Laurie and Debbie’s blog | Laurie Toby Edison

We deny the authority of the Fascists

Laurie says:

Hiroko HAGIWARA recently told me that Junko FUKAZAWA died on March 3, 2025, of the long-term effects of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Junko was one of my collaborators on the Women of Japan project. She and Hiro have been best friends since they were 12. Both of her Women of Japan photographs have been exhibited in Japan, Europe and the US.

Junko was a brilliant feminist scholar, and contributed the essay below to the project, which is available here online in both Japanese and English.

Junko dancing. Her image is off center and her arms are moving so fast they are out of focus. — Junko FUKAZAWA, from Women of Japan

As far as I know, Junko is the first of my Japanese collaborators to pass away. I will miss her.

Junko’s essay

Laurie asked me, “By the way, what should I say you do?”

Here it comes.

What is your specialty? What do you do?

I can never give a good answer.

Even though I am over 50 years old, I hesitate as to how I should answer these questions.

The I who has been rejected by existing specialties, and the I who has refused to enter such specialties. Stuck between those two spaces I have continued to engage in my daily work and activities. I thought that by doing so I would eventually find my natural place. But I must soon accept the conclusion that this seems not to be the case.

I feel a disconnect and an incompatibility between myself as a woman and the system that blankets Japanese society.

I went to an arts college and majored in oil painting. What controlled that arena was a male-dominant sense of values centered on sexuality and an atmosphere that extolled expressions of sexual violence against women. I could hardly stay in a place like that, even though to leave meant I was branded with the labels of failure, defeat, and dropping out.

As the years passed since I left my “specialty,” I have come to realize that the space that I have entered is much wider and deeper, and that the people I have met are far more enriching.

A friend I met a few years ago asked me to go with her as “just a woman” when she went to seek her just conclusion by going to confront the person who had assaulted her in the past.

“Just a woman.” I thought that was wonderful and an honor.

I still need to pursue much discipline before I can become a tried and true “just a woman.”