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Papers by Sarah Frederick
Testing the Margins of Leisure, 2019
Analyzes the cultural capital attached to gendered leisure activity and work in the story Stella ... more Analyzes the cultural capital attached to gendered leisure activity and work in the story Stella Dallas as it moves from novel to film and from the United States to Japan to create its own genre of mother melodrama as A Mother’s Song (Haha no kyoku, 1936). By comparing these texts and their creators, the chapter develops an understanding of the symbolic properties of leisure across cultures in the early twentieth century. It argues that various versions of the story use the category of the girl (shōjo) to explore a potential space of leisure outside the workplace or the heterosexual family unit. Of course, this space was also easily occupied by expectations that the leisure would cultivate the young woman’s taste and domestic skills. Considering a flexible use of the concept of affective labor, the paper looks at the ways these texts used aspirational activities on the edges of “leisure” to negotiate various anxieties surrounding wage and unpaid domestic labor by women in the early twentieth century in relationship to class and sexual identities. A central case is the use of piano playing in the Japanese versions as a multifaceted activity, both work and leisure, that could represent good taste and potential for marriage, while also providing access to professional activity and a way for women to support themselves outside the family structure. In the Japanese case, this allowed them to remain permanently attached to what was seen as girl culture, including aspirations to cross cultural spaces and media, as does the entertaining story Stella Dallas.
US - Japan Women's Journal: English Supplement, 2002
UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is an archive of life sciences journal literature.
U S Japan Women S Journal, Feb 1, 2002
UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is an archive of life sciences journal literature.
Japan Forum, 2013
Kagayaku (1933–1941) was an offshoot of Nyonin geijutsu (Women's arts) that continued after ... more Kagayaku (1933–1941) was an offshoot of Nyonin geijutsu (Women's arts) that continued after Nyonin geijutsu shut down in 1932. This simple four-page leaflet extended the already complex vision of Nyonin geijutsu. This article focuses on Kagayaku's strong tendency to include writings by women intellectuals and artists living outside Japan, with contributions by women in North America, Europe, Brazil, the Philippines, Russia and China. It argues that, even as the publication was drawn into the nationalist discourses of an increasingly militarized Japan, these writings often reflected an increasingly cosmopolitan and eclectic perspective on culture, race, and ethnicity. At times, this tendency was tied to a ‘co-prosperity sphere’ image of Asia, but such an ideological category does not capture the writings meaningfully. Through close analysis of a few key texts from Kagayaku, this article draws attention to the ways the tensions between art and politics and gender and class that characterized Nyonin geijutsu played out in the wartime context.
Bad Girls of Japan, 2005
Not That Innocent: Yoshiya Nobuko's Good Girls
An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries workin... more An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBNs for this book are 9780824878382 (PDF) and 9780824878375 (EPUB). More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.
Choice Reviews Online, 2007
Turning Pages makes sense of Japanese "ladies magazines" through a detailed analysis of several i... more Turning Pages makes sense of Japanese "ladies magazines" through a detailed analysis of several interwar magazines, including the literary journal Ladies Review (Fujin koron) the popular domestic periodical Housewife's Friend (Shufu no tomo), and the politically radical magazine Women's Arts (Nyonin geijutsu). Through a close examination of their literature, articles, advertising, and art, the book explores the magazines as both windows onto and actors in this period of Japanese history.
The Journal of Japanese Studies, 2008
about consumption. Zwicker also uses apparently stable title counts to argue that changes in prin... more about consumption. Zwicker also uses apparently stable title counts to argue that changes in printing technology had little impact on the publication of literature in the nineteenth century, but print runs would be the defi nitive measure. For Zwicker’s argument, perhaps a more critical problem is that title counting says little about who is reading a book. Comparing Meijiperiod publishing rates of “modern novels written in Japanese,” “Edo fi ction” in reprint, and translations of foreign literature, Zwicker cites the low number of foreign titles as evidence of the limited impact of European fi ction (pp. 149–50). Whether the general public was reading European fi ction matters little to arguments on European infl uence, however, which always stress what writers read. (Why Zwicker distinguishes in this case between “modern novels” and “Edo fi ction”—described as “the previous dominant form”—is unclear.) Perhaps to head off such objections, Zwicker says that literary history that does not rely on quantitative methods is “anecdotal” and inadequate by itself, although he uses anecdote effectively (p. 146). Many of the most compelling arguments in Practices of the Sentimental Imagination come from good reasoning based on a group of sources, as in the author’s history of the use of shōsetsu and painstaking formal analyses of works such as Tora no maki and Hototogisu. However incomplete, Zwicker’s quantitative investigations contribute to a grasp of the materiality of literary form that places the economic, ideological, and aesthetic work of literature at the center of a research agenda. Zwicker’s willingness to reconsider under the rubric of the rise of the novel two periods normally kept at arm’s length likewise opens avenues for investigations crossing the false division between premodern and modern that structures, and hobbles, the study of Japanese literature. This bold book, written with a great deal of dash, deserves attention.
annual meeting of Association for Japanese Literary Studies, Hanover, NH, Oct 7, 2005
Throughout the twentieth century, the production, distribution, and consumption of Japanese kimon... more Throughout the twentieth century, the production, distribution, and consumption of Japanese kimono underwent tremendous changes as the Japanese nation made efforts to be perceived as modern and international. By focusing on its material form as well as representations of kimono in texts and images both within Japan and beyond its borders, this research group intends to reveal how shifts in the design and use of the physical garment and its representation in multiple media throughout this one-hundred-year span were intimately tied to the Japanese nation's evolving status in a dynamic global setting. The multi-disciplinary research group comprises four members; two Americans and two Japanese. Terry Milhaupt investigates chronological shifts in kimono design by examining the materials and decorative techniques involved in the production of kimono for domestic and international consumption. Sarah Frederick analyzes representations of kimono in American and Japanese literature and po...
This chapter focuses on the translation of Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) by Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1... more This chapter focuses on the translation of Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) by Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980) in the early 1910s and the influence on Japanese feminism of the writings of this thinker. While some writings on sexuality in Japan have lumped Carpenter with sexologists who were seen to have brought restrictions upon a premodern flexibility about same-sex relations, we see instead a modernist and international queer discourse to which many connected themselves and through which ideas about sexuality and social ethics were linked and developed. The chapter focuses especially on personal affiliations and translation, as understood through Carpenter’s correspondence with Japanese thinkers and Yamakawa’s personal observations in the feminist community of the Taishō era (1912–1926). Through analysis of rhetorical style and translation choices, this chapter explores the international and interpersonal dynamics of 1920s Japanese feminisms.
This is a video of a talk by Sarah Frederick (Boston University, World Languages and Literatures)... more This is a video of a talk by Sarah Frederick (Boston University, World Languages and Literatures) for the "Haiku as World Literature: A Celebration of the 150th Birthday of Haiku Poet Masaoka Shiki", which took place on October 12 & 13, 2017 at Barristers Hall, Boston University. Recorded on October 12 by the Geddes Language Center.
Testing the Margins of Leisure, 2019
Analyzes the cultural capital attached to gendered leisure activity and work in the story Stella ... more Analyzes the cultural capital attached to gendered leisure activity and work in the story Stella Dallas as it moves from novel to film and from the United States to Japan to create its own genre of mother melodrama as A Mother’s Song (Haha no kyoku, 1936). By comparing these texts and their creators, the chapter develops an understanding of the symbolic properties of leisure across cultures in the early twentieth century. It argues that various versions of the story use the category of the girl (shōjo) to explore a potential space of leisure outside the workplace or the heterosexual family unit. Of course, this space was also easily occupied by expectations that the leisure would cultivate the young woman’s taste and domestic skills. Considering a flexible use of the concept of affective labor, the paper looks at the ways these texts used aspirational activities on the edges of “leisure” to negotiate various anxieties surrounding wage and unpaid domestic labor by women in the early twentieth century in relationship to class and sexual identities. A central case is the use of piano playing in the Japanese versions as a multifaceted activity, both work and leisure, that could represent good taste and potential for marriage, while also providing access to professional activity and a way for women to support themselves outside the family structure. In the Japanese case, this allowed them to remain permanently attached to what was seen as girl culture, including aspirations to cross cultural spaces and media, as does the entertaining story Stella Dallas.
US - Japan Women's Journal: English Supplement, 2002
UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is an archive of life sciences journal literature.
U S Japan Women S Journal, Feb 1, 2002
UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is an archive of life sciences journal literature.
Japan Forum, 2013
Kagayaku (1933–1941) was an offshoot of Nyonin geijutsu (Women's arts) that continued after ... more Kagayaku (1933–1941) was an offshoot of Nyonin geijutsu (Women's arts) that continued after Nyonin geijutsu shut down in 1932. This simple four-page leaflet extended the already complex vision of Nyonin geijutsu. This article focuses on Kagayaku's strong tendency to include writings by women intellectuals and artists living outside Japan, with contributions by women in North America, Europe, Brazil, the Philippines, Russia and China. It argues that, even as the publication was drawn into the nationalist discourses of an increasingly militarized Japan, these writings often reflected an increasingly cosmopolitan and eclectic perspective on culture, race, and ethnicity. At times, this tendency was tied to a ‘co-prosperity sphere’ image of Asia, but such an ideological category does not capture the writings meaningfully. Through close analysis of a few key texts from Kagayaku, this article draws attention to the ways the tensions between art and politics and gender and class that characterized Nyonin geijutsu played out in the wartime context.
Bad Girls of Japan, 2005
Not That Innocent: Yoshiya Nobuko's Good Girls
An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries workin... more An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBNs for this book are 9780824878382 (PDF) and 9780824878375 (EPUB). More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.
Choice Reviews Online, 2007
Turning Pages makes sense of Japanese "ladies magazines" through a detailed analysis of several i... more Turning Pages makes sense of Japanese "ladies magazines" through a detailed analysis of several interwar magazines, including the literary journal Ladies Review (Fujin koron) the popular domestic periodical Housewife's Friend (Shufu no tomo), and the politically radical magazine Women's Arts (Nyonin geijutsu). Through a close examination of their literature, articles, advertising, and art, the book explores the magazines as both windows onto and actors in this period of Japanese history.
The Journal of Japanese Studies, 2008
about consumption. Zwicker also uses apparently stable title counts to argue that changes in prin... more about consumption. Zwicker also uses apparently stable title counts to argue that changes in printing technology had little impact on the publication of literature in the nineteenth century, but print runs would be the defi nitive measure. For Zwicker’s argument, perhaps a more critical problem is that title counting says little about who is reading a book. Comparing Meijiperiod publishing rates of “modern novels written in Japanese,” “Edo fi ction” in reprint, and translations of foreign literature, Zwicker cites the low number of foreign titles as evidence of the limited impact of European fi ction (pp. 149–50). Whether the general public was reading European fi ction matters little to arguments on European infl uence, however, which always stress what writers read. (Why Zwicker distinguishes in this case between “modern novels” and “Edo fi ction”—described as “the previous dominant form”—is unclear.) Perhaps to head off such objections, Zwicker says that literary history that does not rely on quantitative methods is “anecdotal” and inadequate by itself, although he uses anecdote effectively (p. 146). Many of the most compelling arguments in Practices of the Sentimental Imagination come from good reasoning based on a group of sources, as in the author’s history of the use of shōsetsu and painstaking formal analyses of works such as Tora no maki and Hototogisu. However incomplete, Zwicker’s quantitative investigations contribute to a grasp of the materiality of literary form that places the economic, ideological, and aesthetic work of literature at the center of a research agenda. Zwicker’s willingness to reconsider under the rubric of the rise of the novel two periods normally kept at arm’s length likewise opens avenues for investigations crossing the false division between premodern and modern that structures, and hobbles, the study of Japanese literature. This bold book, written with a great deal of dash, deserves attention.
annual meeting of Association for Japanese Literary Studies, Hanover, NH, Oct 7, 2005
Throughout the twentieth century, the production, distribution, and consumption of Japanese kimon... more Throughout the twentieth century, the production, distribution, and consumption of Japanese kimono underwent tremendous changes as the Japanese nation made efforts to be perceived as modern and international. By focusing on its material form as well as representations of kimono in texts and images both within Japan and beyond its borders, this research group intends to reveal how shifts in the design and use of the physical garment and its representation in multiple media throughout this one-hundred-year span were intimately tied to the Japanese nation's evolving status in a dynamic global setting. The multi-disciplinary research group comprises four members; two Americans and two Japanese. Terry Milhaupt investigates chronological shifts in kimono design by examining the materials and decorative techniques involved in the production of kimono for domestic and international consumption. Sarah Frederick analyzes representations of kimono in American and Japanese literature and po...
This chapter focuses on the translation of Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) by Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1... more This chapter focuses on the translation of Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) by Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980) in the early 1910s and the influence on Japanese feminism of the writings of this thinker. While some writings on sexuality in Japan have lumped Carpenter with sexologists who were seen to have brought restrictions upon a premodern flexibility about same-sex relations, we see instead a modernist and international queer discourse to which many connected themselves and through which ideas about sexuality and social ethics were linked and developed. The chapter focuses especially on personal affiliations and translation, as understood through Carpenter’s correspondence with Japanese thinkers and Yamakawa’s personal observations in the feminist community of the Taishō era (1912–1926). Through analysis of rhetorical style and translation choices, this chapter explores the international and interpersonal dynamics of 1920s Japanese feminisms.
This is a video of a talk by Sarah Frederick (Boston University, World Languages and Literatures)... more This is a video of a talk by Sarah Frederick (Boston University, World Languages and Literatures) for the "Haiku as World Literature: A Celebration of the 150th Birthday of Haiku Poet Masaoka Shiki", which took place on October 12 & 13, 2017 at Barristers Hall, Boston University. Recorded on October 12 by the Geddes Language Center.