Hello, my name is Sam Timminsky and I am a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I specialize in post-war Japanese histories, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I specialize

in post-war Japanese history, specifically the history of experts and political activism.

And I'll be talking to you today about the history of Japanese women and labor activism

in the 20th century. First, I would like to thank Isaac Meyer for the opportunity to give this

lecture to all of you. He has always been a kind friend and an incredibly insightful colleague,

and I'm thrilled to be working with him even after we've moved to different institutions.

So let's get to it.

Women have always played a critically important role in Japanese society and have been

impacted in very different ways than their male counterparts, probably governmental,

cultural, social, and political forces.

Women in Japan fought for very similar rights against similar sorts of oppression as their

American or European counterparts, but the course of that activism and the degree of success

that they achieved was very different.

As such, I would like you all to keep in mind the dangers of correlating the experiences

of activists across time and space,

and remember that the experience of Japan is unique to the Japanese Isles.

I will begin with a brief summary of the earliest forms of explicit women's political activism around the turn of the 20th century through the Pacific War,

so that we can grasp the foundations that later generations of activists were building from

and some pre-existing issues that carried through the war itself. We will then turn to the tensions between

female activists and labor leadership in the post-war. Finally, we will shift our discussion

to women in the new left movement to get a sense of the breadth of women's participation

...