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Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Akiko Takenaka, "Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
Description: Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2025) examines the shifting relationships among motherhood, peace activism, and women's rights in the decades following Japan's defeat in 1945. With a focus on the concept of bosei, generally understood to be the "motherly" qualities that are supposedly inherent to women, the book illuminates how popular perceptions of the mother, the child, and the mother-child relationship gradually evolved to create the image that mothers, more than anyone else, protect children from war. This image did not result simply from a mothers' desire to keep their children s...