ABSTRACT

In this chapter I will show a moment in Japanese history when a woman's identity was in the process of being newly constructed, through a renegotiation of interior and exterior spaces. The moment comes in the wake of the great Kanto earthquake which wiped out most of Tokyo on 23 September 1923, after which Japan entered a frenzied period of rapid rebuilding, of modernisation and westernisation (seen then as synonymous processes). At the same time, the image of women was undergoing its own process of modernisation! westernisation, in terms of gender roles, sexual relations and spatial practices. Indeed, as Gail Lee Bernstein has stated, the 1920s was a period when 'the nature, status and proper sphere of women became the preoccupation of bureaucrats, journalists and women alike' (Bernstein 1991 :65).