Gendering the Culture of 1960s Japan

 In this paper I will explore the use of visual materials as a historical source for the history of 1960s Japan. How would we consider this history if we were to use visual materials as a primary source, rather than simply to illustrate points made from more conventional sources? I will consider how alternative visions of democracy, citizenship, and publicness are reflected in visual culture; how gender, class and ethnicity are constituted through these sources; and some alternative forms of (self) representation.

Vera Mackie is Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the History Department at the University of Melbourne, where she is working on a cultural history of the body in modern Japan. Major publications include Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality, Cambridge 2003; Gurōbaruka to Jendā Hyōshō [Globalisation and Representations of Gender]; Ochanomizu Shobō, 2003; Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937, Cambridge, 1997 (paperback edition 2002) and Human Rights and Gender Politics: Asia–Pacific Perspectives, co-edited with Anne Marie Hilsdon, Martha Macintyre and Maila Stivens, Routledge, 2000.