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“These Hands Don’t Hurt Women” – Erin Davis on Bilingual & Transnational V-DAY SHIMANE 2006!


The 2006 V-Day Shimane Flyer created by Madeline Magistrado,
an English teacher from the U.K.

Erin Davis, a Canadian from Victoria (on Vancouver Island), British Columbia, spent last year in Japan teaching English, and during her stay organized the 2006 V-DAY SHIMANE, a hybrid event, bringing together ex-pat with local Japanese women to produce a powerful bilingual, multicultural, & transnational event!

American Titia Widener, from Cleveland, Ohio, is the 2007 organizer. Her blog, V Day Shimane, has more news and photos about the 2006 performance and updates on the upcoming 2007 V DAY SHIMANE.

Shimane is also home to some guys who have to be some of the dreamiest men in the world. On their own, they created an art project called "These Hands Don't Hurt Women," made of paper cut-outs of men's hands that they formed into a giant V shape, to support V-Day.

From Victoria, Erin shared news about the amazingly creative, challenging, and affirmative 2006 V-DAY SHIMANE:

How did the V-Day get started?

The idea for V-Day Shimane 2006 started at a Japanese language camp I went to last summer. My friend, Titia Widener, suggested that with the diversity of women in our community of English teachers it would be a great opportunity to do the show. We both had experienced participating in a production before so we ended up coordinating the production together. Our production of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues was held at the Matsue International Community Centre in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture.

Who was involved – was it a multicultural production?

The production was very multicultural and international. The majority of the volunteers and performers were English teachers living in Japan, so we come from several different countries including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Germany, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England. In addition to being from many different nations the women also had very diverse cultural backgrounds.
We also had local Japanese women participate in the production as well. They really enhanced our show by performing their parts in Japanese for our bilingual audience.

How did it go? Did any aspect of the process or performance especially move you?

The show was extremely successful in terms of the impact it had on the people in our show, the audience and the community. So much of the whole experience was really amazing!

First of all, the commitment from the men and women involved in the show really impressed me. Most of the volunteers had never seen a production of The Vagina Monologues before let alone participated in one. They really put their hearts and souls into it and everyone just shined so beautifully on stage.
I really enjoyed talking with each of the women about their monologues and the process they were going through in the production.

I was also really moved by some men in our community who came down to do some technical work on the show. With very little notice they came down and got things organized at the theatre.

A couple of men also organized an art project called "These Hands Don't Hurt Women". They made a collage of paper cut outs of men's hands from the hands of men in our community, both ex-pats and Japanese friends, and formed it into a giant V shape. It was awesome!


"These Hands Don't Hurt Women" art project put together by Nathan Casey of Wales, and Leif Griffin of the USA.

I think it's so important to have male allies that support a production like this.

There were also two very courageous Japanese women who performed in the show. I was having a difficult time at first in finding women who would be interested in getting up on stage and performing some parts in Japanese. The Vagina Monologues isn't as well known here, of course, as it is in Western countries, and we do live in a very rural and somewhat conservative area of Japan, so I was worried I wouldn't find anyone to fulfill this role. However, when these two women became involved their excitement about this project really motivated me and I think the other volunteers as well.
It was so fun to hear them say all those great vagina words in Japanese on stage!

Finally, I was absolutely blown away by the response from Japanese people in the area. Because our show was primarily in English, I didn't really expect a huge turn out of Japanese people, but I was really shocked to see that about half our audience was Japanese.

Not only did they come out to support the show but I received many emails later on from Japanese women who expressed how much they were moved by seeing The Vagina Monologues. Some shared their stories, and many were interested in reading the Japanese version of the script. I really hope that some women might be inspired to perform entirely in Japanese in Shimane next year.

How the justice for “comfort women” survivors theme and associated theme of sexual trafficking resonate? Was there unease about confronting this or openness or both?

We had a lot of debate and discussion over the “Comfort Women” Spotlight.

One of the major issues we considered was that as a group of foreign residents who had been welcomed into living and working in Japan, there was some unease about taking a confrontational stance against Japan when highlighting this issue.

The “Comfort Women” monologue, "Say It", is very confrontational, and rightly so, I believe, as the atrocities commited by the Japanese government and military of that day were extremely severe and lasting.

However, it was important for us to examine the issue very critically. There was a group of volunteers in our production who did an excellent job of researching the work of “Comfort Women” organizations as well as where the issue of compensation for “Comfort Women” stands in Japan today.

There are of course, people and groups in Japan who are supportive of the struggle of “Comfort Women” and there have been attempts in the past by individuals in the Japanese government to offer compensation and apology to the “Comfort Women.”

It's a very complicated issue and we wanted to understand all sides of it. What we ended up doing was presenting a very informative display at our show featuring photos and testimonials of “Comfort Women”survivors as well as information gathered from volunteers' research. We wanted to present the facts and stories we could find and leave it to our audience to decide how they felt about it and the kind of personal action they wanted to take.

Was this the first year?

Yes, it was the first ever V-Day event and production of The Vagina Monologues in Shimane Prefecture! There was a lot of excitement and momentum built from this experience so plans for next year's production are already in the works. I will be leaving Japan in August, but Titia is making plans for coordinating the show for 2007.

How did you become involved?

I had participated in a university production of the VM in Victoria in 2003 so I knew how to access the resources to organize the production (on the vday website). Also, one of my good friends had organized the show that year so I learned a lot from watching her. That's one of the great things about VM is that women learn from and inspire each other to be leaders in this movement.

Titia Widener, organizer of 2007 V-DAY SHIMANE

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