New Women’s Studies course will cover historical overview of Japanese women

Posted on December 15, 2014November 6, 2025 by Staff

Images of Japanese Women: Students will study Japanese women’s roles in Japan from social, cultural, political, religious, and theoretical angles.

By Kara Nelson/UH Hilo Stories.

Yoshiko Fukushima casual portrait wearing black. — Yoshiko Fukushima

A new experimental course cross-listed in women’s studies and Japanese studies will be offered in the spring of 2015 at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. Images of Japanese Women will provide a historical overview of Japanese women and explore Japan’s changing aspects from ancient to contemporary times. Students will examine Japanese women’s place in modern Japan as well as the stereotypical image of the subservient Japanese woman prevalent in Western society.

“I am hoping this course can provide the cutting-edge knowledge about Japanese women, breaking the stereotype image of Japanese women, (and) reporting how contemporary Japanese women are living in current Japan,” says Yoshiko Fukushima, an associate professor of Japanese who will teach the class. She notes there aren’t any courses focused on East-Asian women currently taught on campus.

Fukushima specializes in Asian theatre and performance studies. Her research interests are in modern and contemporary Japanese drama, Asian performance theory, and comparative drama. Her current research focuses on the use of comedy and the role of the comedians in wartime Japan, with attention to the ways in which the Japanese military used theatre as a tool of collaboration in wartime China. She received her master of education in applied linguistics, with a concentration on discourse analysis, from Columbia University, New York, and her doctor of philosophy in performance studies from New York University.

Students in the new course will study Japanese women’s roles in Japan from social, cultural, political, religious, and theoretical angles. Referencing an article in The Economist about two Japanese women who resigned from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet for minor infractions of public funding rules, Fukushima says she wants students to explore “the role of Japanese women, historically identify it, and investigate into their struggle in contemporary Japanese society.”

Fukushima says the course is particularly relevant to the local community because of the high percentage of Japanese-American residents in Hawaiʻi and Hawaiians of Japanese descent. By comparing Japanese-American women in Hawaiʻi to Japanese women in Japan, says Fukushima, “students can identify how the old values are preserved in Hawaiʻi, (compared to) Japan.”

Fukushima hopes the course will become permanent with the goal of being one of the courses than fulfills the UH Hilo Hawaiʻi Pan-Pacific General Education requirement.