UC Irvine

During the Asia-Pacific War, Japan mobilized women in support of the Japanese Empire by capitalizing upon decades of patriarchal and nationalist ideas that had been embedded within society and these women. Japanese women were drafted into volunteering for women’s defense organizations, most prominently the Greater Japan National Defense Women's Association (Dai Nihon Kokubo-fujin) in the 1940s, and they were tasked with being mothers not only to the families they were supposed to form and grow but to the nation as a whole. The role of Japanese women in the war was rarely focused upon in traditional discussions of the war until Japanese feminist artist Shimada Yoshiko decided to probe into the unique manipulation and mobilization of Japanese women into enthusiastic fascists. Her artistic oeuvre includes etchings, installations, collage, and performance works, all of which focus on some aspect of the Asia Pacific War as related to Japanese women and most often Korean ‘comfort women’. A key component of many of her artworks is the usage of politically charged clothing to illustrate the banalities of everyday nationalism. This thesis focuses upon her usage of the Japanese kappōgi, a white apron that became conflated with motherhood, and the iconic kimono in an analysis of how clothing was positioned as a (false) liberator for Japanese women while other Asian women suffered at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army. Dealing with positionality and memory, Shimada’s artworks illustrate how the Japanese state and society capitalized upon the seemingly innocent nature of clothing to construct and enforce nationalist divisions between Japanese women and other Asian women and appeal to Japanese women’s desire for a larger sense of freedom and importance within the Japanese Empire.