Transnational Community Building through Women and Girls: Constructing an Intergenerational Girls’ Mission School Network Across Borders in 1920s and 1930s Japan

Abstract: This article illuminates how and why students, graduates, and educators of the Tōyō Eiwa Jogakkō girls’ mission school network developed a transnational community in 1920s and 1930s Japan. It reveals the methods through which Japanese and Western women and girls created links to the wider world across nations and empires to build connections and knowledge in a turbulent and nationalistic time. Using a transnational approach to examine the activities of actors generally not viewed as engaging in internationalism reveals networking and ideas that did not necessarily align with period social and intellectual trends and state ideology, and in fact sought to address and temper these and build the world they envisioned. Thus, this networking widens our understanding of women’s internationalism by looking beyond diplomacy and prominent intellectuals to illuminate adult women and girls’ engagement with, and mobility into, the wider world across borders in 1920s and 1930s Japan and beyond.