I moved to the US from Japan when I was 6 and have come to learn about the huge gender inequality gap Japan has but I’m wondering if there is a feminist movement going on in Japan or if that even exists here in Japan. Anything that’s going on in current politics to change the inequality going on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/10220og/were_there_ever_a_feminist_movement_in_japan_like/
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No need
Not exactly, but there are of course people pushing against the inequality. From opposition parties to a lot of individual activists. Although I was told, that the word “feminist” is kinda tainted and is associated with TERFy activists. So they won’t be called “feminists” per se.
No joking here, is frightening to live in Spain as a man. I will get downvoted to hell for that but I hope it never reaches Japan.
Traditionally, the women still have all the money of the family to play with, while the men just get a little pocket money for all of their hard work. This mitigates the inequality to a certain extent.
And no, I don’t think that the feminist movement, if there is one, will ever get as militant, nasty and inpolite as it is in the US; at least I hope, it stays more civil.
Yes Japan has had waves of feminist movements the most notable being the suffragette movement starting in the Meiji era. There have been a few historical books written about it and activism in later decades.
what I do know is that after WWII General MacArthur put equality into the Japanese constitution pretty much by force. He believed it would temper their aggressive nature
Strict speaking, the women in Postwar Japan had more rights than American women – how those rights are enforced…well, we all know how that can go, but really they had a major leg up after the War over American Women – I’m sure there must have been some form of feminist movement but probably a bit more muted than the US
Recommended book: Coed revolution by Chelsea Szendi Schieder
There are! The Girl Gangs of the 80s were actually very fascinating. These were groups of middle and high school girls that did things like wear long skirts in protest of the short skirt uniforms at many of their schools, as well as developing the basics of what became “kawaii” culture—things like using cutesy handwriting and grammar—in order to express femininity in a fun way, rather than the more typical expectations to either be pure and demure or sexualized and fetishized. There are also some quite interesting movements nowadays—for example, her name escapes me, but there’s an artist who was arrested for making various products shaped like vaginas in order to try and normalize talking about vaginas (including a kayak modeled after a 3-D print of her own vagina). There are also currently people pushing back against standards such as how many office jobs require women to wear heels and makeup. Not sure how much of this has reached a legislative level, but I’ve definitely seen news mentioning grass roots organizing such as petitions, marches, etc. In terms of intersectional movements, there has also been a lot more acceptance and normalization of LGBT+ identities in Japan lately including attention being paid to legal rights such as marriage and transition.
There has been a feminist movement since the Meiji era, but it isn’t fair to compare the US feminist movement to those they have occurred (or are occurring) in other countries. The Japanese movements have not been as concerned with the rights of individual and has been more concerned with the rights of all women in Japan. Another thing you will find is that, as is the case for pretty much everything here, change happens much slower and that is very much the case with feminist movements.
On a side note, an interesting book to read is Beate Sirota Gordon’s “The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir of Japan, Human Rights, and the Arts”. The book deals with how Ms. Gordon ended up being included in the room while the Japanese constitution was written post WWII and how she was able to, almost single-handedly, establish the rights of Japanese women written into the constitution.
I was able to hear her speak when I was in University and talk to her afterwards and she was an amazing person to hear speak of this time in history.
There are a lot of other papers written about the woman’s feminist movements over the years and, while it is frustrating to see where some things still sit, it is interesting to see how much has actually changed and how those changes were able to be incorporated. Personally, I think we will see another massive movement in the workplace coming over the next 2 decades with an aging population of workers and declining birth rate…
This is the first part for a three part podcast on feminism in Japan. https://isaacmeyer.net/2020/03/episode-329-in-the-beginning-woman-was-the-sun-part-1/
Yes, there’s both historical and current occurrences of feminist movements in Japan. One example from the 1910s is the [Bluestocking magazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluestocking_(magazine)) which was a feminist publication. A recent “popular” example was #KuToo, which was derived from the #MeToo hashtag and was protesting against the expectation of women to wear high heels in certain working environments. Although I don’t know how widespread it is, I know multiple Japanese people who consider themselves feminists (literally フェミニスト) and are involved with various organizations and programs.
japan had a first wave and second wave feminist movement much like the us and europe. i can give you book titles once im at my computer, ill come back to this. conservative efforts seemed to have p much killed any sustaintiable movements in present times but i know tokyo has queer feminist scenes.