Musashi campus life

In Professor Wuehler's specialized seminar on gender issues, we read Judith Butler's "Gender Trouble" together and learned about the trends in feminist thought. As I continued to think about it, struggling with the difficulty of understanding it, I was able to arrive at my own view on the roots of conflict and discrimination between men and women, which was a great benefit. Through the seminar, I learned the importance of questioning preconceived knowledge and recognizing individual identities without lumping or dividing people into groups based on gender or nationality.

I have always been interested in the formation of gender views, so for my graduation thesis I researched the gender bias inherent in picture books in Japan, France, and Finland. Based on the advice I received in the graduation thesis seminar, I deepened my learning not only about the differences in gender views, but also about why differences appear. By seeing the differences in the cultural backgrounds of each country, such as policies for children's education and cultural promotion, I feel that I was able to reach a conclusion using my own approach, rather than relying solely on previous research.