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Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan

Sharon Sievers

3.97 · Rating details · 38 ratings · 7 reviews

This is the first book to examine the changing roles of women in Japan during the four decades following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a period of sweeping political, social, and economic change. The book concentrates on those Japanese women who were outspoken critics of their society and the roles women were assigned in it, but also assesses the contributions women made ...more

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Paperback, 256 pages

Published June 1st 1983 by Stanford University Press

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Jul 05, 2017 Richard rated it really liked it

Shelves: japan-related

I found out about this book via my perusal of a bibliography of another book on women in Japan which I had read. I am glad I was able to get it via my local public library because it was quite well done.

Sievers did a great job of weaving the political and social history of Japan from the mid 19th century into the first two decades of the 20th with interesting depictions of individual women who struggled to gain the freedom and rights that (a small number of) men had in the country. Despite ther ...more

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May 17, 2015 Arlian rated it really liked it

I would give this book 5 stars, but I had to take a star (and maybe a star and a half?) off for inaccuracies.

Let me give you a direct quote written about the "High Treason Incident":
"After a secret trial, conducted with great dispatch, twelve socialists, including Koutoku Shuusui and Kanno Suga were hanged."

Kanno Suga was an anarchist, not a socialist and the "High Treason Incident" was a case of primarily anarchists being hanged. Sievers also mislabels Osugi Sakae as a Socialist. I am providi I would give this book 5 stars, but I had to take a star (and maybe a star and a half?) off for inaccuracies.

Let me give you a direct quote written about the "High Treason Incident":
"After a secret trial, conducted with great dispatch, twelve socialists, including Koutoku Shuusui and Kanno Suga were hanged."

Kanno Suga was an anarchist, not a socialist and the "High Treason Incident" was a case of primarily anarchists being hanged. Sievers also mislabels Osugi Sakae as a Socialist. I am providing a link to a Wikipedia article about the High Treason incident. Further Helene Bowen Raddeker's book "Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan" discusses Kanno Suga at length.

Given that Wikipedia and the Internet did not exist when Sievers wrote her book, it means she had to do legwork on this book in a way that we youngun's of today probably can't really understand. Further, I've said elsewhere that inaccuracies and errors are, unfortunately, unavoidable to some degree in all scholarship for a variety of different reasons. However in each instance when I discover an error in a book I wonder--what other errors are there that I DIDN'T catch because I'm not super familiar with the topic? I also wonder what are the *reasons* for the errors? Did Sievers have inaccurate information available to her? Did she misinterpret the available information? Does she not understand the difference between "anarchist" and "socialist"? Or does she, for some reason, have a commitment or interest in the word "socialist" that causes her to skew some bits of history? While I enjoyed the book, I obviously have reservations about trusting the information contained inside it. Yet at the same time I am sympathetic to how hard it is to be one of the forerunners of research on a topic where information is very difficult to get in English (or even in Japanese!!).

Other points of confusion for me: this author claims that Itou Noe was anti-abortion. This is possible, for sure. Anything is possible. But Itou Noe was Japan's first Anarcha-feminist, heavily inspired by Nietzsche and Stirner. She was in a relationship with Tsuji Jun (an anarchist, feminist, surrealist, playwright and translator of "The Ego and It's Own") for a brief time. It's hard for me to imagine Itou Noe as being "Anti-Abortion", especially for the stated reason of her being "opposed to anything unnatural". Again--people are complicated, so people CAN hold contradictory ideas but this particular idea is hard to square with all other known facts I've heard, seen, and read about Noe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Tr... ...more

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Jan 28, 2016 Alexandra Eremia rated it it was amazing

"If it is true that men are better than women because they are stronger, why aren't our sumo wrestlers in the government?"
Kishida Toshiko, 19th Century Japanese Feminist ...more

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Nov 12, 2010 Leifer rated it liked it

Shelves: grad-school-reading

A very interesting intro, though it skips between general history and biography in a slightly uninteresting way. Sievers gets mad props from me for putting this attempt together. The writing is sympathetic, nuanced, and careful in a way that i really appreciate (considering the subject matter and the author's status). It would have been easy to screw this up.

I would like to see how this connected to art more. Tough to find an anthology on visual art and feminist consciousness... ...more

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May 15, 2016 Adam rated it really liked it

Shelves: exploration-of-japanese-lit-manga

Kanna Suga (1906): "Rise up, women! Wake up! As in the struggle workers are engaged in against capitalists to break down the class system, our demands for freedom and equality with men will not be women easily just because we will it; they will not be won if we do not raise our voices, if no blood is shed." That is frickin' tough. I need to read more of her stuff. She seems to have bled righteousness. ...more

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May 05, 2010 Chelsea Szendi rated it liked it

Shelves: japan

Siever's application of the idea that in anxious times of rapid social change, women are forces into the role of the keepers of tradition plays out very nicely here. This is an important book because it offers a corrective to so many histories of modern Japan in which men are the only actors. However, its analytic mode of "feminist consciousness" seems a little tired and outdated. ...more

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