoning part of herself, her "womanliness" or her femininity. She now resolves that she is no longer willing to be complicit, that the time has come for her to "reposition" (tachi-naosu) herself so she no longer has to "stand" or work alongside men, always being required to do the "shit work." Now she wants to "self-consciously stand on the side of oppressed women," and from there join this resolve with the goals of postwar democratic movement which seemed to also be abandoning its own ideals.

Then, she is diagnosed with Breast Cancer which she cannot help but wonder if it might be somehow be connected with her whole decision to jump into the workplace, compete with men, and in the process unknowingly abandon that part of her which made her who she was, a woman.

She wrote about how "my cancer was the inevitable rebellion of my own body against the lifestyle I had chosen, the lifestyle that had me placing work aove above all else--just like men--and abandoning the part of me that was woman. I felt that the motif I had I had adopted for my essay had actually forged a connection to my life experiences and was therefore transformed into something real in my life." (115)

This is a powerful assertion: the act of Remembering, Reflecting, and Writing has enabled her to transform the consciouness of her fractured, disrupted self, and by forging a connection to her own very real life experiences, she is allowed to transform what she has come to understand deep inside herself into "something real," sounding as though she is talking about transforming something in the realm of her inner consciousness into "something real," something out there in the "real" world of historical events and actions.

It is up to us as readers to fully appreciate what this "something real" might be. Clearly. it is something that moves the writer beyond words, beyond recalling and reflecing on her past; but it also becomes something that must simultaneously be situated "out there" in the real world, something that can meld her ideas, which grow out of her experiences, with everything that she believes she has become in relation to that outer social world, what we think of as the world of politics, economics, labor, with the accompanying issues of fairness, equity and opportunity. All this reflecting she does for this essay motivated her to want to retrace her steps and undertake her larger autobiograpical project--the very book we are reading!--in order to to help her reclaim her historical agency.

Her next segment takes her readers back to her

Early Days at Sankei (117-131)

-- How she becomes drawn to the Labor Union Movement at the newspaper but was punished by management for her activities. This links her own personal experiences with the overall trends of postwar history as the government turned against the very unioism the Occupation had encouraged in the early days of the occupation.

--Interviewed women writers like Hirabayashi Taiko, Tsuboi Sakae, Ota Yoko

--Discovered the work of legendary leftist journalist Agnes Smedley who had journeyed to Yan'an and met Mao Zedong; Kishino aims to write a biography of Smedley in Japanese

--She knew she had developed a feminist consciousness as she experienced discrimination in the workplace

--Wrote an essay criticizing leftist proletarian writer Kobayashi Takiji who had been murdered in 1933 by police because of his womanizing and his attitude towards women. (122-123)

--Joined the Ampo Protests in 1960; becomes disillusioned when her newspaper joined with 6 others in an editorial stance against the violence of the protests

--Uses excerpts of her diaries to document her participation in the protests and how the Sankei management forced harsh terms on their workers,"transferring" key union personnel out of the home office

--Saw clearly how workers and management could never be on the same page

--Understood at the depths of her being how managment was enforcing a "regime of control" over the employees = a cynical theory of management.

She needed to find some Projects (131-134) to which she could commit herself:

1. Look deeply into the way reporters freedom to operate during Ampo was curtailed;

2. Study the treatment of youthful offenders in the courts and at youthful correction facilities;

3. Translate some of Agnes Smedley's work into Japanese, as well as translate Spanish Anti-Franco leader Constancia de la Mora's autobiography into Japanese;

4. Adding her reading of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sexa--a key feminist text--to her analysis of female youthful offenders in Japan.

Discovering a Feminine Consciousness

--1970 Her friend Komashaku Kimi encourages her to explore the Women's Lib Movement (136)

--Encounters the work of Tanaka Mitsu: she is younger, brash, not professional like herself but there is something that resonates in what she has to say

--Begins to re-examine and reasses her life in a different light - haunted by her erasure of the part of her that was woman

--Revists how she sat through The Woman I Abandoned twice in a row, unable to stem the flow of her tears; she had scuttled everything that didn't have to do with work in her life, erasing her feminity and buying into "the logic of the patriarchal order, with priority placed on work," even to the point of judging herself by male standards and looking at herself with the male gaze. (137)

--Tired of hearing the oft-repeated phrase "because she is a woman (onna naru ga yue ni)," she notes how "in an instant, a real picture of women as historically, socially and psychologically oppressed took shape in my mind."(138)

-- the meetings and conversations with other women in the Lib Movement talking about their lives, their bodies, how male-female relationships in literature are portrayed - all of this raised her consciousness and helped solidify her "real picture" of women.

--She could appreciate even more how her attraction as an adjunct professor to reading and teaching African American Literature was an outgrowth of her experience as an oppressed woman (Richard Wright's Native Son) and then Hispanic American and Japanese American literature began speaking to her, too.

--She concluded that she wanted to learn to live her life fully as a woman, at one with her body, without worrying about what parts she may have inadvertently erased.

--But then she had to deal with her bresst cancer and surgery.

--She knew that she had to "recover her own feminist consciousness" and stop living a life rooted in patriarchal conceptions that enslave women; (138-140)

--She pledges to listen more carefully to the voice of her own body and wants to connect her work and her encounters with people. It's the only way to go. (140)

ANALYSIS (140-145)

H199 Changing Lives, Ch.4 "Creating a Feminine Consciousness"

We should also consider for a moment the title of her memoir. Like Yoshitake's, it merits a little unpacking:

Onna no chihei kara miete-kita mono: Josei kisha nn Jibunshi. Or,

[女の地平から見えて来たもの: 女性記者の自分史]

Let's start from the back: she refers to her work as a jibunshi (自分史) or a "Self-History." But it is a "Self-History" of a "Female Reporter" (Josei Kisha 女性記者). Her job, her professional identity and her gender were obviously important to her overall sense of self and her identity.

It's the next part that is a little tricky:

Onna no chihei kara miete-kita mono (女の地平から見えて来たもの) or

The biggest challenge comes with the word "Chihei" 地平 which literally means "level ground" but also extends to refer to "field of view" or "horizon." In my rendering, I took a little liberty and went with "Perspective."

So, when we put all of this together we wind up with a title that reads:

Things Visible from a Woman's Perspective: My Self-History as a Woman Reporter.

She opens her text with a segment called:

Prologue: The Dream of Postwar Democracy (108-117)

She begins with a recitation of the timeline, kind of a litany.

1952 Start of the Korean War

1952 Bloody May Day

1953 the year she joined the staff of the Sangyô keizai shinbun, only 5 among 30 were women

1954 The establishment of the Self Defense Forces signalling Japan's move toward rearmament

1960 the Ampo Protests

1969 Kishino quits the newspaper and becomes an adjunct college professor;

Accepted Two Fundamental Pillars for her life:

1. Make the most of her situation as the first wave of postwar women to graduate 4-year universities and enter the workplace----> search for equality and equity;

2. Report the Truth - The War had demonstrated what happens when the press is not free to report the truth.

For Kishino these two pillars were equivalent to "The Spirit of Postwar Democracy"

She was disappointed by how Japan was not living up to its ideals, while she herself was just becoming another cog in the engine that fueled Japan's postwar high-speed economic growth.

--She realizes Women were forfeiting a part of themselves, their gentleness or feminnity (yasashisa) much as the young waom in the film had.

Then, she is diagnosed with Breast Cancer which she cannot help but wonder if it might be somehow be connected with her whole decision to jump into the workplace, compete with men, and in the process unknowingly abandon that part of her which made her who she was, a woman.

Her next segment takes her readers back to her

Early Days at Sankei (117-131)

--Interviewed women writers like Hirabayashi Taiko, Tsuboi Sakae, Ota Yoko

--Discovered the work of legendary leftist journalist Agnes Smedley who had journeyed to Yan'an and met Mao Zedong; Kishino aims to write a biography of Smedley in Japanese

--She knew she had developed a feminist consciousness as she experienced discrimination in the workplace

--Wrote an essay criticizing leftist proletarian writer Kobayashi Takiji who had been murdered in 1933 by police because of his womanizing and his attitude towards women. (122-123)

--Joined the Ampo Protests in 1960; becomes disillusioned when her newspaper joined with 6 others in an editorial stance against the violence of the protests

--Uses excerpts of her diaries to document her participation in the protests and how the Sankei management forced harsh terms on their workers,"transferring" key union personnel out of the home office

--Saw clearly how workers and management could never be on the same page

--Understood at the depths of her being how managment was enforcing a "regime of control" over the employees = a cynical theory of management.

She needed to find some Projects (131-134) to which she could commit herself:

1. Look deeply into the way reporters freedom to operate during Ampo was curtailed;

2. Study the treatment of youthful offenders in the courts and at youthful correction facilities;

3. Translate some of Agnes Smedley's work into Japanese, as well as translate Spanish Anti-Franco leader Constancia de la Mora's autobiography into Japanese;

4. Adding her reading of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sexa--a key feminist text--to her analysis of female youthful offenders in Japan.

Discovering a Feminine Consciousness

--1970 Her friend Komashaku Kimi encourages her to explore the Women's Lib Movement (136)

--Encounters the work of Tanaka Mitsu: she is younger, brash, not professional like herself but there is something that resonates in what she has to say

--Begins to re-examine and reasses her life in a different light - haunted by her erasure of the part of her that was woman

--Tired of hearing the oft-repeated phrase "because she is a woman (onna naru ga yue ni)," she notes how "in an instant, a real picture of women as historically, socially and psychologically oppressed took shape in my mind."(138)

-- the meetings and conversations with other women in the Lib Movement talking about their lives, their bodies, how male-female relationships in literature are portrayed - all of this raised her consciousness and helped solidify her "real picture" of women.

--She concluded that she wanted to learn to live her life fully as a woman, at one with her body, without worrying about what parts she may have inadvertently erased.

--But then she had to deal with her bresst cancer and surgery.

--She knew that she had to "recover her own feminist consciousness" and stop living a life rooted in patriarchal conceptions that enslave women; (138-140)

--She pledges to listen more carefully to the voice of her own body and wants to connect her work and her encounters with people. It's the only way to go. (140)

ANALYSIS (140-145)