Following an introduction that situates women's self-writing against the backdrop of Japan during the 1920s and 1930s, Loftus takes up the autobiographies of Oku Mumeo, a leader of the prewar women's movement, and Takai Toshio, a textile worker who later became a well-known labor activist. Next is the moving story of Nishi Kyoko, whose Reminiscences tells of her life as a young woman who escapes the oppression of her family and establishes her financial independence. Nishi's narrative precedes a detailed look at the autobiography of Sata Ineko. Sata's Between the Lines of My Personal Chronology recounts her years as a member of a proletarian arts circle and her struggle to become a writer. The collection ends with the Marxist Fukunaga Misao's frank and explosive text, Memoirs of a Female Communist, which is examined as a manifesto condemning the male chauvinism of the prewar Japanese Communist Party.
Each of these narratives illustrates the importance of gender in Japan's historical development and reveals what a disruptive force it could be. In their concern for women's political rights and economic independence and their desire to transcend the narrow limitations of the "good wife, wise mother" morality imposed by the state, these "self-writers" were active participants in a wide variety of discourses which, when taken together, constituted a substantive oppositional ideology.
