Feminist Impulse in Antimodernism : Reading A Japanese Interior in American Context

This paper analyzes the significance of the image of Japan Alice Mabel Bacon (1858-1918) depicted in her book A Japanese Interior (1893). The book, which is a collection of letters she originally wrote to her family during her stay in Japan in 1888-1889, shows much about her daily life in Tokyo that was spent mostly teaching young Japanese women English and interacting with her female Japanese friends such as Umeko Tsuda and Stematsu Oyama. Bacon presented Japan as a gentle and feminine society by emphasizing the bond among women that transcended national and racial differences. The paper argues that such a representation of Japan that highlighted the domestic and feminized nature of the society can be read as Bacon\u27s attempt at critiquing the contemporary American social conditions in which she felt increasingly marginalized and alienated