Gender and Culture: East Asia
Books and films
China
Barlow, Tan E.
The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism
Brownell, Susan & Wasserstrom, Jeffrey
Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader
Cahill, Suzanne
Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in
Medieval China
Chang, Chia-lan
Family Matters: Women’s Negotiation with Confucian Family Ethics in
Qing and Republican China.
Chang, Jung
Wild Swans: Three Daughters in China
Cheng, Nian
Life and Death in Shanghai
Cleary, Thomas (trans.)
Immortal Sisters: Secret Teachings of Taoist Women (1996)
Croll, Elisabeth
The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (2010)
Endangered Daughters: Discrimination and Development in Asia
(Routledge, 2001)
Changing Identities of Chinese Women: Rhetoric, Experience and SelfPerception in 20th Century China (1995)
Feminism and Socialism in China (1988)
Chinese Women since Mao (1984)
Women in Rural Development: Critical Issues (1980)
Davin, Delia B.
Du, Guangting
Woman-work: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China (1979)
“Chinese Women: Media Concerns and Politics of Reform” in Afshar.H. ed.
Women and Politics in the Third World (London: Routledge, 1996)
Divine Traces of the Daoist Sisterhood: Records of the Assembled Transcendents
of the Fortified Walled City (Suzanne E. Cahill Translated)
Edwards, Louise
Men and Women in Qing China: Gender in the Red Chamber Dream
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Walthal & Palais
East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History (2008)
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley
Women and the Family in Chinese History ( New York : Routledge, 2003)
Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd Ed (1993)
Inner Quarter: marriage and the lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period
Evans, Harriet
The Subject of Gender: Daughter and Mothers in Urban China (2008)
Grant, Beata
Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China (2008)
Gilmartin, Christina.
Engendering China: Women, Culture and the State (1994)
Glosser, Susan
Chinese Visions of Family and State: 1915-1953
Guisso and Johannesen, eds., Women in China
Hershatter, Gail
The Gender of Memory: Rural women and China’s Collective Past (2011)
Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century (2007)
Dangerous Pleasures: prostitution and modernity in twentieth-century Shanghai
(Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999)
Holdsworth, May
Women of the Tang Dynasty (1999)
Honig, Emily & Hershatter, Gail
Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s (1988)
Honig, Emily
Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949
Hsiung, Ping-Chun
Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite Factory System in
Taiwan (Temple Univ. Press, 1996)
Judge, Joan
The Precious Raft of History: the Past, the West, and the Woman Question in
China (Stanford University Press, c2008)
Klein, Anne C.
Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self
(2008)
Kung, Lydia
Factory Women in Taiwan (Columbia Univ. Press, 1994)
Ko, Dorothy
Cinderella’s Sister: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (2007)
Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in seventeenth
China (1994)
Private Lives, Public Morality: Women and the State in the Ming-Qing
Transition (1992)
Ko, Dorothy, Haboush & Piggott
Women and Confucian Cultures: In Pre-modern China, Korea and Japan (2003)
Ko, Dorothy & Wang
Translating Feminism in China (2007)
Lan, Hua
Women in Republican China (1999)
Lee, Ching Kwan
Gender and the South China Miracle
Li, Yu-ning
Chinese Women through Chinese Eyes (1992)
Mann, Susan
The Talented Women of the Zhang Family (2007)
Precious Records: Women in China’s Long 18th Century (1997)
Mann, Susan & Cheng
Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (2001)
O’Hara, Albert Richard
The position of woman in early China according to the Lieh nu chuan, "The
biographies of eminent Chinese women" (Westport, Conn. : Hyperion Press,
1981.)
Ono, Kazuko
Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution (1988)
Paul Diana Y.
Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in the Mahayana Tradition
(U. of California, 1985)
Peterson, Barbara Bennett, et al.
Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century
(2000).
Pruitt, Ida
A Daughter Of Han: The Autobiography Of A Chinese Working Woman
Old Madam Yin: A Memoir of Peking Life
Ramusack, Barbara & Sievers
Women in Asia: Restoring Women to History
Roces, Mina & Edwards, Louise
Women’s Movement in Asia: Feminism and Transnational Activism. (2010)
Schneider, Helen M.
Keeping the Nation’s House: Domestic Management and the making of Modern
Shen, Fu
Six Records of a Floating Life
Stearns, Peter N.
Gender in world history (New York ; London : Routledge, 2006)
Tam, Kwok-kan & Yip, Terry Siu-nan
Gender, Discourses and the Self in Literature: Issues in mainland China, Taiwan
and Hong Kong
Tao Jie
Holding up Half the Sky: Chinese Women Past, Present, and Future
Wang, Robin
Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture (2003)
Wolf, Margery
Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China.
Wolf, Margery et al
Women in Chinese Society ( Stanford University Press, 1975)
Wu, Hu
Once Iron Girls: Essays on Gender by Post-Mao Chinese Literary Women.
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Xie, Bingying
A Woman Soldier's Own Story (Columbia Univ. Press, 2001)
Xinran, Xinran
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
Yao, Esther Shu-Shin Lee
Chinese Women: Past and Present (1983)
Zhong & Wang
Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing up in the Mao Era
Zurndorfer, Harriet
Chinese Women in the Imperial Past, a New Perspective (1999)
Korea
Cho, Eun-su
Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen: Hidden Histories, Enduring Vitality
(SUNY 2011)
Kendall, Laurel
Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in
the Republic of Korea (U. of Hawaii Press, 2001)
Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity (U. of Cal. Press
1996)
Korean Women: View from Inner Room (1983)
Kim, Elaine H.
Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism (1998)
Kim, Yung-Hee
Questioning Minds: Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers (2010)
Kim-Renaud, Young-Key
Creative Women of Korea: The Fifteenth Through the Twentieth Centuries
(2003)
Haboush, JaHyun Kim
The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown
Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea (1996)
Moon, Katharine H. S. Sex among Allies (Columbia Univ. Press, 1997)
Moon, Seungsook
Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Duke Univ.
Press, 2005)
Shin, Jae-hyo
The Tale of Chun Hyang (Silk Pagoda, 2010)
Soh, C. Sarah
The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea
and Japan (Univ. of Chicago, 2009)
Japan
Arai, Paula Kane Robinson
Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999)
Ariyoshi, Sawako
The Twilight Years
Bernstein, Gail Lee
Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (Univ. of CA press, 1991)
Haruko's World: A Japanese Farm Woman and Her Community (1983)
Bingham, Marjorie Wall & Gross
Women in Japan: From Ancient Times to the Present (Women in World Area
Studies 1987)
Buckley, Sandra
Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism (U. of Cal. Press, 1997)
Enchi, Fukomi
The Waiting years (a novel)
Faison, Elyssa
Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan (Univ. of CA press,
2007)
Fujimura-Fanselow, K., Kameda, A.
Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future
(The Feminist Press 1995)
Imamura, Anne E.
Re-Imaging Japanese Women (Univ. of CA press, 1996)
Itoh, Masako
Iwao, Sumiko
Kawakami, Sumie
Leupp, Gary
Mackie, Vera
I'm Married to Your Company!: Everyday Voices of Japanese Women (Asian
Voices) 2007
Japanese Women (Free Press, 1998)
Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman
Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (Univ. of
Cal. press, 1997)
Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality
(Contemporary Japanese Society. Cambridge U. Press, 2003)
Meeks, Lori
Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan
(U. of Hawaii, 2010)
Molony, Barbara & Uno
Gendering Modern Japanese History (Harvard Univ. Press, 2008)
Morley, Patricia
The Mountain is moving: Japanese Women’s Lives (1999)
Murasaki, Shikibu
Diary of Lady Murasaki (Penguin Classics, 1999)
Nakano, Makiko
Makiko's Diary: A Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto
Ruch, Barbara
Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan (U. of Michigan,
2002)
Seishonagon
The Pillow Book (Penguin Classics, 2007)
Sievers, Sharon
Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan
(1983)
Soh, C. Sarah
Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and postcolonial memory in Korea and Japan
(2008)
Soto, Barbara
The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan
(Duke Univ. Press, 2003)
Sugimoto, Etsu Inagaki A Daughter of the Samurai (2003)
Suzuki, Michiko
Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese
Literature and Culture (Stanford Univ.Press, 2009)
Tachibanaki, Toshiaki New Paradox for Japanese Women: Greater Choice, Greater Equality (2010)
Tanizaki, Junichiro
Naomi (a novel)
Yamakawa, Kikue
Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life (Stanford
Unv. Press, 2002)
Films
Documentary
The Great step Forward: China Women in the 20th century.
A two-part look at how Chinese women broke with their age-old traditions of subservience and
prejudice to confront issues and agitate for reforms in the 20th century.
Pt. 1. From Confucius to Mao (54 min.)
Pt. 2. From Mao towards full equality (55 min.)
A CCTV and Southern Star production ; produced by Yuan Zhengming ... [et al.]
; writers, Peter George, Christopher McCollough ; directed by Liu Chun.
Princeton, N.J. : Films for the Humanities & Sciences, c2002.
The Women's Kingdom (22 min.)
“Keepers of one of the last matriarchal societies in the world, Mosuo women in a remote area of
southwest China live beyond the strictures of mainstream Chinese culture-- enjoying great
freedoms and carrying heavy responsibilities. Filmmaker Xiaoli Zhou takes a fascinating journey
into the heart of The Women's Kingdom to discover a society of powerful women whose future is
on the brink of change"--Container.
Directed and produced by Xiaoli Zhou; German Camera Productions.
New York : Women Make Movies, c2006.
Small Happiness: Women of a Chinese Village (58 min.)
“Small Happiness explores sexual politics in rural China with segments on love and marriage,
foot-binding, child-bearing and birth control”. Directed by Carma Hinton, 1984)
China Blue (86 min.)
“CHINA BLUE takes viewers inside a blue jeans factory in southern China, where teenage
workers struggle to survive harsh working conditions. Providing perspectives from both the top
and bottom levels of the factory’s hierarchy, the film looks at complex issues of globalization
from the human level”. Directed by Micha Peled (2005).
China’s Lost Girls (43 min.)
“As most couples in China are limited to having only one child, the bias toward boys leaves many
girl babies aborted or abandoned. Lisa Ling travels to China with some of the many American
families who are adopting Chinese baby girls. In China, she examines the social pressures to have
male children and the effects of the resulting gender imbalance.” National Geographic Television
Program (2004)
Mother’s Way, Daughter’s Choice
“Why would successful women from the world’s second largest economic power choose to start
their lives over in New York City? The documentary “Mothers’ Way, Daughters’ Choice”
explores how several Japanese women struggle to reconcile their traditional upbringing and their
desire to create unique lives. To understand these struggles, the director, Kyoko Gasha, shows the
deep, powerful influences of Japanese culture on her own life. Kyoko also uncovers stories of
other Japanese women in New York City, weaving parallel tales of guilt, denial, sacrifice and joy.
This is a story of cultures clashing on a personal level.”
Directed by Kyoto Gasha (2009)
Feature Films:
Raise the Red Lantern (directed by Zhang Yimou), 125 min.
In 1920's China, an educated young woman became a rich man’s fourth concubine
Autumn Gem (directed by Rae Chang)
Autumn Gem portrays the life of Qiu Jin, the woman revolutionary at the turn of the 20th century.
“It is the first documentary feature on Qiu Jin in the U.S. Using scholar interviews, archival
materials, and dramatic recreation scenes based on her original writings, AUTUMN GEM brings
the story of Qiu Jin to life”. (2009) http://autumn-gem.com/about/
A Women's Story (directed by Peng Xiaolian), 96 min.
The impact of traditional customs on Chinese women in the modern world is depicted in this
story of a young girl faced with an impending, arranged marriage and her curiosity about urban
life. Series Perspectives on Chinese Cinema / Shanghai Film Studio, The People's Republic of
China. New York, N.Y. : The International Film Circuit, Inc.[distributor] (1992)
Sandakan No. 8 (directed by Kei Kumai), 121 min.
An elderly Japanese woman, Osaki, tells the story of being tricked into prostitution in the 1920s.
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 1975.
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (directed by Ang Lee), 124 min.
A light-hearted comedy about a family in Taiwan, the film depicts the relationship between the
father and his three grown daughters. In the time of economic growth, the family values
(Confucian) face challenges and the social boundary becomes blurry.
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 1994.
Shall We Dance? (directed by Masayuki Suo), 119 min. (1996)
A Japanese comedy, the film captures the stereotypical images of salary-man husband, his long
train-ride home at night and his quiet, suffering wife.
The Tale of Chunhyang 120 min.(2000)
A forbidden love story between a governor’s son and the daughter of a courtesan; set in 18th
Century Korea.