Modern Japanese Girls Flying Into the Sky: Gender Norms and Aviation Fashion in the 1920s

Abstract

This paper examines how aviation refashioned women’s clothing and the female gender norm in Japan in the 1920s. Central to this refashioning were female aviators who fought against gender inequality with the very system of patriarchy. I will first shed light on Katherine Stinson, an American aviatrix who came to Japan in 1916. She performed barnstorming of the furisode, a traditional Japanese garment for young women. The performance, I suggest, helped change Japanese women’s ideas of female bodies. Furthermore, pioneering Japanese female pilots contributed to the shift in female clothing. By examining newspapers and magazines, this paper argues that female gender norms in Japan were significantly refashioned by the air-mindedness of female pilots who changed the, beforehand exclusively, male realm of air space.