Type of Research Fundamental Research
Research Title Gendering the History of the Japanese Archipelago
Head of the Research Team Prof. YOKOYAMA Yuriko
Research Period FY2016-2018
Purpose The study aims to shed light on gender and the process of gender construction in the history of the Japanese archipelago from the prehistoric and ancient to contemporary times. Focusing on two aspects, including (i) letters and writing styles and (ii) production and distribution of clothing, the study examines gender in historical research within the framework of place (space) and social groups.
Result This research sought to concretely and empirically clarify the generation of gender and its transformation in Japanese archipelago society according to four issues: letters/writing styles and gender, production and distribution of clothing and gender, places in the expression of sexuality, and social groups and gender. The aim was to update traditional historical images, which lack a gender perspective. Through the research results, we elucidated the gender structure of politics and labor in the ancient bilateral kinship society, the characteristics of household gender in the medieval period, and the formation and development of “outward” and “inward” in the early modern period and their disappearance in the modern period, and gender and its transformation in the history of the Japanese archipelago from various aspects including gender trade based on social structures from the medieval period to the modern period, the gender characteristics that appear, and gender that appears in literary culture. In addition, we focused on museum exhibitions as a historical narrative and compared history museum exhibitions in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, and other countries to clarify the importance of introducing gender perspectives in exhibitions.