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The purpose of this paper is to break the silence surrounding the politics of translation that influence cross-language/cultural accounting research. It gives due consideration to the ways in which translation gaps are produced and re-produced in qualitative interdisciplinary accounting research (IAR).

First, the authors discuss backstage insights and the authors’ own life experiences vis-à-vis translating cross-cultural/language research. The authors provide a critical self-reflection on the process as non-Western female researchers publishing in English-language accounting journals. Second, the authors carry out a content analysis to examine reported translation practices in three long-established interdisciplinary accounting journals from 2015 to 2017. The conclusion integrates these analyses to discuss the reproduction process of the translation gap in accounting research and its outcomes.

The study identifies inherent contradictions in IAR and its emancipatory agenda, where translation gaps are structural outcomes of overlaps between the politics of translation and the politics of publishing IAR. The study highlights the IAR community’s lack of awareness regarding political and methodological sensitivities in dealing with particularities in cultural contexts. The authors argue that this reflects the institutional norms for publishing in IAR, which contributes to neutralising cultural diversity and complex translation processes in the name of objectivity. This could ultimately lead to further marginalisation of non-Western cultural knowledge and values, while producing academic “elites” within the IAR community, meanwhile missing opportunities for innovation.

By opening the “black box” pertaining to translation gaps in the context of cross-language/cultural accounting research, the study calls for IAR scholars to help raise awareness of their role and identity as “cultural brokers”.

Globalization has brought about migration and the transnational movement of people from different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, using different languages, and has thereby facilitated intercultural interaction and re-interpretation of lived experiences. Gender research in accounting is also influenced by globalization, which has created a platform where different cultures can meet and interact, and where knowledge can be synthesized from the work of authors from various different countries. Building on my own research experiences and their outcomes, this study examines the globalization of gender research in accounting by tracing the development of research on the relationship between Japanese women and accounting. The experiences of Japan highlight that knowledge in accounting, including gender-in-accounting studies, historically flows from West to East. The language, concepts and framework in existing Western-led accounting studies translate and visualize the history and phenomena in a Japanese context to be shared within the international accounting arena.

This study demonstrates that this process provides a body of interesting evidence from Japanese contexts in the fields of history, household accounting and professionalization. Accounting played an enabling role for women in Japan, while positioning women to act as catalysts for social change. Questions arise regarding the potential for such findings (from the East) to flow to the West and be accorded equal status to Western-led accounting research. The study concludes by discussing, in terms of achieving sustainable and innovative knowledge creation in accounting, the importance of herstory in understanding local culture and its integration into ‘global’ academic research.

The purpose of this paper is to open up the Anglo‐centred argument in gender and accounting by exploring the relationship of women and accounting in a different social and cultural context.

The paper draws on in‐depth ethnographical studies to explore the real‐ life experiences of 66 Japanese women (9 percent of all women CPAs) who have entered the accounting profession from a range of backgrounds and generations.

The paper finds that some women accounting professionals in Japan have brought about changes in accounting practice there by applying a uniquely feminine approach in their day‐to‐day work. Their strict approach is attuned to the ongoing globalization in the field of accountancy, and this has helped to widen the opportunities for women.

This paper demonstrates that, in order to understand the issues surrounding gender and accounting, it is important to consider the prevailing social context and its underpinnings. In the Japanese “interdependent” social context, gender is intertwined in the process of accounting to establish its “independent” status.

It has been argued that the unique social and cultural context in Japan will make it difficult for the country to converge its accounting and auditing with global standards. By incorporating a gender perspective, the paper aims to clarify the social assumptions under which accounting and auditing operate in Japan.

By making a close analysis of the process by which Japanese women have entered the accounting profession, the paper reveals the connection between the growing significance of auditing and the changing role and position of women.

This paper explores the development of household accounting practice in post‐war Japan through a review of reported experiences of the winners of an annual accounting prize scheme organized, since 1954, by the Central Council for Saving Information. While academic study of accounting at home is a developing area, analysis has tended so far to rely mainly on Anglo‐Saxon contexts. This paper’s examination of Japanese household accounting practice offers evidence from a very different context. The paper uses the prize schemes to document key changes in household accounting practice over the last half century which essentially has seen a switch in focus from short‐term budgetary control to lifetime planning and a growing concern with broader social and environmental issues. Such changes appear to be closely related to changes in the economic and social roles served by the Japanese household.