I have had an interest in Japanese culture for a while and I was interested in reading a couple books around Japanese culture. I found a book called Women and Family in Contemporary Japan by Susan Holloway. It was a very good book that went into the world about Japanese mothers in Japanese society. I particularly enjoyed reading about the in-depth research process that Holloway went through to produce this book, as it was very intricate. After reading Women and Family in Contemporary Japan, I was interested in learning more about this topic, so I decided to reach out to the author, Susan Holloway. I learned that she is a professor at the University of California, Berkley. Holloway has a Ph.D from Stanford University, and a degree in Child Development and Early Childhood Education. Aside from teaching at Berkley, Holloway has taught at the University of Maryland and Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
I had the honor of talking with Professor Holloway from the University of California Berkley to ask a couple of questions that I had about this book. I am very grateful for this opportunity and I hope to share my findings with you.
According to Professor Holloway, if she had to describe the book to someone who had never read the book before she would start by introducing the things that inspired her to write this book. Beyond intellectual interest in Japan, her personal interests are something that led her to write this book.
Some things that inspired her to write this book was during graduate school at the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 1978. She worked with this advisor, and was eventually able to go to Japan where she encountered pre-school directors (who were mostly men), who were very critical of the mothers at their preschool. Being a mother herself, she felt annoyed on a personal level, understanding the difficulty of the effort it takes to be a working mother. This led to her deciding to focus her next project on Japanese women and their motherhood. Holloway states that one of the key points about this book is that it explore a complex world and works to defy stereotypes of Japanese women. Her book goes into a high level of research with surveys and other quantitative data.
During our interview, I was able to get a deeper understanding of the books purpose, but I wanted to highlight a couple of questions that were answered.
Did you have an audience in mind when writing this book? How do you hope your work will contribute to the understanding of women and family in Japan?
Previously, Holloway had done academic writing about Japan that was meant for specialists. She thought that by writing a book, it would lead to opportunity for a broader audience, such as undergraduate and graduate students, or people who were interested in themes of low birthrate, academics and policy people.
As the author, reflecting on the years since the book's release, are there any aspects you wish you could explore further, or has there been a change in your perspective on certain issues discussed in the book?
The book represents the long-process of the theoretical process of expressing her opinion. However, since stepping away from academic writing a couple years after her retirement in 2019, she can't give an exact answer about changes in perspectives or aspects she wishes to explore further.
I shared a couple of my own opinions around Japanese society, one being that I believe that Japanese society is almost paradoxical. Many outsiders see Japan as a place that "lives in the future", due to futuristic technology and a different way of living. While I think that is true, to a certain extent, I believe that part of Japan is still living in the past. Many things are still manual in Japan, and even today there are very limited opportunities for women, and still very misogynistic in general.
Having the opportunity to talk the the author of a book that covered a topic that I was interested in was a wonderful experience. It was exciting to hear about the depth of this research process and the personal level that this had on Holloway. I hope that even though it may be a niche topic, many other will become more interested in women in Japanese society.
If you would like to read this book, the links below are where you can buy the book. (Amazon, etc) https://www.amazon.com/Women-Family-Contemporary-Japan-Holloway/dp/0521180376
Comments