A half-day conference on Women in Wartime East Asia will take place at Pomona College on Friday, November 30.

Friday, November 30, 1:30-5:00 p.m.
Hahn Building 101, Pomona College
420 Harvard Avenue, Claremont, CA

Program

1:30 Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, Pomona College
Introductory remarks

1:35 Introduction
Sophia Lee, Professor of History, California State University-Hayward

1:40 Li Danke (Associate Professor of History, Fairfield University)
“Re-thinking Resistance: Ordinary Chinese Women’s Experiences in in Chongqing,
China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1938-1945”

2:20 Discussion (20 minutes)

2:40 Break (5 minutes)

2:45 Introduction
Albert Park, Assistant Professor of History, Claremont McKenna College

2:50 Sharalyn Orbaugh (Professor and Graduate Advisor, Asian Studies, University of British Columbia)
"Japanese Women as Creators and Targets of Propaganda: Kamishibai in the Fifteen Year War"

3:30 Discussion (20 minutes)

3:50 Break (5 minutes)

3:55 Introduction
Georgia Mickey, Associate Professor of History, California Polytechnic University-Pomona

4:00 Lori Watt (Associate Professor of History, Washington University)
“From Pioneers to Repatriates: Women and the End of the Japanese Empire”

4:40 Discussion (20 minutes)

5:00 Reception (Hahn Lobby)

Danke Li, “Re-thinking Resistance: Ordinary Chinese Women’s Experiences in Chongqing, China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1938-1945”

Professor Li will examine the personal stories of ordinary Chinese women who lived in the wartime capital of Chongqing during China’s War of Resistance against Japan from 1938 to 1945. The women featured in her lecture came from different social, economic, and educational backgrounds and experienced the war in a variety of ways. Some were active in the Communist resistance while others tried to support families or pursue their educations. The accounts of how women coped, worked, and lived during the war years in the Chongqing region not only gives them a public voice and face; it also offers a glimpse of the roles that ordinary women played in wartime and forces us to rethink the meaning of resistance.

Sharalyn Orbaugh, "Japanese Women as Creators and Targets of Propaganda: Kamishibai in the Fifteen Year War"

Professor Orbaugh will examine kamishibai (literally "paper drama"), one of the most ubiquitous media for domestic propaganda in Japan from 1931-1945. Originally a form of street theatre for children, kamishibai was adapted during the war to convey government-sponsored messages to diverse audiences—soldiers, farmers, shopkeepers, neighborhood association members, and so on. Recognizing the importance of women's cooperation in the war effort, the state agency charged with overseeing the production of propaganda kamishibai recruited a number of talented female script-writers and artists to create plays that would target a feminine audience. This presentation will explore the messages and techniques of the kamishibai plays produced by women for women in the Japanese mobilization campaigns from 1937-1945.

Lori Watt, “From Pioneers to Repatriates: Women and the End of the Japanese Empire”

Professor Watt will discuss the Japanese women who populated Japan’s empire on the Asian mainland and who played important roles in their nation's colonial project in both empirical and symbolic ways. With the collapse of Japan's empire in August 1945, Japanese colonial women experienced further transformations as the metropolitan Japanese population tried to distance themselves from the failed overseas project. This presentation explores how women experienced the dramatic transition from an empire at war to a nation under occupation in mid-twentieth century East Asia.
edited by Ying Jia on 11/26/2012