하니 세쓰코(羽仁説子)의 여성해방과 봉건주의

Abstract

This research examines cultural power in everyday life through Hani Setsuko’s “Women and Liberty.” Culture, which reflects the way of life, has a wide and diverse base, from visible things such as knowledge, information, and media to invisible things such as lifestyles, norms, and traditions in everyday life. As the breadth of culture is so wide, we cannot overlook its various aspects and ambivalence. Hani Setsuko(1903~1987) was a leading early childhood educator and women’s activist in modern Japan. Cultural power, as used in this research, is a concept that focuses on the autonomy of cultural places in everyday life. This paper regards feudal thinking and feudalism that constrain women in postwar Japanese society as seen in “Women and Liberty” as the legacies of the empire and defines them as cultural power. The cultural power that constrains Japanese women did not suddenly appear postwar. The pre-modern, feudal ideology that was the symbol of the prewar period still functioned as a cultural power in postwar Japanese society. The significance of this paper is to see how cultural power stands in contrast to women’s emancipation in the new era, and to consider the working principle of cultural power in postwar Japan through this. In addition, we will be able to find significance in the work of clarifying the legacies of imperial Japan’s cultural powers that have been forgotten and hidden, and looking directly at them as objects of recognition.