history in multiplicity: locating de certeau's ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ in early...

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History in multiplicity: locating de Certeau's‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ in early postwar JapanCurtis Anderson Gayle aa Leiden University ,Published online: 29 Nov 2006.

To cite this article: Curtis Anderson Gayle (2006) History in multiplicity: locating de Certeau's ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ inearly postwar Japan, Japan Forum, 18:2, 207-228, DOI: 10.1080/09555800600731114

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History in multiplicity: locatingde Certeau’s ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’

in early postwar Japan

C U RT I S A N D E R S O N G AY L E

Abstract: In early postwar Japan Marxian historians like Ishimoda Sho andInoue Kiyoshi utilized history in order to help create the cultural conditions fora socialist revolution. Ordinary Japanese women were important to this projectand to Marxian campaigns for social change among the working class during thelate 1940s and early 1950s. Local women’s history-writing groups such as theEhime Women’s History Circle were, conversely, inspired by these historians andshared with them the belief that history writing could become a ‘revolutionarypraxis’ to change Japanese society. This article will discuss how, while influencedby Marxian positions on history, the Ehime group nevertheless sought to devise‘tactics’ by which to distance itself from the larger ‘strategies’ represented byprofessional historians and institutions. In this respect, the relationship betweenMarxian approaches and the Ehime Circle reminds us of what Michel de Certeauhas, more generally, called ‘tactics’ that both utilize and distinguish themselvesfrom larger institutions and discourses.

Keywords: Ehime Women’s History Circle, history-writing, revolutionarypraxis, Ishimoda Sho, Inoue Kiyoshi, Movement for a People’s History

Introduction

Contemporary social theory (e.g. Mouffe 1979) has often stressed the existenceof social movements on the left challenging the state and some of the more nefar-ious aspects of modern capitalist society. The late Michel de Certeau, a FrenchJesuit, once argued (1999: 126–33) that the relationship between discursive sitesof power and everyday life is more complex and multi-directional than we mightotherwise imagine. Within modern society, for instance, there exist various typesof ‘strategies’ that function discursively through configurations of power and in-fluence. These can consist of institutions, discourses and practices that help shape

Japan Forum 18(2) 2006: 207–228 ISSN: 0955–5803 print/1469–932X onlineCopyright C© 2006 BAJS DOI: 10.1080/09555800600731114

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208 History in multiplicity

the everyday life of consumers, voters and members (as well as non-members) ofthe public. They are, in effect, ‘strategies of production’ that exist within mar-kets, organizations and communities and come to bear upon the way we interactwith others (Lee 2001: 1). In response, individuals and groups often devise theirown sets of tactics or ways by which to manage specific aspects of day-to-day life.Lacking the institutional impetus of ‘strategies’, the ‘tactics’ developed by ordi-nary people are at root attempts to negotiate power relationships, discourses andrepresentations of identity.

Following this line of reasoning, we might expect women on the margins ofsociety to respond ‘to a particular ideological space or place’ by ‘refunctioning thetools and materials at hand’ so as to ‘make them personally useful’ to their ownidentities (Willis 2005). If strategies consist of actions that ‘elaborate theoreticalplaces (systems and totalising discourses)’ and produce power relations, tacticssubvert larger modes of representation by creating new spaces and temporali-ties linked to the direct interests and identities of people defined and imagined acertain way in historical narratives. The tactics constructed by women and othersinterested in having their voices heard can, however, rely on aspects of the culturallogic embedded in the strategies they are resisting (Fleming 2005). Such is oftenthe case when those resisting larger institutions, discourses and positions are notideologically dissimilar from those against whom they are seeking autonomy anddistinction. In fact, it is possible to find many examples of this tension and dif-ference among discourses and groups who share common politics, methods andpractices. This means that the tactics devised by women’s history-writing groupsconcerned with self-representation, for instance, need not be defined simply asresistance to the usual cast of interests and practices associated with state powerand authority.

By bringing de Certeau’s analogy to modern Japanese history, I will arguethat Marxian historical movements during the early postwar period constitutedan important strategy or influential set of discourses towards women and othermarginalized groups. I will show that Marxian approaches, which did inspireJapanese women in Ehime Prefecture, also functioned as strategies that soughtto totalize, represent and account for all Japanese women. Choosing not to havetheir own experiences and pasts rendered through the ‘national liberation’ of theethnic nation (minzoku) from capitalism, however, during the 1950s women inEhime began to establish their own historical narratives and subject positions inclear distinction from Marxian approaches.

This study will begin by historically foregrounding the Marxian idea that historywriting could become the centrepiece for cultural movements to change Japanesesociety and politics. First put forward in the prewar era, this approach was recon-structed after 1945 in light of new historical and social developments that camewith the war’s end. After demonstrating how Marxian ideas supported the strategyof history writing as a ‘revolutionary praxis’, I will turn to an examination of howhistory writing in the Ehime Women’s History Circle can be read as a set of tactics

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Curtis Anderson Gayle 209

created in distinction from Marxian historical institutions and discourses. In thisway, the Ehime example will take the concept of strategy and tactics beyond theleft/right opposition by showing that these can operate within ideologically andmethodologically similar sites of discursive production.

Grounding a ‘people’s culture’ and rebuilding Japanese history

The years following the First World War brought with them much soul searchingover how to organize and imagine everyday life as the pace of modernizationwent into high gear. As in other modernizing societies, Japanese capitalism andmodernity brought with them the rethinking of the ‘experience of class’ and the‘details and objects that formed the conditions of lived experience’. During the1920s, this coming to grips with modernity was not something taking place onlyin Europe but was, in broader terms, occurring simultaneously in countries likeJapan as they ‘underwent the passage of capitalist modernization’ to create their‘own experience of everydayness’ (Harootunian 2000: 21–2). Marxists themselveswere beginning to think more closely about how the experiences of ordinary peoplein everyday settings could contribute to the formation of greater working-classconsciousness and historical agency. Various kinds of experiences and practices ineveryday life were becoming important to Marxists and to those concerned withthe frenetic pace of industrialization at home and the growing problem of Japaneseimperialism in Asia.

Accordingly, some Marxian thinkers became intent on developing ideas abouthow the creation of a ‘people’s culture’ might be an important first step to-wards a more equitable future. For example, Russian literature specialist KuraharaKorehito (1902–1999)1 advocated the formation of ‘small units within [proletar-ian] cultural movements trying to create a revolutionary consciousness amongthe Japanese masses’ (Tsurumi 1977: 3–4). Although not directly influenced byItalian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), Kurahara, like his Europeancounterpart, focused upon the symbiosis between everyday life and socio-politicalchange. Historical progress, in this interpretation, was not merely about the ob-jective conditions that existed within specific classes, societies or nations. Rather,individual members of the working class could, through their own initiative and‘awakening’, create cultural representations and practices in their everyday livesthrough which to bring about change. In this account, the realms of culture andeveryday life were no longer elite or bourgeois constructions, but had instead be-come the basis upon which ordinary people could themselves begin to take on theeconomic and social basis of the capitalist state.2

Much like Gramsci, furthermore, Kurahara’s position was that revolution couldcome about only through the collective and coordinated efforts of ordinary peo-ple to create cultural ‘circles’ and organizations in conscious resistance to politicalinstitutions and the capitalist state (Collier 1988: 37; Gramsci 1975: 11). Thegrass-roots creation of circles and cultural groups was also the foundation for what

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Kurahara called ‘cultural activities’ (bunka katsudo) by the working class. These,he hoped, might lead to the proliferation of networks and alliances to serve assites from which to launch a collective assault on the rule of the state (Tsurumi1999: 3–4). Indeed, through circle activities and larger cultural movements such asthe Proletarian Literature Movement (Puroretaria Bungaku Undo ), Kurahara andother Marxian intellectuals sought to make the creation of proletarian art and lit-erature the fabric of social and political change (Honda 1971: 55–60). Not unlikethe ‘popular cultural fronts’ in Italy and the United States during the prewar era,Kurahara’s vision of working-class cultural activity saw in the realism of everydaylife the opportunity for ordinary people to create a new relationship to societythrough activities that raised their own self-consciousness. These constellationsand activities, Kurahara maintained, could galvanize the working class and leadthem to confront the prewar Japanese state directly, culminating in socialistrevolution.

During the 1920s and 1930s, there were also attempts to make history writ-ing by the working class a part of this ensemble. For example, the How to WriteYour Daily Life Movement (Seikatsu Tsuzurikata Undo ) attempted to democra-tize and popularize the writing of history in the hope that it could help maximizethe agency of ordinary people. This important prewar movement was ‘directed atworking class children’ as part of an effort to ‘combat the excesses of nationalistic“objective” moral indoctrination practiced in government-sponsored elementaryeducation’. The Daily Life Movement ‘encouraged the putatively unencumbered’and ‘pure subjective written expression of the everyday thoughts and actions ofordinary people’. Much like the Movement for a People’s History of the 1950s,discussed below, this campaign sought ‘the development of a proletarian voiceand class consciousness’ by ‘empowering and liberating the masses through anorganized and democratized writing movement’ (Figal 1996: 907). History writ-ing, in this respect, was seen as an activity that could be undertaken directly bythe masses and, ultimately, serve the cause of social change.

Of course, there were some crucial differences in the postwar era that madehistory writing something different from days past. The social and legal gains af-forded women in the 1947 constitution meant that they were now citizens with theright of suffrage. This gave impetus to the women’s movement and helped create aclimate in which they no longer had to limit themselves to autobiographical writ-ing. In the prewar era, autobiographical ‘self-writing’ helped women to articulatetheir subjectivity in the context of the women’s movement (Loftus 2004). Eventhough autobiographical writing also remained important after the war, womenwere now able to establish independent organizations to study collectively andwrite history without working as closely with political parties or major politicalorganizations as before the war.

This process of transition was, moreover, facilitated by narrating the prewarpast as the diametric opposite of what was hoped for in the present. Early postwarmemory of prewar resistance thus effaced much of the prewar struggle to put

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history writing to work for ordinary people. As certain Marxian historians of theday lamented, prewar Marxian thinkers and historians, Kurahara Korehito forone, had not been able to connect with the masses closely enough to realize theobjective of social change (Bando 1976: 292). In actuality, Marxian historianslike Eguchi Bokuro (1911–1989) and Ishimoda Sho (1912–1986) would rekindleprewar arguments first put forward by Marxists during the late 1920s and early1930s (Gayle 2003: 40).3 By narrating their approach as something new, however,Marxian historians during the late 1940s and 1950s would be able to lay a newcornerstone for the prewar notion of a ‘people’s culture’ so as to better provide theworking class with the means to hammer out its own versions of cultural struggleand resistance. This was, at least, the expectation of history-writing campaignsorganized by Marxists. Such designs were more than idealistic notions of coop-eration between Marxists and the masses. They instead reflected the newfoundlegitimacy of progressive intellectuals, and the domain of history itself, in thesocio-political landscape during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The overall legitimacy accorded Marxian historians, and the discipline of historyin Japan after the war, lay in the promise of its becoming a modern, rationalscience that could explain the mistakes of the past and provide a window ontothe possibilities of the present and future. From as early as June 1946, Marxianhistorians affiliated with groups such as the Historical Science Society (RekishigakuKenkyukai ) declared that postwar approaches to history needed to be something‘scientific’. In their ‘New principles of history’, for example, the Society voicedits support for ‘historical science’ as the necessary form postwar historiography inJapan should assume (Rekishigaku Kenkyukai 1946: 47). As the creation of theAssociation of Democratic Scientists and reconsolidation of the Historical ScienceSociety (both in 1946) attest,4 during the period immediately following the warthe role of scientific knowledge became central to working-class movements forsocial change. There were a number of reasons that help explain this stress uponhistory as a science. Among them was the fact that, after the war, liberal andMarxian intellectuals sought to ‘examine the structure of the past’ ‘in order torepair socio-political ills and move toward the future’ (Gluck 1995: 7–8).5 Eventhough history as a discipline had during the war been co-opted by the fasciststate, it could now serve ordinary people in the creation of a Japan that was to bemodern, rational and peaceful. Before history writing could become the centre ofworking-class cultural resistance after 1945, then, it had first to be legitimized asa body of knowledge that could diagnose the mistakes of the past and prescribe acourse of action for the present.

For Ishimoda Sho and like-minded historians, moreover, the objectivity of his-tory would need to be measured not only by its independence from the state,but also by its virtual proximity to the lives of the working class. History would,in other words, need to become the means by which to thrash out somethingthat was, in one and the same moment, both scientific and existentially relevantto the everyday lives of those on the margins of Japanese society. Even though

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Marxist thinkers like Kurahara had developed similar positions during the 1920sand 1930s, Ishimoda and his colleagues wanted to imprint the link between ‘struc-ture’ (revolution) and ‘praxis’ (everyday life) onto the veneer of history as newdiscipline – indeed science – in postwar Japan. Complementing the newfoundlegitimacy of history and progressive intellectuals, then, was the image that Marx-ian approaches to historical change came as something new (i.e. unblemished)and as thus well suited to the overall climate of vilifying the past for the sake ofthe present. This meant, among other things, that, while prewar Japanese historywas decried as having been statist, based upon myth and politically manipulated,historians would now have to focus on the creation of a ‘people’s history’ (jin-min no rekishi) that could speak for those whose voices had long been silent. Themost important step in creating a new people’s culture, then, was the activity ofordinary people writing their own histories and the histories of their immediateenvironments, workplaces and communities.

The worsening political situation during the late 1940s helped push forwardthese Marxian-led attempts to encourage the ordinary people to write their ownhistories. As political conditions became more repressive for the left, Marxianthinkers and historians began to engage in coordinated attempts to develop masshistory writing as a ‘cultural activity’ in ways not seen during the prewar years.With the onset of the Cold War in Asia, and the ‘Reverse Course’ in Occupa-tion policy, a good number of Marxian historians found themselves questioningwhether they might not be better off with a direct transition to socialism (Gayle2003: 53–7). American crackdowns on the right of labour unions to strike andon the Japan Communist Party had helped produce a more antagonistic climatetowards the Occupation among both intellectuals and the working class. It wasright at this juncture – in 1948 – that Kurahara Korehito once again called uponhis colleagues and the working class to engage in a direct ‘cultural struggle’ (bunkatoso) against the middle class, the capitalist state and the American Occupationthat was sustaining both.

The basis of Kurahara’s argument, as in the 1920s, was that the idea of classstruggle could be mediated by the development of a ‘national people’s culture’(minzoku bunka) developed by the working class themselves (Kurahara 1948: 62-4). Much like his prewar ideas and those put forward in Italy by Antonio Gramsci,Kurahara believed that the working class could gain liberation by establishing itsown ‘original conception of the world’ from the starting point of culture andeveryday life (Pozzolini 1970: 109). Like Gramsci’s, furthermore, this approachalso assumed that only a ‘transformation of the state and its oppressive socialrelations’ would allow voiceless and marginalized groups in Japan finally to attainliberation (Green 2002: 20).

For this to take place, however, the role of women within Japanese historywould also have to be articulated. It was against this political backdrop that InoueKiyoshi (1913–2001)6 wrote The History of Japanese Women (Nihon Josei-shi) in1949. Inoue’s position revealed two important methodological points concerning

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the relation of history to ordinary women. First, Inoue insisted that narrativesabout Japanese women, from ancient to modern times, would now have to bewritten through the ‘principal subject’ (shujin) of the Japanese proletariat in or-der to craft a true ‘people’s history’ (Inoue 1949: 2). This meant not focusingupon ‘the imperial elite’, ‘the nobility’ or ‘women from illustrious bushi fami-lies’, but looking instead at the ‘real lifestyles’ of Japanese women themselves(Inoue 1949: 2–3). While previous histories of Japanese women had been mere‘love stories’ centring on well-known figures, Inoue suggested that the time hadcome for histories that could portray the struggle of women towards liberationby ‘treating them as autonomous’ human beings (Inoue 1949: 1–2). Accordingto Inoue, these concerns had also been on the minds of Marxian historians inJapan during the prewar era, in that there was an effort to write ‘popular his-tories of Japanese women from different periods’ and to include women withinthe domain of ‘people’s histories’ (Inoue 1949: 3). In fact, Inoue saw his ownstance as an extension of this genre in depicting both ‘the history of ordinarywomen’ (jinmin josei no rekishi) and ‘history for the popular masses’ (jinmin taishuno tame no rekishi) (ibid.: 3). He intended to locate Japanese women’s historywithin the larger context of ‘people’s histories’ and the general proletarian subjectof the working class, while also realizing that the historical, social and politicallandscapes had changed after the war. This meant that women, as an historicalsubject, would be located within larger attempts to make history writing an agent ofrevolution.

The Marxian strategy of revolutionary praxis during the 1950s

As already suggested, there was a profound difference between earlier Marxianconceptions of revolutionary praxis and those now being put forward in earlypostwar Japan. Faith in historical science and the newfound legitimacy of pro-gressive intellectuals translated into more coordinated attempts to promote thewriting of history by the working class themselves through the proliferation ofhistory-writing groups. Whereas prewar circle groups had been swept away by thelate 1930s, postwar circle activity reinforced the commitment to making historicalscience work towards social change with a fervour not seen in the prewar days. Itwould now be easier for Marxists to follow through on more concrete forms ofrevolutionary praxis by encouraging the formation of history-writing campaignsnationwide. Indeed, history writing was to become the prime example of how or-dinary people, in their homes and workplaces, could go about cobbling togethera kind of ‘people’s culture’ that would lead to socialist revolution and ensure thatthe horrors of fascism could never again haunt Japan. It was in this very spirit thatthe Marxian historian Matsumoto Shinpachiro (b. 1913) heralded a new age of‘revolutionary cultural traditions’ (kakumeiteki bunka) that could overcome ‘reac-tionary traditions’ of the past in the postwar drive towards revolution (Matsumoto1956).7

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Borrowing Joseph Stalin’s conception of the nation (minzoku) as an historicallyconstructed community of people sharing common traits and values (Stalin 1940),Matsumoto argued that underneath bourgeois modernity in Japan there existeda ‘common, traditional way of thinking’ that could be ‘rediscovered’ and ‘reap-praised’ so that new progressive cultural traditions might help create working-classunity and a true ‘revolutionary culture’ (Matsumoto 1956: 189). Interestingly,Matsumoto, Ishimoda and other like-minded Marxian historians utilized whatthey perceived to be Mao Zedong’s efforts from the 1930s to ‘create a people’sculture’ that could help ‘win mass support for the Chinese Communist Partyand its war against Japan’ (Ip 2001: 232). Seeing their own battle as one againstthe postwar Japanese state and American imperialism, Matsumoto, Kurahara andIshimoda sought to articulate culture as something other than a constellation ofcommodified symbols or representations supporting middle-class life and the ex-isting political system. Instead, the act of writing history by the working class couldbecome the modus vivendi for cultural campaigns to unite the working class intheir collective ‘discovery’ of ‘revolutionary cultural traditions’. In this sense, andas a revolutionary praxis, history writing was becoming an indispensable meansby which to bridge the longstanding gap between ordinary people (the workingclass) and historians (intellectuals).

In 1950, Marxian historians such as Ishimoda and Matsumoto helped establishthe Movement for a People’s History (Toyama 1968: 117–27). Bringing togetherhistorical organizations like the Historical Science Society and the Association ofDemocratic Scientists, the movement represented a consortium of smaller cam-paigns orchestrated by Marxian historians and organizations interested in pro-moting both historical science and ‘national-popular liberation’ (minzoku kaiho).One interesting campaign within the overall movement was the Movement for aNational Science (Kokuminteki Kagaku Undo ). Initiated by the Historical Sectionof the Kyoto Branch of the Association of Democratic Scientists and historians likeInoue Kiyoshi, it consisted of a number of cultural activities farmers and labour-ers could take part in. This campaign sponsored surveys of local villages andexchanges among different circle groups in various factories, as well as the forma-tion of groups dedicated to revitalizing cultural traditions like Japanese folk tales(minwa) and cultural forms ‘rooted in the everyday lifestyles’ of ordinary people(Toyama 1968: 126–7). Other campaigns included the Creation and Spreading ofNational Science (Kokuminteki Kagaku no Sozo to Fukkyu ) and the Creation of aPeople’s Science (Jinmin no Kagaku no Sozo ) (Takeuchi 1956: 157). These kindsof campaigns, by 1955, led to a National Cultural Conference headed by Marxianhistorian Uehara Senroku (1899–1975)8 who would soon take great interest inthe Ehime Women’s History Circle (Takeuchi 1956: 79).

Of particular note here is the fact that the movement supposed that historywriting could become a completely de-professionalized activity available to oneand all. More specifically, the logic of the movement lay in the amalgamationof ‘study and action’ (gakushu to katsudo) so that history writing might become

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a direct source of social activism and cultural resistance (Takeuchi 1956: 74–5). This position was different from prewar experiments in that the Movementfor a People’s History did not stop at the creation of social practices designedto sharpen working-class consciousness. Instead, it believed that through historywriting individuals and groups, though untrained in historical methods, couldhelp change the face of Japanese society. In this sense, the movement saw peoplefrom all walks of life as potential ‘embodiments’ of history and historical practice.This reinforced the idea that, while Marxian approaches to history were to havestructural concerns, they were to also be sensitive to the utility of history writingwithin everyday life as a means to bring about the transition to socialism from thegrassroots level of Japanese society.9 History writing was, therefore, no longer theexclusive preserve of professionally trained and educated men, but could now belegitimately written by women, farmers, students and factory workers.

One of the most important and influential attempts by Marxian historians withinthis genre could be found in Ishimoda Sho’s 1948 ‘History of the village/historyof the factory’ (Ishimoda 1984 [1948]). In what would become the blueprintfor the Movement for a People’s History, Ishimoda called on ordinary peopleliving in villages and working in factories all across Japan to write the historiesof their own lives within the context of their everyday existence. This appeal alsoinvolved the writing of what Ishimoda called ‘mothers’ histories’. Although theinitial stimulus for writing mothers’ histories lay in Ishimoda’s 1952 The Discoveryof History and the Nation (in particular the section entitled ‘A letter about mymother’), this campaign officially kicked off with Furukawa Osamu’s 1953 articleentitled ‘Let’s all write mother’s histories’. Based upon Ishimoda’s earlier idea that‘there is a wealth of history [waiting to be written] in the realm of the people andtheir lifestyles’, Furukawa (1998 [1953]) called upon labourers and farmers towrite the histories of their mothers with attention to how they had fought againstvarious kinds of economic and social exploitation. But Furukawa also stressed thatmothers’ histories did not have to be written according to specific historical rules.Rather, he suggested that ordinary people interview their mothers and other familymembers and then contextualize these histories in light of the given period or erain Japanese society. From this viewpoint, the writing of the history of one’s mother(as well as workplace and village) was seen as the starting point for individual andsocial ‘awakening’.

Although the Movement for a People’s History gained steam among labourunions and university research circles/women’s circles in various parts of Japan,nowhere were mother’s histories more influential than in the collaborative effortsof organizations such as the Tomari Branch of the East Asian Weaver’s CompanyLabour Union (Toa Boshoku Kumiai Tomari Shibu), located in Yokkai-ichi City,Mie Prefecture. They created their own circle, and called it the Recording Waysof Life Group (Seikatsu o Kiroku suru Kai), which lasted from 1952 until 1961(Boshoku Joshi Koin Seikatsu Kirokushu 2002 [1952–3]). The Tomari Branchwas an important example of mothers’ histories because the women, who came

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from traditional farming families in Nagano Prefecture, were able to form labourunions within modern factories and attain their own ‘awakening’ (jikaku) in waysthey hoped would serve history and the liberation of farm villages from feudalways of thinking (Tsurumi 1955: 183–8). The struggles of working women weretaken, moreover, as proof positive that they had become integral members ofthe proletariat and were in the process of overcoming traditional village life. Inthe larger scheme of things, such activities were also supposed to assist in thecollective creation of a new kind of people’s culture as the basis for a non-bourgeoisform of Japanese modernity where women could realize their own liberation oncethe transition to socialism was complete.

The work and histories of the Tomari Writing Lifestyles Circle were compiledin a seven-volume set of histories and accounts, the first of which is entitledMy Home/Mother’s History. In the preface to this volume, the toils of the Tomariwomen are referred to as the ‘sad histories of factory women’ (joko aishi).10 Theefforts to write their own histories by the Tomari Circle were not unrelated to theimportant historical trail blazed by Inoue Kiyoshi in 1949. These efforts were,likewise, also very much in the spirit of Furukawa Osamu’s call for the writingof mothers’ histories that grew out of Ishimoda’s plea for mothers’ history asthe backbone to the history of Japanese women written in the voices of womenthemselves (Furukawa 1998 [1953]: 238–9). Taken together, these sentimentsreflected the important belief that if women were truly to become part of thevanguard of historical change they would first need to write their own histories intheir own voices to bring about their own awakening.

In a similar vein, between August and December of 1953 a mass excava-tion of the Tsuki no Wa ruins took place in Iokamura, Okayama Prefecture.This project included members of local housewives associations, schools, youthgroups, local archaeological students and teachers and local village inhabitants.As Oguni Yoshihiro points out, the expedition was sponsored by the Associ-ation of Democratic Scientists – a group closely affiliated with Marxian his-torians – and was noteworthy on several counts. Given that archaeology andexcavations of ancient Japanese sites had been the purview of national historyand national academic discourses during the war to perpetuate the myth ofone ‘continuous race symbolised and embodied by the emperor’, this excava-tion was considered something that could help to de-mystify emperor-centrichistorical education (Oguni 2003: 1–2). In the words of its sponsors, the ex-cavation was a splendid opportunity to make a ‘living history of the people’that could replace the prewar myth of the emperor as the legitimate basis ofJapanese society and civilization (Bibi Kyodo Bunka no Kai 1954: 30). Whathad previously been an historic monument for legitimizing the role of the impe-rial system in holding together the Japanese nation, therefore, had now become atestament to the plurality, complexity and dynamism of Japanese culture, as wellas the importance of ordinary people to the sustenance and creativity of culturaltraditions.

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The excavation was heralded a cultural activity germane to history writing be-cause those directly involved were discovering that history was not simply ‘anexternal investigation into events of the past’. Following the radical historicalmethodology developed by Ishimoda and other Marxian historians, this was achance for village residents and educators alike to experience directly how thepast was ‘reflected within each event of one’s present life’ (Bibi Kyodo Bunkano Kai 1954: 30). Commentators such as Oguma Eiji acknowledge that Tsukino Wa provided a fine example of how ‘people’s history could be made throughcooperation between intellectuals and the masses’ (2002: 341). In keeping withthe attempts to fuse historical knowledge and social activism, the historical exca-vation in Okayama was also supposed to help in the battle to reverse ‘militaristeducation’, towards true ‘democratic education’ in postwar Japan (Bibi KyodoBunka no Kai 1954: 30). As such, the uncovering of history through this culturalcampaign was seen as a way for ordinary citizens to better integrate themselveswithin larger attempts to transform Japanese society and politics (Watanabe andUmeda 1999: 72). Much like the Movement for a People’s History, moreover, thisenterprise was also articulated as an example of a ‘scientific movement’ (kagakuundo), illustrating the principle that history writing should be both scientific andexistentially relevant.11

While claiming to be a science, then, history and history writing were things toalso be embodied in local communities and cultural artefacts. In other words, thetexts of history were not simply those to be authored, structured and providedby historical organizations in Tokyo or by a cadre of trained historians. Instead,they were seen as coming directly from the individual, communal and culturalcontexts in which ordinary people spent their daily lives. In this sense, historyand history writing were embedded and contextualized in human experience andwithin human activity in local and regional settings. The non-document-basedemphasis of the Movement for a People’s History also meant that local mythsand oral histories could become ways for those on the margins of society and inlocal communities to rethink and re-narrate their relationship to the contexts inwhich they lived their everyday lives. Looked at from this angle, furthermore, itwould seem hard to deny the proposition that Marxists had created a movementdesigned to facilitate greater autonomy and subjectivity for those whose voiceshad long been denied in official or professional historical accounts.

When looked at from the viewpoint of local women in Ehime, however, theMarxian inclusion of women and those on the margins of society into Japanesehistory was something less than ideal. Conceptually speaking, the Marxian questto arrive at a spatially integrated account of national life in Japan subordinatedthe historical subjectivity of women to the social politics of revolution. The livesand experiences of women were represented within the Movement for a Peo-ple’s History as moments within the horizon of a sweeping national and strategicproject for epochal change. In the grand scheme of things, then, the innovativeand far-reaching strategy of history writing initiated and sponsored by Marxists

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was concerned with everyday life only as it existed in the historical time andnarrative of Japanese women as a homogeneous and universal subject. It wasquite true that Marxists had pushed things forward to an exceptional degreeby conceiving the praxis of history writing as a way to change individual con-sciousness and society. Yet it was equally true that the subject position of womenwithin this praxis spoke for them in ways that partially eclipsed their voices andidentities.

If history is something replete with irony, then it is quite ironic that Marxianstrategies helped generate resistance from some of the very elements of Japanesesociety they had also emboldened. During the mid-1950s, women who createdthe Ehime Women’s History Circle, for example, were convinced that, in spiteof the noteworthy attempts by Marxists, they nevertheless remained hidden fromJapanese history. By creating their own subject positions through a distinctive(and de-centred) concept of place and identity that they would call the ‘chi’iki’,or region, women in Ehime would go about challenging and transforming thislingering historical condition.

The Ehime Women’s History Circle and the tacticsof revolutionary praxis

Ehime Prefecture, with its capital Matsuyama City (population 500,000) is some600 kilometres south west of Tokyo, on the island of Shikoku. With a total pop-ulation of 1.5 million, Ehime Prefecture has historically emphasized the ship-building, heavy chemical, paper pulp and textile industries, and is also known forits cultivation of oranges, persimmons and chestnuts. Politically speaking, it has,in the postwar era, often been called ‘the conservative kingdom of Ehime’ (hoshuokoku Ehime). In July of 1945, just before the end of the war, Matsuyama washeavily bombed and nearly levelled.

When they decided to create the Ehime Women’s History Circle in January of1956, founding members like Kumito Fujiko and Kawamata Yoshiko were alreadywell acquainted with Marxian historians who had taken part in the Movement fora People’s History, most notably Inoue Kiyoshi, Uehara Senroku and MatsumotoShinpachiro. Kumito (b. 1926) was a young high school teacher in Matsuyama andKawamata (b. 1932) belonged to a local teachers’ union in the same city. Most ofthe founding participants were local high-school teachers or worked in teachers’and labour unions in Matsuyama City: founding member Kawamata Yoshikoheld a high-ranking post in the Ehime Teachers’ Union and Kurihara Minakobelonged to the local branch of the Japan Communist Party. As this suggests,members of the Ehime Circle were engaged in the struggle for greater autonomyfrom prefectural and central authority before they began to write history. The tiesbetween members of the group and Marxian historians were, moreover, reflectedin the group’s initial approach to history writing. For example, even without anyprofessional training in historical methodology, the Ehime Circle was convinced

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that it could study and write history as well as, if not better than, the historianswith whom they were acquainted.

As Marxian historians had demonstrated, history writing was now a de-professionalized activity through which those on the margins of Japanese societycould begin to gain greater voice and agency. This notion was affirmed by KumitoFujiko, who noted that ‘whilst trying to improve the lives of women in Ehime’,the Ehime Circle studied historical texts with the conviction that ‘the writing ofwomen’s history could become one important dimension to the women’s move-ment’ in Ehime (Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 1966: 53). By arming themselves witha greater consciousness of history, then, the Ehime group sought to realize theprofound way in which learning and resistance might together provide a compre-hensive and balanced way for participants to ‘begin the process of regional change’(Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 1978: 88).

Much like the methodology of Marxian approaches, this position assumed thathistory should not merely be an object of study that would speak to ordinary peo-ple, but should instead provide a concrete means through which ordinary peoplecould find their own voices and go about changing the spaces in which they lived.Since historical knowledge and the writing of history were now more a part ofeveryday life, there would be no place for the ontological dichotomies of sub-ject/object, theory/practice or thought/action. True to the spirit of the Movementfor a People’s History and its concern with closing the divide between the sub-ject (historians/historical knowledge) and the object of history (ordinary people’slifestyles/social change), members of the Ehime group believed that through his-tory writing they could have an impact on social and political conditions in theirworkplaces and communities. Much like the view towards history expressed byMarxists, then, the Ehime group maintained that history writing was a kind ofexistential praxis that could be directly utilized by those wishing to realize greaterlevels of historical knowledge and social activism.

Members of the Ehime Circle saw it as necessary first to undertake readingsin Marxian history before going on to writing the history of women and of thoseon the margins of society in Ehime Prefecture. In 1956, they began reading andstudying Inoue Kiyoshi’s 1949 The History of Japanese Women. For the Ehimegroup, Inoue’s work was a useful starting point because it had affirmed the histor-ical subjectivity of women within the sphere of everyday life and suggested womencould radically transform the economic and political landscape in Japan to a de-gree unimaginable in the prewar years. Even though Inoue had written women’shistory ‘from a woman’s viewpoint’ there was, nevertheless, also a perceptionamong Ehime Circle members that ‘history should not be written by elites’ (eraihitotachi). In fact, members of the group recall that they undertook the study ofInoue’s text ‘very carefully and deeply’ and sent their ‘opinions directly to theauthor’, a process that lasted a full three years.

While retaining their admiration for Marxian approaches to history and histor-ical movements, members of the Ehime group also realized that Marxian history

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in Japan remained gendered through its emphasis on historical institutions andorganizations centred in Tokyo. As some in Ehime saw it, women no longer hadto accept overbearing forms of structural change (e.g. revolution) that Marxistshad described as the necessary counterpart to the existential side of history writ-ing. Just as history no longer had to be written by elite male historians so it nolonger had to draw out its plot in the hues of a grand narrative that told the storyof classes or nations. Influenced by Marxian attempts to make history writing arevolutionary praxis, however, the Ehime group was in fact able to apply someMarxian assumptions about history writing to its own particular objectives. Inother words, women in the Ehime Women’s History Circle would begin to engagein history writing as a revolutionary praxis without soldering their experiences orapproach onto the strategy of revolution. This meant that, for the Ehime group,history writing had become an important tactic to resist Marxian strategies thatfocused on what Julia Kristeva has more generally termed the ‘monumental timeof nations, continents and civilisations’ (1981: 14).

Their tactics of difference from Marxian historical strategies lay in the newmodel for women’s history writing that was gradually being constructed in Ehime.Members of the Ehime Circle helped develop the notion of the ‘chi’iki’, or region,as a temporal and spatial framework through which to separate themselves fromhistories written by historians affiliated with large historical organizations basedin Tokyo (Tsukamoto 1976: 353). Their purpose was, however, not to devise ahard-edged analytical construct but rather to provide a flexible conception withinwhich to recount and explain the past and present in gender-sensitive ways thatdefied the collectivization of Japanese women’s memories and aspirations. Fol-lowing the early postwar fascination by Marxists with making history a science,the Ehime group did believe that its conception of the region could become ascientific paradigm embraced by women and others seeking to write history inother remote parts of Japan (Furuya 1978: 235).

More importantly, the beliefs of the Ehime Circle fitted in quite well with theneed to write histories that could include those whose voices had long been deniedby official prefectural histories (ken-shi) and local histories (chiho-shi) written byMarxists.12 This is why the Ehime group did not establish its concept of the regionwithin a spatial configuration linked to Tokyo as the avatar of Japanese moder-nity. Neither would the group write history for the purpose of bringing aboutnational revolution or discerning ‘class-based problems within national societyand the state’ (kokka shakai no kaikyuteki mujun) (Furuya 1978: 235). Instead,the Ehime Circle sought to illuminate the ‘unique problems within regional societyand the ways in which local groups might themselves transform such conditions’(Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 1978: 88). The ultimate aim of the Ehime Circle wasto provide a way for members to locate both ‘individual member’ and ‘group’subjectivity (jikaku) within regional society (Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 2003). Inthis respect, then, historical subjectivity was reconstructed by women in Ehimethrough categories that challenged the nationalization of women’s experiences in

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terms of universalized versions of culture and gendered narratives of historicalsubjectivity.

One interesting way the Ehime Circle articulated its particular form of historywas by creating a serial publication in 1959. Their journal’s name, Mugi (literally,‘wheat’) was thought up by Kumito Fujiko, who noted that she chose the title be-cause it reminded her of ‘something that withstands the cold winter and sprouts uptoward the sky’, an image reflecting the sense that these women were on their own.Rather than merely publishing commentaries, histories and historical pageantry inbooks or anthologies that would take months, if not years, to be released, throughMugi the Ehime Circle decided to engage in a more direct forum that might beaccessible to ordinary residents of Ehime Prefecture. In one sense, history writ-ing in this journal often focused on what seemed like national issues of the kindInoue, Ishimoda and other Marxian historians had taken up. By becoming betteracquainted with Marxian history, members maintained, it would be easier to takepart in ‘movements to protect peace and democracy’ while also ‘making up forsome of the shortcomings’ in historical knowledge among its members (EhimeJosei-shi Sakuru 1959: 17).

In fact, many of the articles and discussions to appear in Mugi that discussedMarxian history focused upon points raised during the Ehime Circle’s readings ofInoue Kiyoshi. For example, the 20 October 1959 edition of Mugi devoted itselfto discussing the emperor system during the Meiji era (1868–1911), a theme thathad been an essential starting point for Marxian history as a whole in Japan imme-diately after the war.13 In general, historical issues dealt with during the first fewyears of the journal included the growth of peasants and the working class duringthe Meiji period, the formation of Japanese imperialism and the Russo-JapaneseWar, the development of Japanese capitalism and the relationship between thedomestic economic system and Japanese imperialism. Their friendship with andadmiration for Marxian historians was not the only reason the Ehime Circle,from its inception, maintained an interest in Marxian historical approaches. LikeIshimoda Sho, Uehara Senroku, Matsumoto Shinpachiro and Inoue Kiyoshi, theEhime Circle maintained that postwar Japan was once again headed down theroad of fascism and militarism at the hands of American imperialism in East Asiaas a result of the Cold War.

The tactics of the chi’iki as a model for regional women’s history

In a more practical sense, Mugi also served as an outlet through which the group’sinterface of textual study and social activism could be chronicled, documentedand preserved. Although there are many examples of this, perhaps the most in-teresting case involved the 50th International Women’s Day held in Matsuyamain 1960 and sponsored by the Ehime Circle. The event was itself noteworthy asit illustrated the desire of women in Ehime to link their own region to the largerhistory of East Asia and provided a means by which Mugi could demonstrate the

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importance of combining study with action and history reading with social life. Inother words, by discussing and recounting the International Women’s Day eventsheld in Matsuyama the Ehime Circle could illustrate, through Mugi, that historywas about the synthesis of study and activism, historical knowledge and historywriting. This important link would, moreover, strengthen the role of history writ-ing as a set of tactics through which local women might attain agency in ways notbeholden to larger discourses or institutions.

The central narrative behind this attempt at documenting the link betweenhistorical knowledge and social activism at the International Women’s Day wasthe historical dramatization organized and performed by the Ehime Circle, enti-tled ‘Variety Special: The History of Women’. This was, in essence, an historicaldramatization of contemporary historical events and political conditions that af-fected Japan, Korea and China. By performing this historical dramatization onstage, members of the Ehime group hoped to ‘introduce the conditions and his-tories of women, from very different places, in order to strengthen a feeling ofinternational solidarity’ among women (Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 1960a: 4). Con-versely, members of the Ehime group also felt confident that the InternationalWomen’s Day would be an opportunity to ‘introduce the history of East Asiato housewives and working women in Ehime through historical dramatizations’(Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 2003). With a greater appreciation of how Japan hadcolonized Korea and China before the war, and in turn been ‘colonized’ by theUnited States thereafter,14 women in Ehime could come to greater realization ofthe need to work for peace and democratic education in Ehime. As members ofthe group noted, analogously, these kinds of dramatization activity had by the late1950s become an important part of local resistance in Ehime by young teachersinterested in motivating young people and reinforcing their own commitment to‘democratic education that supported peace’ (Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 1996: 3).

The 25 March 1960 edition of Mugi chronicled the International Women’s Dayevents and noted that the dramatization was translated into English and wouldbe introduced at the 1961 Copenhagen International Women’s Committee. Thiswas not only noteworthy in its own right, but also was remarkable because Copen-hagen had requested three copies of the text, something the Ehime group had notexpected ‘in its wildest dreams’ (Ehime Josei-shi Sakuru 1960: 11). In fact, theresponse to the 1960 International Women’s Day historical dramatization was sooverwhelming that the group’s members decided to think about future opportuni-ties to perform. It also provided a concrete example of how the chi’iki (or region)could become a site of discursive resistance to the national/local hierarchy codifiedwithin Marxian history and official forms of local history (chiho-shi and ken-shi).History could be presented in ways that linked it to East Asia rather than to Tokyoor to the discourse of the unitary subject ‘Japan’. In a manner of speaking, then, theEhime Circle’s presentation disturbed the imagined hierarchy of the national/localand the meta-narrative of Japan as a culturally and geographically constituted ho-mogeneity. While retaining some of the epistemology and methodology of Marxian

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approaches, therefore, local residents in Ehime were able to develop the practiceof history writing in ways that subverted Marxian strategies developed earlier byprofessional historians and nationally organized campaigns for history writing.

Conclusion

The tactics through which the Ehime Women’s History Circle indirectly chal-lenged Marxian historical strategies and institutions were, moreover, to have res-onance beyond the 1950s. As Uehara Senroku himself declared (1977 [1968]:452), the ‘regional history of Ehime’ (chi’iki Ehime no rekishi) that developed dur-ing the 1950s helped provide a model that could be useful nationwide for regionalwomen’s history-writing groups. It was no coincidence that Uehara wrote thesewords the same year the Ehime Circle’s A Social History of Capitalism in Ehimewas published (Shinozaki 1968). Written collectively by Circle members, this vol-ume sought to synthesize the group’s thinking about history in Ehime that hadbegun under the banner of ‘regional women’s history’. Now confident that re-gional women’s history could be utilized by women’s history-writing groups inany part of Japan, members of the group systematically wrote about the methodsand characteristics of the approach they originally developed in the early 1950s.This subsequent stage represented the culmination of their effort to bring out theinternal problems, or ‘contradictions’, inherent in everyday life in Ehime.

By the following decade, the Ehime Circle was helping to bring about the cre-ation of a nationwide network of regional women’s history-writing groups (EhimeJosei-shi Sakuru 1979: 14–21). In fact, the Regional Women’s History Movement(Chi’iki Josei-shi Undo) drew upon the Ehime example in seeing history writing assomething directly linked to socio-political change (Orii 2001). Similar groups, toemerge all around Japan, sought to fuse historical knowledge with social activismby educating the public on issues like consumer protection, voting rights, schoolcurricula and international peace. As Ehime member Kumito Fujiko recalls, theEhime Women’s History Circle also co-sponsored a landmark National Women’sConference. Held in Nagoya in 1977, the conference was conceived by EhimeCircle members upon the publication of the Ehime group’s A 30-Year HistoricalChronology of the Postwar Women’s Movement in Ehime (Kumito 1979: 14). This na-tionwide conference encouraged the formation of women’s history-writing groupsall around Japan, in effect leading the way for a grass-roots nationwide forum todevelop during the late 1970s. Indeed, the efforts of the Ehime Women’s HistoryCircle led to the regular convening of such conferences and marked the fulfilmentof the Ehime group’s goal of stimulating the creation of other regional women’shistory-writing groups near and far.15

What de Certeau has called the ‘strategic productions’ of cultural projects andinstitutions thus need not be limited to the traditional fare of conservative dis-courses rationalising the modern capitalist state. As the Ehime case illustrates,Marxian narratives and approaches, while emboldening women, at the same time

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exteriorized them by creating a universal subject of Japanese women. Not satisfiedwith the mere writing of women into history and the praxis of history writing assomething that could serve a homogenized women’s time, the Ehime Women’sHistory Circle showed that women could in effect challenge the idea that theconcept of ‘man’ (and that of the nation – or minzoku) was a ‘generic, universalcategory typifying everything human’ (Spongberg 2002: 5) and modern in Japan.Ultimately, then, the Ehime example lends support to the claim that even radicalhistories and social movements can become strategies towards which those whotake self-representation as the true basis for subjectivity can claim difference andresistance. In this sense, the Ehime examples illustrate that new forms of subjec-tivity created through historical practice can also exist outside the bounds of the‘left/right’ dichotomy and occupy a much richer terrain that draws in elements ofgender, place and identity.

Leiden University

Notes

1. Kurahara Korehito was a specialist in Russian literature and helped establish the JapaneseProletarian League (Nihon Puroretaria Bungaku Renmei ) during the early 1920s. In 1932 he wasarrested and imprisoned for seven years. He became a member of the Central Committee of theJapan Communist Party after the war and continued to refine his ideas about the relationshipof the working class to social change.

2. The Gramscian concept of hegemony has been defined as ‘Intellectual or moral leadership,particularly by one class or part of a class over others’. See Perry (2002: 164).

3. Ishimoda Sho graduated from Tokyo University and specialized in pre-modern Japanese history.He was both a didactic and charismatic figure within the Movement for a People’s History.Eguchi Bokuro was a specialist in international relations as well as European history and was aprofessor at the University of Tokyo.

4. The Historical Science Society was founded in 1932 and continues to this day. The Associationof Democratic Scientists, established in 1946, was an early postwar organization of historiansand other progressive intellectuals committed to bridging the gap between elites and ordinarypeople.

5. Gluck elsewhere notes that ‘rarely in history has the scrutiny of a blighted past so systematicallybeen made the basis for fundamental societal change’ (1992: 4) as in Japan during the earlypostwar period.

6. Inoue Kiyoshi was a colleague of Ishimoda and a participant in the Movement for a People’sHistory. Educated at the University of Tokyo, he specialized in modern Japanese political historyand later taught at Kyoto University.

7. Matsumoto was an historian of pre-modern Japan affiliated with the Historical Science Societyand was a colleague of Ishimoda Sho. He was also from Matsumoto City in Ehime Prefectureand had ties to the Ehime Women’s History Circle.

8. Inoue’s colleague Uehara Senroku was an historian specializing in German history and worldhistory. During the early postwar period he became interested in how Japanese history might beread in the context of world history and eventually became chancellor of Hitotsubashi Universityin Tokyo.

9. Marxian approaches to history on the whole often do not look to history writing as an existentialtool, but rather focus upon how historical processes and structures define the individual’s rolein history. See, for example, Rigby (1998).

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10. Here it should be noted that the phrase ‘joko aishi’ was originally something from the prewarperiod. See Hosoi (1929).

11. Here I refer the reader to Minshushugi Kagakusha Kyokai (1955).12. One look at the journals in local history (see Chiho-shi Kenkyu 2001) during the 1950s confirms

that Marxian approaches to local history (chiho-shi) did not sufficiently include the voices ofwomen. Thus, it is no surprise that the Ehime group – and other similar groups to follow –conceptualized their regional histories as alternatives to these.

13. I refer the reader to texts such as Rekishigaku Kenkyukai (1947).14. The ‘colonization’ of the nation, or minzoku, to an illegitimate state created and sustained by

American imperialism was an important theme for Marxists in the early postwar era. See Gayle(2003).

15. After the first in Nagoya 1977, these were again held in 1981 (Asahikawa), 1983 (Kanagawa),1986 (Matsuyama), 1992 (Okinawa), 1994 (Yamagata) 1998 (Kanagawa), 2001 (Gifu), and2003 (Niigata).

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Curtis Anderson Gayle is a postdoctoral research fellow at Leiden University. His doctoral re-search (ANU 2005) traced the emergence of local and regional women’s history in postwar Japan.Previous publications include Marxist History and Postwar Japanese Nationalism (RoutledgeCurzon,2003). His current research focuses on how proletarian culture was constructed in 1920s Japan onthe level of ideas and within movements promoting specific forms of material culture. He may becontacted at [email protected].

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