The Woman Question during the Japanese Occupation in Kikuko Kawakami’s and Tsuyako Miyake’s Philippine Diaries (1943)

Abstract

Realizing the value of women’s labor in the war effort, the Japanese Empire called for women all over the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (GEACPS) to shed Western influence. In 1943 Filipino women intellectuals and two Japanese writers, Kikuko Kawakami and Tsuyako Miyake, held two roundtable meetings to discuss the woman’s role within the “New Order.” Based on Kawakami and Miyake’s hitherto unstudied accounts of these meetings, this article examines the discourse between Filipino and Japanese women, particularly on the women’s position in Japan’s GEACPS. The tensions present in both accounts tell of the complex power relations that informed their dialogues.

KEYWORDS: JAPANESE OCCUPATION • WOMEN’S HISTORY • GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE • KIKUKO KAWAKAMI • TSUYAKO MIYAKE