Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan

Laura Dales

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134046379
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

In contemporary Japan there is much ambivalence about women's roles, and the term "feminism" is not widely recognised or considered relevant. Nonetheless, as this book shows, there is a flourishing feminist movement in contemporary Japan. The book investigates the features and effects of feminism in contemporary Japan, in non-government (NGO) women's groups, government-run women's centres and the individual activities of feminists Haruka Yoko and Kitahara Minori. Based on two years of fieldwork conducted in Japan and drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic data, it argues that the work of individual activists and women's organisations in Japan promotes real and potential change to gender roles and expectations among Japanese women. It explores the ways that feminism is created, promoted and limited among Japanese women, and advocates a broader construction of what the feminist movement is understood to be and a rethinking of the boundaries of feminist identification. It also addresses the impact of legislation, government bureaucracy, literature and the internet as avenues of feminist development, and details the ways which these promote agency – the ability to act – among Japanese women.

1 Women, feminism and the family in contemporary Japan

[I]t is inevitable that at different times, different approaches will generate a barrage of sparks as they come into contact with one another, but … the stimulation of these fiery encounters can become the ground for new ideas and action. It is here that we can identify the boundless potential of feminism.

(Saitō 1997: 267)

As an overview of Japanese ideals and expectations of femininity and the family, this chapter looks at the patterns of change and development over the last century, particularly since the end of World War II. Focusing on family, sexuality and work, I aim to delineate the historical relationship between women’s organizations (including feminist movements) and the lived experiences of contemporary Japanese women. Furthermore, I emphasize the diversity of Japanese feminism and feminist approaches, and the broad scope of feminist movement in organizations that have operated and continue to operate in Japan.

When looking at patterns in a large and diverse population, it is critical to note that these patterns are bounded and that beyond the boundaries are women for whom these assertions and models are inappropriate and/or inadequate. Thus, while in other parts of this book attention is given to the perceptions and experiences of Japanese women, at this point I diverge to consider the distinction between cultural ideals and lived experience. Although I may use individual women’s experiences to illustrate certain values or expectations, these examples do not imply a universal truth about Japanese women (Long 1996: 158). Furthermore, as Long observed, abstracted ideals of femininity are translated into practice differently, according to factors such as class, geography and opportunity (1996: 156).

By definition, an ideal is aspirational; it is an objective placed on a higher plane and therefore above individual experience. The ideal may be partially embodied by individuals, but as a symbolic model it remains beyond the individual’s ability. Ideals may change (or, more specifically, be changed) as, for example, ideals of beauty have changed. Because of this, ideals can reflect the historical and social contexts in which they developed. However, because ideals exist beyond individuals, changes in ideals cannot necessarily illuminate the breadth or nature of changes that have occurred throughout society, nor can an ideal be uniformly applicable to all members of a society. Thus, while ideals of Japanese femininity reflect real changes in women’s perceptions and experiences, they do not reveal the variation within these experiences—the subtle and specific adaptations each woman makes in her attempt to live out the expectations that created the ideal. In light of these limitations, this chapter examines the ideal as an influence on, rather than a determinant of, women’s experiences and as having variable relevance to the individual’s interpretation of her life and the lives of others (Long 1996: 158). This discussion brings me to the problematic framing of gender in analysis.

The discourse of role is one of the frameworks through which the concept of gender has been defined that is, as a cultural or social representation of a biological state (sex). Thus, as Oakley argued, to be a woman or a man ‘is as much a function of dress, gesture, occupation, social network and personality, as it is of possessing a particular set of genitals’ (1972: 158). Mead observed that the conflation of biology with culture is encouraged by certain social assumptions, namely that certain behaviours, traits and temperaments are specifically and exclusively masculine or feminine (1962: 30–1). These traits and behaviours can be understood as the foundation blocks of roles, the foundation on which ideal packages of femininity and masculinity are built.

The problems of role are its rigidity and its potential to essentialize and mask the self-determination involved in living and acting in a certain way. In a role-based analysis of an act, it is the role (insofar as it is represented by the act), rather than the actor, that is central. In Japan the acts of being female, married and not engaged in (full-time) paid labour thus become the role of being a sengyō shufu, or full-time housewife.

Judith Butler offered an alternative to role, viewing gender as performative, ‘an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylised repetition of acts’ (Butler 1999: 179 (emphasis in original). In this framework, the body is constituted by the acts (gestures, dress, behaviour) that appear on and through it. The acts of standing in certain postures, wearing certain clothes and using certain gestures are all ways in which gender is inscribed on and through the body, to be interpreted in light of numerous specificities (including culture, history, language, etc.). Furthermore, it is in the repetition of these acts that gender is effected and the meaning and implications of gender are created and conveyed (Butler 1999: 179).

Moving beyond the binary of masculine and feminine, gender in this framework is not a firm foundation but a social temporality, constituted in cultural and historical contexts and intersecting with ‘racial, class, ethnic, sexual and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities’ (Butler 1999: 6, 179). While gender roles imply continuity, gender performed is necessarily fluid. As with roles, the emphasis in this framework is on the actor. As Butler pointed out, ‘there need not be a “doer behind the deed” … the “doer” is variably constructed in and through the deed’ (Butler 1999: 181).

While performativity is a persuasive discourse for analysing gender and acts, roles can be employed to understand social phenomena. Roles can neatly package many women’s experiences, elucidating trends and general pressures on women. Furthermore, the rubric of role still allows for a distinction to be drawn between the general and the specific. So while we may speak of the role of housewife or mother, we are not speaking of any one housewife or mother. The trend for women to marry at a later age, for example, can be seen as reflecting the residual symbolic significance of roles in society, firstly because the nature of a trend necessitates a generalized and simplified picture of complicated and multiple human behaviours, and secondly because the rise in the age of first marriage implies that a certain life pattern or lifestyle is favoured more than in previous years—namely that not-marrying is more acceptable, at least for a longer period, than it had once been. If adopting a new (married) lifestyle in general is less attractive or feasible for women, then the element of commonality suggests a shift in social understandings of what it means to be married and female, of what social expectations and ideals are inherent in the overlap of these, and of the desirability and attainability of such ideals. At the societal level, then, role is useful for elucidating analysis and for sketching changes in the way that women as a group have behaved.

However, at the leve l of individual analysis, role is an inadequate framework for analysing gender and its construction. A woman who remains single longer than her peers does not necessarily consciously adopt or repudiate a particular model of femininity, and neither can her single status be understood purely as a product of general changes in social ideals or expectations of womanhood. Rather, her status as an unmarried woman must be seen in the milieu of her circumstances, and the adaptations and subversions involved in her engagement with external pressures and internal desires must be noted. In the Japanese context, as Sakai Junko (2003) observed, single, unmarried, childless women over 35 years may be single for a number of reasons, but, irrespectively, all women in those circumstances are tagged by society as ‘losers’. For the individual woman, and therefore in scholarly analyses of individuals, it is the contextual and transient implications of the act and its repetition that create meaning as gender. The social trend under which the individual or act is subsumed is therefore of little value to individual analysis.

For these reasons, role and performativity sit side by side in my discussion of gender in this chapter. An additional term that I use advisedly is the ‘model’, for example the ‘housewife—salaried worker’ (sengyō shufu—sararīman) model and the family model. In this context, models should not be interpreted as representing a universal pattern, nor do they reveal the subtle variations and adaptations that are made by those encompassed. It is precisely this that makes them useful in an overview of this nature yet also limits their applicability to a detailed analysis of women’s issues. While particular models (and ideals) may be promulgated and propagated by media, folklore, state policy and legislation, the adoption, adaptation and rejection of models occurs on a daily basis in the lived experiences of individuals. The model captures only one aspect or one point in time of that experience, using that information as a centre point for extrapolation or speculation on a broader scale. However, the model cannot reveal the ways that individuals transgress, challenge or reform ideals, nor can it reveal the individualistic ways that this occurs; hence it is useful in broad discussions and has limitations as a lens for micro studies. It is with these limitations in mind that I proceed.

Women in Imperial Japan—family and feminism

Women’s lives are nothing but a series of services, first to parents when young, then to husbands and parents- in-law when married, and when children come, they are busy caring for them and supervising the food and kitchen work.

(Fukuzawa, cited in Fujiwara 1988: 19)

These words were written by liberal social critic and proponent of Western thought Fukuzawa Yukichi, and they illustrate the status of the majority of Japanese women towards the end of the nineteenth century. Influenced by the work of John Stuart Mill and inspired by the work of Japanese female activists, Fukuzawa’s critique of female subordination in society illustrates two key points: that feminist thought had taken root in Japan long before the women’s lib movement bloomed and that advocates of gender equality could be found even within the depths of the Meiji revival of patrilineal and patriarchal customs (Fujiwara 1988: viii).

In Imperial Japan (the period spanning 1890–1945) the family was the crucible of feminine duty. The responsibilities of the daughterly role gave way to those of the wife, daughter- in-law and mother. The Meiji (1868–1912) abolition of the distinct class system and the reduced influence of the aristocratic (samurai) code meant that women who had previously enjoyed relative flexibility of status were now bound to the Confucian ‘three obediences’ to which the above quote refers (Iwao 1993: 5). The catchphrase ‘ryōsai kenbo’ (good wife, wise mother) exemplifies the ideal of femininity prescribed by the Meiji state, and the promotion of women’s education reflected this emphasis on women as ‘intelligent incubators’.¹ This ideal also reflected the emergence of the nuclear family, a first step towards the full-time housewife feminine ideal of post World War II (Nolte 1987: 92).

The Meiji (1868–1912) and Taisho (1912–1926) eras were a peak in state-promulgated patriarchy, as codified in the Meiji Civil Code that defined the father—husband as head of the household (ie)² and the authority on family matters from marriage to property ownership (Tachi 1995: 21).

In most areas and for most women, marriage rendered a woman the property of the household and awarded ownership of her possessions to the family, or, more specifically, to the most senior male of the house (Mackie 1995b: 2).³ The family was in this sense a political structure, the lowest unit in the Imperial hierarchy. Ideals of self-sacrifice and duty were instilled through family structure, rendering control a domestic and internalized function (Aoki 1997: 23). Furthermore, as the ie ideal entailed continuity beyond the life expectancy of individual members, the family power structure reflected and reinforced the reproductive role of women members (Long 1996: 159). To this end, the transition from new bride to mother implied an increase in authority, while failure to produce an heir was a legitimate ground for divorce. The position of women in the family was prescribed via these official family ideals, and it was maintained not only through marriage and family laws but also through legislation such as the 1890 Law on Political Associations and Meetings, which prohibited women from active political involvement and organization (Mackie 1995b: 4–5).

From this rigid and structurally reinforced discrimination came the first-wave feminist campaigns for women’s suffrage and women’s rights. Although attaining women’s political rights was its primary target, the suffrage movement also addressed wider women’s issues, including the protection of mothers and children and the valuation of the domestic sphere (Tachi 1995: 21–2). The movement encompassed several distinct strands of feminist approach, reflecting the diversity of women involved as well as the breadth of women’s issues at the time.

The first political women’s group, the New Women’s Association (Shin Fujin Kyōkai), was formed in 1919 by Hiratsuka Raichō, Ichikawa Fusae and Oku Mumeo (Tachi 1995: 21). All three women were journalists, and not by coincidence. The ban on women’s political organization (lasting until 1922) meant that journalism played a central role in raising women’s issues to public attention (Nolte 1987: 93; Mackie 1995b: 5).

In 1911, Hiratsuka founded Seitō (Bluestocking), a journal whose original objective was self-expression, as the first journal exclusively by and for women. Seitō addressed the experiential aspects of women’s issues in the Imperial state (Nolte 1987: 97). At this point in her career, Hiratsuka opposed suffrage as an ultimate goal, viewing it as a means of indoctrinating women into the state machine of modernization and industrialization (Tachi 1995: 22). Informed by studies of Buddhism and Christianity, Hiratsuka emphasized the ultimate importance of love as life’s meaning, and she focused on the oppression experienced by women within marriage and the family (Nolte 1987: 98; Tachi 1995: 22). Adopting a binary distinction of public (male) and private (female) spheres, Hiratsuka promoted the reproductive role of women as a ‘hidden power’ to be valued and recognized (Tachi 1995: 25). The first editorial in Seitō featured her now-famous declaration on the decline of this power and the status of Japanese women:

In the beginning, woman was the sun. She was an authentic person. Today she is the moon. She lives by others, shines with the light of others; she is the moon with the pallid face of an invalid … We must restore our hidden sun.

(Hiratsuka, translated in Nolte 1987: 97)

This restoration involved protection of the rights of mothers and the provision of family benefits and maternity leave (Tachi 1995: 22). Hiratsuka’s stance on this issue contrasted with those of fellow Seitō writers and activists such as the poet Yosano Akiko and the socialist Yamakawa Kikue. Yosano rejected state intervention and promoted economic independence as the key to resolving women’s child-care problems (Mackie 1995c: 61). However, although Yosano focused on suffrage as a means of achieving social reform, Yamakawa argued that only the ultimate destruction of the capitalist system would redress inequality between men and women (Mackie 1995c: 61).

The first-wave feminist movement thus encompassed considerable diversity in theoretical as well as practical aims and ideals. While Yosano and Yamakawa were wary of the state, New Women’s Association member Ichikawa Fusae believed that only women’s participation in the political sphere would enable the creation of a gender-equal society (Tachi 1995: 24). Ichikawa’s willingness to cooperate with the state led to increased organization around women’s issues and to increased engagement with government structure and function (Tachi 1995: 24). However, this increase also enabled the state to co-opt into the war effort the women’s groups that had risen to prominence by the 1930s (Mackie 1995b: 5). The implications of women’s participation in the Imperial state were recognized and criticized in the work of contemporary Japanese feminists such as Matsui Yayori.⁴

The Imperial era was a time of flux for women. The Meiji state’s implementation of traditionalist laws and policies was designed to emphasize women’s reproductive role and exclude women from political participation. As a result, women’s resistance and political organization strengthened. While the theoretical approaches of first-wave feminists were varied, discussions and debates brought foundational feminist issues such as social welfare, the value of motherhood and women’s political roles to the attention of a modernizing Japanese society.

The post-war period: changes in constitution, family and gender roles

The Allied (American) Occupation of post-war Japan (1945–1952) brought changes to the official state treatment of women and women’s affairs. Most significant was the introduction of an equal-rights amendment (ERA) into the 1947 Constitution, which was drafted by the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP), General Douglas McArthur, and the forces beneath him (Pharr 1987: 224). Article 14 of the Constitution explicitly guarantees women’s equality in the eyes of the state:

All people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.

Even more radical is the provision of Article 24, drafted by Beate Shirota, a 22-year-old member of the Occupation force who had grown up in Japan. This article states:

Marriage shall be based on mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis.

With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.

As a guarantee of women’s equality in the domestic sphere, this article extends ‘well beyond anything found in most constitutions of the world today’ (Pharr 1987: 231). The Constitution not only defines women’s rights in marriage as being equal to those of men, but in doing so it codifies the family as an egalitarian unit based on principles of gender equality (Mackie 1995b: 8). This redefining of women’s status within the family made the shift from Imperial to post-war Japan all the more dramatic for Japanese women and women’s rights activists.

Even prior to the Constitution, however, the SCAP had indicated support for women’s rights by encouraging women’s entry to the government and supporting bureaucracy. With women’s suffrage finally obtained in December 1945, the first post-war election in April 1946 welcomed 36 women into the Diet, bringing to 8.4 per cent the Lower House female constituency (Pharr 1987: 233; Mackie 1995b: 6).⁵

The rapid economic growth of post-war Japan was accompanied by a revolution in family models and ideals. The trend of urbanization and the increase in nuclear families led to reforms in housing design and development (Ueno 1987: 79; Nishikawa 1996: 228). The nuclear family model encompassed distinct gender roles, namely the full-time housewife—salaried worker (sengyō shufu—sararīman) binary that influenced the design and space utilization of the family home. The ideal post-war family house therefore included a spacious kitchen, with conveniences for the housewife, in which to prepare meals with which to nurture her children and husband. For the ‘corporate warrior’, the home was quickly becoming just a place to eat and sleep (Nishikawa 1996: 228).

The term ‘sengyō shufu’ appeared in the early 1970s, following the almost universal popularization of this ideal in the 1960s (Ueno 1987: 80). The role of housewife epitomized the modern feminine ideal and also, as Ueno pointed out, the sole road to upward mobility for women (1987: 81). The housewife was the feminine complement to the sararīman, itself an ideal promoted by a state fervent in its push for economic development and one, as I will discuss below, which remains entrenched in popular perceptions of women’s roles.

Sengyō shufu proved useful for distinguishing between those wives who were engaged in paid part-time labour (...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Women, feminism and the family in contemporary Japan
• 2 Feminism and non-government women’s groups
• 3 Feminism and bureaucracy – women’s centres
• 4 Feminism and erotica @ the Love Piece Club
• 5 Feminism and the popular media (Haruka Yōko’s feminism)
• Conclusion: Feminist movements and feminist futures
• Notes
• Bibliography