This paper explores the strategies that gender activists in Japan use to advocate gender equality and justice. What is intriguing about this case of feminist activism is that despite its long history, the movement is network-based with many small-scale local groups and no national umbrella organization. Furthermore, unlike feminist movements in areas dominated by the US/European hegemonic model of thinking and organizing, gender activists in Japan refuse to articulate their activism using a single collective label such as “feminist.” Yet their rhetorical strategies, and political narratives that come out of those strategies, demonstrate remarkable agreement and shared understanding of gender hierarchy and injustice in Japan. These strategies weave ideas that are significant to domestic politics and the state of gender relations in Japan together with a global gender discourse. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews over a 16-month period with gender activists in Japan, this paper unravels this puzzle by looking at individual life histories and their intersection with the larger historical context. By examining how Japanese gender activists make sense of what they do and why they do it, this study challenges our conceptualizations of collective action, strategy, and feminism as a global phenomenon.

Monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has many unique characteristics, one of which is a strong photoluminescence (PL) excitation due to its direct band gap property. Because of this characteristic, the surface morphologies can be inferred by studying the photoluminescence peak frequency and intensity. Regions where the surface is disrupted by changes in structural phase and defect density will be indicated by the PL fluctuations. We have investigated the hydro-desulfurization (HDS) catalysis using this MoS2 response by widefield PL imaging. This wide field PL imaging technique has the advantage of shorting each acquisition time of a large sample area to 1-2 minutes instead of hours required for mapping scans. Within this time frame, surface morphology changes from temperature under a hydrogen environment and dosing a sulfur containing organic compound, benzenethiol, studied in real time. We have also studied the reaction efficiency using gas chromatography (GC) with a mass spectrometer for the same condition as in the PL widefield imaging experiments. We have found PL image activities in pre-HDS temperatures around 200°C to 300°C. Although PL intensity gets small, there are some PL activities in HDS temperatures between 300°C to 400°C and little over this temperature. We have observed HDS conversion in this temperature regime as well as hydrogen sulfide (H2S) on our GC system. It was not only edges but also the basal region which had PL intensity fluctuation. This activity may imply the HDS in both the edges and the basal plane, unlike previous belief that edges are the sole active catalytic sites.

Evidence collected using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) indicates that labor supply, saving, and marital decisions are strongly linked. This paper has two main goals. The first is to develop a model of household behavior that captures the empirical features of labor supply, saving, and marital choices. The second goal is to simulate the model using the PSID. The results indicates that the proposed model can match most of the features displayed by the data. They also suggest that the relationships between labor supply, saving, and marital status decision are important features of household behavior that should be considered by economists and policy makers when designing and implementing policies formulated to change the welfare of household members.