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Looking at the human “body,” which has existed in contexts beyond the distinction between men and women, there are “dominators” and “the dominated” in which a situation of “oppressor” and “oppressed” is created. A world in which this is most evident is that of seafaring. There, domination is not limited to one structure; rather, a twofold domination structure exists. One is the domination and oppression among men, and the other is the existence of women who have been marginalized in the industry. Marxist feminism has clarified that the oppression of women in capitalist societies is based on the connection between capitalism and patriarchy, and in the industry, the vector of domination is not necessarily “male → female,” but rather “male → male → female.” The purpose of this paper is to focus on the shipping industry, which has been constructed at the base of capitalism and to point out the kinds of oppressive structures that have developed there, using the textual analysis of “diaries of seafarers” as a methodology, by focusing on the “bodies” of men and women represented in the history of seafarers in the East and West, with patriarchy onboard ships and the masculinity of seafarers as keywords.

Recently, the Maritime Bureau and Seafarers Policy Division of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism have been working to promote gender equality in the seafarer industry. Moreover, in 2017, the “Committee on the Promotion of Female Seafarers’ Activities from a Female Experts’ Perspective” was launched to discuss the issue. I participated in this committee as one of three academic experts. The committee has reported that the percentage of female seafarers in the Japanese shipping industry is only 2%, and less than 10% of shipping companies have shown a positive attitude toward the employment of female seafarers, indicating that the employment of female seafarers is not being promoted. The purpose of this study is to train female students in maritime colleges to be able to work as seafarers with leadership skills in the future using “masculinity” as a keyword.

It has been a long time since people focused on the term “work-life balance” (WLB). It is an exaggeration to say that a WLB is in vogue like gender equality. Also, in academic fields in Japan, Europe, and the United States, WLB studies have been vigorously discussed, and a number of papers have been published since the 21st century. A WLB policy has been misconstrued as applying only to women because the ideology of the sexual division of work has not been totally dispelled; many women work away from home compared to the old days. This gives a false impression that if working women can easily take maternity leave or childcare leave, many women will have an opportunity to work, which appears to result in gender equality in society. In this interpretation, it has been considered important that company quality should be improved to make maternity leave or childcare leave available to female employees. This paper traces the historical context and previous studies about appearance of the term “WLB,” analyzing what a WLB policy should be to realize real gender equality.

It is obvious that Darling could be mentioned as a most brave woman in doing the heavy labor involved in a lighthouse keeping and even saving shipwrecked people, but it is more particularly worth noting that Ida Lewis’s efforts saved the lives of at least eighteen people over a period of twenty-five years. This paper focuses on Ida Lewis, the most famous woman lighthouse keeper in the United States, and analyzes the gender identity of women lighthouse keepers. most studies that discuss women lighthouse keepers point out that, behind women’s being appointed as official lighthouse keepers in the nineteenth-century United States, the labor of lighthouse keepers could essentially share common features with the form of femininity that was emphasized in the Victorian era. However, when analyzing from the viewpoint of gender ideology, I cannot help raising questions regarding women lighthouse keepers as examples of mere femininity simply because the labor forms were analogous with household labor. When the labors of lighthouse keeping would be actually recognized as a manly role, can we make a judgement that women lighthouse keepers all endowed feminine traits even when performing the heavy tasks of lighthouse keeping? Moreover, lifesaving, being separable from lighthouse keeping, has been traditionally considered to be “masculine behavior.” The aim of this paper is to point out that “femininity” and “masculinity” have been artificially generated, and, as such, are entirely unrelated to an individual’s characteristics and abilities. In that light, to deconstruct ideologies of “femininity” and “masculinity,” I have chosen to focus on women who have committed to continuing to perform their duties by analyzing the life of Ida Lewis as the most famous woman lighthouse keeper. This has been accomplished by referring to the United States Department of the Interior National Park Service: National Register of Historic Places Inventory for 1897 and some articles about Ida Lewis from 1869 to 1911 as primary sources. Ida Lewis applies simultaneously as among those women who, under the patriarchy, should be confined to the “women’s sphere.” Furthermore, according to social gender ideology, the life of Ms. Lewis does not necessarily correspond to an individual’s abilities and character, as she was able to display the same ability as a man and perform “men’s work” in the women’s sphere.

Insoluble particle concentration in ice cores is commonly analyzed as a proxy for variations in atmospheric mineral dust (aerosol concentration). However, recent studies have revealed that the mineral dust is not only a constituent of the particles but that biogenic organic particles are also contained. We microscopically analyzed insoluble particles in a shallow ice core drilled on a mountain glacier, the Urumqi Glacier No. 1, in eastern Tienshan, China. We distinguished different morphological particles in the ice core and quantified them separately. Results showed that the insoluble particles in this ice core consisted mainly of mineral particles, amorphous organic particles, pollen, and microorganisms. Mineral particles were the most dominant, accounting for approximately 67% of total particles, and amorphous organic particles were the second most dominant, accounting for approximately 33% of the total. The annual variation in the particles for the last 11 years differed between mineral and amorphous organic particles. The results suggest that the total insoluble particle concentration in the ice core reflects not only the atmospheric mineral dust but also the organic particles blown from ground soil or produced by microbes on the glacial surface.