Acting like a Woman in Modern Japan

AYAKO KANO is Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on Japanese theater, literature, and gender studies. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She is currently at work on a book about Japanese feminist debates.

• PART I: SETTING THE STAGE Acting Like a Woman Modern Formations of Gender and Performance PART II: KAWAKAMI SADAYAKKO Wifeing the Woman Straightening the Theater Reproducing the Empire PART III: MATSUI SUMAKO A New Woman A New Theater Feminists and Femmes Fatales Epilogue: Revealing the Real Body

'A sophisticated analysis of the relationship between the 'new theater,' the 'new woman,' the new nation, and the new empire in turn of the twentieth-century Japan, engagingly told through the stories of the two actresses who pioneered women (rather than men) playing women's roles on the Japanese stage. A meaningful and mesmerizing book.' - Carol Gluck, Columbia University