Tadashi Ishikawa traces perceptions and practices of gender in the Japanese empire on the occasion of Japan's colonisation of Taiwan from 1895 . In the 1910s, metropolitan and colonial authorities attempted social reform in ways which particularly impacted on family traditions and, therefore, gender relations, paving the way for the politics of comparison within and beyond the empire. In Geographies of Gender, Tadashi Ishikawa delves into a variety of diplomatic issues, colonial and anticolonial discourses, and judicial cases, finding marriage gifts, daughter adoption, and premarital sexual relationships to be sites of tension between norms and ideals among both elite and ordinary men and women. He explores how the Japanese empire became a gendered space from the 1910s through the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, arguing that gender norms were both unsettled and reinforced in ways which highlight the instability of metropole-colony relations.

‘Geographies of Gender makes a compelling case that Japan’s empire should not be analyzed only through the traditional lenses of diplomacy, war, and identity. This pathbreaking work shows that Japan’s colonialism in Taiwan was also molded by new conceptions of the family, women, marriage, and masculinities in official policies and social visions in both Japan and Taiwan, offering an insightful new paradigm for understanding colonial-metropolitan relations. I highly recommend it for scholars and students of empire, gender, and the modern state.’

Barbara Molony - Santa Clara University

‘A fascinating study of family life, legal culture, and gender politics during a period of rapid and uneven social change in East Asia. Ishikawa's meticulous examination of public discourse, court documents, and the imperial archive deepens our understanding of everyday life in colonial Taiwan during the early twentieth-century, while bringing to light hitherto ignored stories and historical actors.’

Paul Barclay - Lafayette College