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Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (Asia-Pacific) | 
| Author: Karen Kelsky
Creators: Rey Chow
, Harry Harootunian
Publisher: Duke University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy Used: $8.17
You Save: $15.78 (66%)
New (18) Used (25) from $8.17
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 909935
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 082232816X
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.420952
EAN: 9780822328162
ASIN: 082232816X
Publication Date: 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Over the past few decades, many young Japanese women have emerged as Japan’s most enthusiastic “internationalists,” investing in study or work abroad, or in romance with Western men as opportunities to circumvent what they consider their country’s oppressive corporate and family structures. Drawing on a rich supply of autobiographical narratives, as well as literary and cultural texts, Karen Kelsky situates this phenomenon against a backdrop of profound social change in Japan and within an intricate network of larger global forces.
In exploring the promises, limitations, and contradictions of these “occidental longings,” Women on the Verge exposes the racial and erotic politics of transnational mobility. Kelsky shows how female cosmopolitanism recontextualizes the well-known Western male romance with the Orient: Japanese women are now the agents, narrating their own desires for the “modern” West in ways that seem to defy Japanese nationalism as well as long-standing relations of power not only between men and women but between Japan and the West. While transnational movement is not available to all Japanese women, Kelsky shows that the desire for the foreign permeates many Japanese women’s lives. She also reveals how this feminine allegiance to the Westâand particularly to white menâcan impose its own unanticipated hegemonies of race, sexuality, and capital.
Combining ethnography and literary analysis, and bridging anthropology and cultural studies, Women on the Verge will also appeal to students and scholars of Japan studies, feminism, and global culture.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 A serious dissapointment April 14, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
After reading a few pages of this book from a forgotten website, I wanted nothing else than to read this book so that I would be substantially wiser on the topic of Japanese anthropology. I regret ever going to that website.
This book makes me wish there were spotted owls in every tree, so books like this wouldn't be printed. The author claims that the white man is a subject of idolatry from the Japanese woman, and comes to "the west" for him and equality in the workplace (although workplace equality has mostly taken a backseat).
There is nothing groundbreaking in this book; the only thing that I learned is that absolutely anything can get published. To save you the money, I can tell you that Japanese women, just like any other woman on the face of this planet, want to be treated well. As such, those who can, come to "the west" (USA, UK, Australia, etc) so they can live and work with less repression because of their gender.
The author constantly brings up the topic of how Japanese women fawn of white men because they are white, even though all the examples and evidence in her book says otherwise. The women that the author meets say that they like western men because they can hold a door open and are polite, and not because of the color of their skin.
I hope to have saved you the cost of this book. I have payed too high a price for this book; in money, embarrassment, and mental anguish.
I gave this book one too many stars. How I wish that there were zero and negative ratings.
Hard to rate... October 29, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
so I put my rating right in the middle. The previous reviewer hopes that people "who don't know anything about Asia" will abstain from submitting reviews, but ours is a free world so thankfully nobody will listen to him.
Kelsky writes well, which makes for compelling reading here, except in those parts that are loaded with anthropological jargon. Like writers, she has her biases, in her case against white men who have relationships with Japanese women. But her book is hard to put down.
 People that don't know anything about Asia should abstain their opinions October 13, 2006
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I was born in Asia, and I've lived in Asia for the majority of my life, and I still go there every year.
Everything said in this book is true. Yes, the truth is offensive and ugly, but deal with it.
 Depends on how you categorize it January 21, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Reviews for this book tend to be All or Nothing. I think it boils down to how you categorize the book. If you view it as a collection of essays with a particular viewpoint and nothing more (as I did), you will probably find it a satisfying read, whether or not you agree with its conclusions. If you approach it as ethnology--a hard, academic tome--then you might find it wanting.
The truth may be opposite May 3, 2005
9 out of 19 found this review helpful
Well, to me, it is more like white men are chasing Japanese women. Many yellow fevers come to Japan or other Asian countries. Why doesn't Kelsky focus on this?
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