Mizuta: Foundations of Japanese Feminism: A Collection of Western Sources

The Western influence on the modernization of Japan is one of the most important subjects in Japanese Studies; indeed it is central to any understanding of today’s Japan. The Western influence on the history of women in Japan is especially crucial since the women’s movement there was founded on the translation of Western books into Japanese in the early Meiji era. During this period, along with the classical texts by authors such as J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer, some of the minor books in the subject were also translated and published in Japanese. This set collects together some of those texts which are now forgotten, but played an important role in the foundation of Japanese feminism.