Feminising the ‘Modern’ Sweetness: Gender and Western-Style Confectionery in Interwar Japan

This article explores how the feminisation of Western-style confectionery was critical in bridging sweetness with modernity in interwar Japan. By examining three categories of Japanese women – the ‘female worker’, the ‘modern girl’ and the ‘good wife, wise mother’, it argues that the sweetness of Western-style confectionery was associated with the female body due to women's extensive involvement in the production process and performances in visual advertisements. As these women helped construct the cultural imagination of Western-style confectionery as a feminised product, their presence also unfolds the key links between Japan's rising consumer culture and the empire's growing power.

_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-0424.12657