Free Download Akiko Takenaka, "Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan"
English | ISBN: 0824898532 | 2025 | 224 pages | PDF | 10 MB
Mothers Against War examines the shifting relationships among motherhood, peace activism, and women’s rights in the decades following Japan’s defeat in 1945. With a focus on the concept of bosei, generally understood to be the "motherly" qualities that are supposedly inherent to women, the book illuminates how popular perceptions of the mother, the child, and the mother-child relationship gradually evolved to create the image that mothers, more than anyone else, protect children from war. This image did not result simply from a mothers’ desire to keep their children safe, nor was it the outcome of the Japanese experience of the Asia-Pacific War in which many mothers became widowed or lost their children. Through the examination of five instances of peace activism that took place between 1945 and 1980, Mothers Against War
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