A chance conversation at this year's TESOL conference brought a wonderful new video/DVD resource to my attention. "Women in Japan: Memories of the Past, Dreams for the Future" showcases six women who have created international lives and who share their stories on this 52-minute documentary. It's current (filmed in 2001), interesting, professionally made, and available in a very viewer-friendly bilingual format. Who could ask for more? I used this production in both my media literacy and gender studies classes, and in each case, it got very positive response from students.

Women in Japan is produced by two teachers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Joanne Hershfield, a teacher of women's studies and film, and Jan Bardsley, who teaches women' studies, literature and popular culture. The documentary focuses on the stories of six women of different ages and backgrounds and from various parts of Japan. What they have in common is international experience, and it is this focus that makes this documentary particularly interesting to Japanese students of language and culture.

The interviewees, by telling their stories, cover a lot of historical ground in Japan and elsewhere. Reiko Ishihara, who grew up in the U.S. and was incarcerated in a World War II internment camp, lived there again in the 1960s when she was married to a Buddhist priest, raising four children. She is now a school board president in Shiga prefecture. Ryuko Kubota, a teacher and scholar, talks about her life as a professor in the U.S. and a daughter in Nagano Prefecture. Taeko Tomiyama, famous for her paintings of Thai women in Japan, talks about her passion for social justice and resistance to expectations for women in the 1940s and 50s. Yoshiko Nakata, chair of the Hokkaido branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, works on issues relating to women and children in developing countries.

In addition to the four Japanese women described above, the documentary includes two non-Japanese women, both of whom are farmers in Hokkaido: Lourdes Matsumoto, who ran away from her home in the Philippines to be a dancer in Japan, and Rohei Shimada, a college grad who talks about what it has been like to trade her professional, urban life in China for the family melon farm. Clearly, these stories are fine discussion starters on a variety of topics, and they also show the power of a story to make history and social issues come to life.

Women in Japan has a website http://www.womeninjapan.com, which includes a synopsis, lesson suggestions and a list of English-language references on a variety of topics touched upon in the women's stories. It's available in VHS or DVD format. I bought the DVD, which is ideal for a multicultural class, as Japanese language sections are subtitled in English and English sections, in Japanese. The price is a drawback--$150 for non-profit customers and individuals (more for institutions). However, for those who can handle or share that cost, it's well worth the investment.

Another excellent up-to-date resource comes from the Media Educational Foundation http://www.mediaed.org/. Killing Us Softly is a 34-minute documentary‹expose is more like it‹of images of women in advertising. It's actually a lecture, which the creator, Jean Kilbourne, delivers at colleges across the U.S. She illustrates her talk with dozens of photos of ads using women's bodies to sell products. Her focus is images of women in advertising over the past 20 years. The section titles give you an idea of Kilbourne's perspective: Does the beauty ideal still tyrannize women? Does advertising still objectify women's bodies? Are the twin themes of liberation and weight control still linked? Is sexuality still presented as women's main concern? Are young girls still sexualized? Are grown women infantilized? Are images of male violence against women still used to sell products? I have not yet shown this video to students, but after previewing it, I think it will work well in my intermediate level gender studies seminar. Killing Us Softly is English-only‹with English subtitles available on the DVD version and close captioning on the VHS. Like the other documentary mentioned above, this one is not cheap--$150 for high schools and non-profit groups and $295 for universities. (As an individual teacher, I was able to get the non-profit rate). If interested teachers could pool their resources, other gender-related offerings from The Media Educational Foundation would become accessible. The list is impressive.

G.A.L.E. Main Page / Articles / Events / Links / Feedback