Chizuko Ueno Fever and Inter-Asian Feminist Travelling

Following the viral dissemination in China of her 2019 speech at the University of Tokyo, the Japanese feminist scholar Chizuko Ueno has become an icon for many Chinese women. Drawing on ‘travelling’ theory, and based on social-media data and interviews with Ueno’s book editors in China, this study explores which of Ueno’s feminist ideas have travelled and how they have been localised, commodified, embraced, and contested. The findings reveal that Ueno’s practical guidance on choices regarding intimate relationships is the most widely discussed theme of her work in China. Her influence in China has given rise to a unique form of feminism, which we term critical choice feminism. It stresses individualised everyday practices that, through digital participatory culture, generate collective recognition of structural inequality and carry the potential for resistance. Ueno’s ideas on bridewealth have been criticised, however, with some arguing that her privileged class position and childless status limit her understanding of ordinary Chinese women’s lived realities. Our research challenges traditional Western-centric frameworks of feminist travelling and underscores the inter-Asian circulation of feminist knowledge, highlighting that the transnational trajectory of feminist thought is contingent upon its negotiation with the socioeconomic, cultural, and gendered realities of local contexts.