Editor's Note

Abstract

We are honored to publish the fifty-first issue of the U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal (USJWJ)— complete with special features to commemorate the previous fifty issues—and to launch a new phase in our history. Founded in 1988, USJWJ is the world’s oldest scholarly journal devoted to the study of gender and Japan. We are a peer-reviewed, biannual publication, available in print and online, that promotes scholarly exchange on social, cultural, political, and economic issues. We encourage comparative study among Japan, the United States, and other countries, and feature articles about women’s lived experiences and media representations. Our mission is to foster the work of young researchers and to ensure that the achievements of established scholars are not forgotten. We dedicate this commemorative issue to the previous editors who have cultivated generations of feminist scholars: Drs. Sally A. Hastings, Jan Bardsley, Noriko Mizuta, and Yoko Kawashima. In their introductory essays, Drs. Bardsley and Hastings offer highlights from their decades with the journal and explain how USJWJ continually supported their teaching and research and helped them engage both deeply and broadly with the field. In this issue, we explore the power of periodicals to construct notions of gender, transnationalism, and the nation-state and to expand women’s worldviews. We reprint two articles