Well, Katha, the history of women's active participation in imperialism isn't about "white feminist" bashing (whatever you mean by this). Take a look at the following article by Ueno Chizuko, for instance.
***** AJWS Vol. 2, pp. 170-191.
"The Making of a History of Feminism in Japan"
Ueno Chizuko Dept. of Sociology The University of Tokyo Tokyo
...The Japanese women's movement was successful in gaining a substantial amount of public child-care centers throughout the 1950's, supported by women's right of motherhood. Within the growing economy, it was able to transfer the cost of women's employment from the private sector to the public sector. In the end, it was not only women workers, but also Japanese corporations who benefited from this, and it has been proven to have been a good choice in many ways. It keeps the quality of child-care facilities apart from the logic of cost and benefit, gives women the freedom of job transfer, since they do not depend on on-site child-care, and controls working hours, since the child-care regulation is not in the hands of employers. The national consensus that motherhood is public made it possible for women to be provided with substantial child-care. The women's movement contributed to creating this consensus.
On the other hand, the very notion of public motherhood limited Japanese feminism. According to Hiratsuka Raiteu, women have the right to require public support for child-care because children are not private goods, but rather public goods. Her thinking extends to eugenics as she proposes that women who are not qualified to be mothers should not give birth to children. Takamure Itsue, one of the greatest feminist thinkers in pre-war Japan, and a self-proclaimed successor of Hiratsuka, proposed the communal concept of "mother self," according to which women could step out of the limited concept of the individual self. She supported the war enthusiastically (Nishikawa, 1982; 1990). Together with Ichikawa Fusae, a great leader in the women's suffrage movement in Japan, Hiratsuka and Takamure supported the ultra-nationalist regime during the war because they were trapped by the idea that women's rights could be achieved through women's contribution to the state (Suzuki, 1989).
In the 1980's there was a movement toward self-reflexive women's history in Japan, an effort to look back on women's pasts, not only as passive victims, but also, as active agents in history. Women were guilty of Japan's imperialist invasion, both as feminist leaders among the elite and, also, as commoners actively supporting the war. As part of this movement, the independent historian Kano Mikiyo created the expression, "women's history behind the battle field," and tried to trace the ways that women participated actively in the war in their everyday lives (Kano, 1987). A people's historian, Murakami Nobuhiko, pointed out that the war meant liberation for women, since it gave them a space for public activity which, to a certain extent, they enjoyed (Murakami, 1978). Looking at the fascist past, Japanese women's history has much in common with German women's history as described by Claudia Koonz in her Mothers in the Fatherland (Koonz, 1987). Recent trends in Italian women's history show the same interest in women's responsibility for the war (Kano, 1995).
However, I do not raise this issue in order to make a comparative study of feminism in the former allied countries. The nationalist trap of feminism does not belong strictly to fascist countries nor strictly to the past. In many countries, women are still fighting for their rights primarily by contributing to the state. This leads to a situation in which in a conflict of national interests, feminists are divided by national borders. For example, in former Yugoslavia, a feminist friend of mine recently had an unhappy experience. After the nation broke down, many of her friends started to say, "First of all, I am Croatian, and then I am a feminist" (Kasic, 1995). In the case of the U.S. as well, the decision made by NOW (National Organization for Women) during the time of the Gulf War gave us a shock: NOW supported the participation of women soldiers in battle in the name of "equality," advocating (in effect) that American women die for their nation. NOW did not question the violence that the state was exercising. How feminism can go beyond nationalism is a very contemporary issue.
Kano, Mikiyo (1987), Jugo no Onna(Women behind the Battle Field), Chikuma Shobo.
(ed.) (1995), Bosei Fashizumu (Maternalist Fascism: a Temptation from the "Nature"), New Feminism Review , Vol. 6., Tokyo: Gakuyo Shobo.
Kasic, Bilyana (1995), "Nationalism and feminist discourse," Japanese translation by Kamikawa, Bosei Fashizumu, ed. Kano, Tokyo: Gakuyo Shobo.
Koonz, Claudia (1987), Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and the Nazi Politics, New York: St. Martin's Press.
Murakami, Nobuhiko (1978), Nihon no Fujin Mondai (Women's Problems in Japan), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Nishikawa, Yuko (1982), Mori no le no Miko (A Shamaness in a House in the Woods), Tokyo: Shinchosha. (1990), Takamure Itsue, Tokyo: Daisan Bunmeisha.
Suzuki, Yuko (1989), Josei-shi wo Hiraku (Creating Women's History), vol. 1&2, Tokyo: Miraisha.
<http://ews.ewha.ac.kr/ews/eng/m6acws/96ED6.HTM> *****
Yoshie