We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Recrafting Marriage in Meiji Hawai'i, 1885–1913.
- Authors
Takai, Yukari
- Abstract
This paper examines the hitherto understudied praxis surrounding marriage, in particular, temporary marriage, wife sale and marriage brokerage among Hawaiian Japanese from 1885 to 1913. It argues that marriage and gender relations of Issei men and women were far more complex and, at times, more disruptive than previously understood. It also argues how marriage and migration became a locus where immigrant women and men assumed greater agency over their lives by exploiting or defying the very links between marriage and migration that nation-states, Japanese and American, sanctioned and privileged. In doing so, the paper seeks to reconsider the persistence of the normative ideology of ‘good wife, wise mother’, that is, the Meiji-era ideal of womanhood, which has underpinned the historical portrayal of Japanese immigrant women as hardworking, loyal and faithful mothers and wives. The paper also seeks to show how deeply the history of early Japanese Hawai’i remained rooted in Japan’s long history of marriage, gender relations and its state engineering, despite an emphasis that scholarly research has tended to place on the impact of migration and the new Hawaiian context. Ultimately, the paper highlights that in many ways, the Meiji Hawai’i in which Issei men and women lived, worked and travelled was a world apart from the one that Meiji officials and American/Hawaiian bureaucrats strove to impose.
- Subjects
MARRIAGE customs &; rites; HAWAIIAN history; ISSEI; HISTORY of marriage; JAPANESE Americans; SOCIAL conditions of women
- Publication
Gender & History, 2019, Vol 31, Issue 3, p646
- ISSN
0953-5233
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1468-0424.12444