CHAPTER 1

YOU GO, GIRL!

Cultural Meanings of Gender,Mobility, and Labor

Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller,and Christine R. Yano

This volume investigates the lived experiences and cultural depictions ofwomen who worked in service industries and other jobs that were inspired byideas of mobility in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japan. Dignified uniformedwomen operating elevators and rhythmically announcing floors representedthe height of luxury in twentieth-century department stores but werescorned in the global media as symbols of a regimented society. Especially inthe 1920s, young women coveted employment as department store clerks, anoccupation they perceived as a step toward self-cultivation. Artists and writers,both before and immediately after World War II, objectified women paid todance with men in dancehalls as tantalizing aspects of foreign allure in the Japanesecity, while providing glimpses of their real physical and emotional exhaustion.During the Jet Age, stewardesses on Pan American World Airways wereparagons of glamour and the public face of Japanese economic and technologicalprogress. Beauty queens competing in international pageants embodied newpossibilities for women in the postwar era. Students and educators led the waytoward cosmopolitanism as some of the first Japanese people to travel to theUnited States during two pivotal historical moments: the years of modernizationfollowing the 1868 Meiji Restoration and the years of recovery after thewar. Female soldiers have changed the composition and image of the JapaneseSelf-Defense Forces, while female soccer players have promoted women's rolesin competitive sports and corporate culture. Ladies League soccer in the 1990spaved the way for the victory of the national team, Nadeshiko Japan, in the 2011World Cup Finals, an event touted by the mass media as the most hopeful in ayear marred by the triple disaster of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake,tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Tour and charter buses are still staffed withfemale guides, who turn an ordinary ride into a memorable event.

All of these modern working women, often conspicuous in their variousuniforms, have influenced social roles, patterns of daily life, and Japan's globalimage. Some have led lives that were ordinary and routine; others enjoyed rareprivileges. What binds them together as the focus of this volume are the waysin which their lives, and the modernity they circumscribe, have been definedby their mobility, both literally and figuratively.

These women have labored in new places, which they have made more invitingby their presence and have used their jobs as means to move into spacesonce exclusive to men. Not only have they occupied urban spaces, but theyhave also defined them, both enacting the cosmopolitanism of their momentand serving as a domesticating salve. They have been featured in photographs,artworks, and stories about the growth of Japan. They have performed jobs thatwere considered fashionable at their inception and thereby represented ideasof modernity at different historical times. Their presence has been taken forgranted by Japanese consumers: if these women were not seen working, manypeople would feel that something was amiss.

Crossing the traditional borders between anthropology, history, literature,and visual studies, Modern Girls on the Go tells the stories of these women whohave affected how Japanese history has been experienced and is remembered.We discuss aspects of modern women's labor that are rarely analyzed, includinghiring and recruitment, training, job performance, manners, uniforms, interpersonalcommunication, and physical motion. Our chapters question whatemployment outside the home has meant to women and how women, in turn,have changed the look and meaning of "work."

We profile these employees and use them as a framework for viewinggeneral opinions about women in the workplace and family and to bring tolight unexpected ways women have supported, even challenged, the corporatestructures underpinning the Japanese economy, currently the third largestin the world. Our chapters highlight how work has been a major factor inshaping women's attitudes toward marriage, childrearing, sexuality, and self-improvement.By exploring how female laborers have been conceptualized simultaneouslyas model employees, erotic icons, and domesticating presences,our research exposes contradictions inherent for women in the workforce.

In fictional accounts and often in reality, working women have...