H199 Changing Lives, Ch. 1 Yosahitake Teruko Notes

Born in 1931, her early life paralleledd Japan's road to war, beginning with the Manchurian Incident. She, too, remembers the Emperor's Radio Broadcast, and recites some of the statistics of the pain and destruction the war wrought. Some thought he was asking his subjects to continue the fight but after seeking clarity, the Village Headman confirmed: "Japan has been defeated."

Yoshitake just wanted to sleep. She slept for 36 hours straight, unable to deal with anything else in waking consciousness. Her frayed nerves had been split in half. She, too, had been raised to be a faithful and loyal Imperial Subject so all this was hard to process! She believed totally in the righteousness of the war and she could see no other outcome but victory! Despondent, all she could do was sleep.

Her text turns to Ichikawa Fusae who also turned on a dime once the war was over. She threw herself into organizing things for women to obtain the basic political rights--the fundamental human rights--they were denied in the prewar years, despite Ichikawa's best efforts to make inroads.

In tothe day the war ended, Ichikawa found "the seeds of a brighter future. In fact, defeat in war was for Japanese women the beginning of a new life." (19)

This confirms historian Kano Masanao's contention that men and women experienced the end of the war differently. Men struggled to deal with their wounded pride, their feelings of powerlessness; they wrestled with their failure to win their Sovereign's holy war. Women saw opportunities to achieve the things they had longed for.

But a shocking, disruptive moment occurs in the narrative: On April 11, 1946, after watching with elation Japanese women vote in an election for the first time, Yoshitake's world was ripped apart when she was gang raped by American soldiers in Aoyama Cemetary. Rape may be easily forgotten by the perpetrators but it remains with the victim forever.

She comes to understand that rape has nothing to do with sexual desire but it is about Violence and Violation--and War is the essence of such violence.She understands that to end War, we must go deep, into all the corners of the world, and establish true gender equality which is the only way to achieve true human equality.

In Japan, with the pyramidal structure of the emperor system, male subjectivity was thoroughly entrenched. That is why on Oct. 21, 1970, when Tanaka Mitsu, "Kahlid," and Asakawa Mari created a new kind of organization, Group: Fighting Women and unfurled their banner proclaiming "Resentment," at an anti-Vietnam War rally. This was new, this was fierce, overtly in-your-face, and she knew she had a home in this "women's lib" movement. This is where she could discover a place to feel comfortable even though she was older (41) than the younger women taking such a radical stance. But she hoped and believed that this is where she could discover her "female subjectivity," her "women's consciousness."

Yoshitake felt diminished trying to live in a male-dominated society, and she needed a space where she could be free from all the fear and alienation she experienced daily. Sometimes, just hearing men talk in their loud, authoritative voices, it would bring back memories of her rape. That inherent sense of superiority she heard in their voices was somehow tied to that violence she had experienced.

She confesses: it was due entirely to her encounter with women's lib that she became able to talk and write about her experience of rape. The movement alerted to her own onna-ishiki, her women's consciousness. Looking into herself, she came to realize how she had internalized a stereotypical, mainstream view of women in which their happiness could only be defined in terms of being married and becoming a "good wife, and wise mother."

She began to realize that her rape was not just a violation of her body, her flesh, but a direct assault on the respect women should have as human beings. That makes rape the worst crime against humankind.

Alas, the culture of male hegemony and superiority had become fully integrated into women's feminine logic. We internalized it, she realized! Figuring all this out was part of her healing process and she felt a sliver of confidence and pride being restored.

"The first step toward my own personal liberation, then, began with recounting my rape experience and writing about it." (22)

The women's lib movement provided the scaffolding to help her do this. She could make the personal political. Consciouness-raising sessions, truth-telling moments, learning to trust other human beings by speaking with women who were there to support her--these are the things she found in the women's lib movement...and nowhere else. She was profoundly transformed. She was coming to see the problem at its roots and to attack these roots, she had to transform her consciousness and start anew. Without the forums, the meetings, the Lib Camps, and the support the movement provided, she might never have been able to do it.

This is where I think we see this doubled effect: it starts with talking, with writing, sith having the courage to share her experiences, and from there, she begins to feel she is being transformed. Deep inside, her consciouness is leading her into a new direction, helping her discover a new way she can be in the world, a new stance she can assume, a new way she can define herself in the society and against the times in which she lives. And a new way she can be active and engaged.

In telling her story this way, in sharing it, she is transformed yet again. Deeper. Further. Her strength and her power now have a new foundation. It is the source of her newfound Subjectivity and her Agency about which she will write more in subsequent chapters.