Transforming Japan

How Feminism and Diversity Are Making a Difference

Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow, Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow

• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781558617001
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Classes & Economic Disparity
• Index: Social Sciences

A volume of essays by Japan's leading female scholars and activists exploring their country's recent progressive cultural shift. When the feminist movement finally arrived in Japan in the 1990s, no one could have foreseen the wide-ranging changes it would bring to the country. Nearly every aspect of contemporary life has been impacted, from marital status to workplace equality, education, politics, and sexuality. Now more than ever, the Japanese myth of a homogenous population living within traditional gender roles is being challenged. The LGBTQ population is coming out of the closet, ever-present minorities are mobilizing for change, single mothers are a growing population, and women are becoming political leaders. In Transforming Japan, Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow has gathered the most comprehensive collection of essays written by Japanese educators and researchers on the ways in which present-day Japan confronts issues of gender, sexuality, race, discrimination, power, and human rights.

VII

FEMINISM AND POLITICAL POWER

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22

Japan’s First Phase of Feminism

Mioko Fujieda

In 1868 the new Meiji government was established in Japan, replacing the Tokugawa shogunate, whose rule had lasted for two hundred and sixty years. A new Japan, with the emperor as head of state, abolished feudalism,¹ introduced a capitalist system, and pursued a path toward modernization, following the models of Western countries. Japan’s start as a capitalist country lagged behind the Western countries by more than a century. To catch up with the West, the political leaders of the time embarked on militaristic expansionism with the slogan “Enrich the nation, strengthen the army.” Under this policy Taiwan and Korea were colonized successively.

Internally, the Emperor system and the feudalistic patriarchal family system, which formed the fundamental basis for achieving this political end, were placed on a firm ground by the end of the nineteenth century with the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution in 1889, and the civil code in 1898. Thus, total subjugation of women to the head of the household, and to men in general, was given legal justification. Women were placed, so to speak, outside the hierarchical order of society, regardless of the social class to which they belonged.

Women had to wait until the end of World War II in 1945 to see restrictions on their rights as human beings removed in all spheres. In the meantime, however, many women continued to struggle for their emancipation from all the miseries and injustices inflicted upon them by society and the state, through speeches, writings, and actions. Their struggle began in the earlier years of the Meiji period, often inspired and encouraged by the struggles and achievements of their sisters in the West.

It seems that outside Japan very little is known about Japanese women today, let alone about Japanese consciousness of issues concerning women. This lack of knowledge about Japan’s “First Phase,” or “First Wave,” as it is called in the West, holds true among most Japanese also, as the history of early feminism is totally absent from school curricula, except for a few women who are occasionally mentioned here and there, such as Akiko Yosano, poet and essayist (1878-1942), and Raicho Hiratsuka (1886-1971), who started Seito magazine (Bluestocking) in 1911.

Although such international developments in recent years as the International Women’s Year and the United Nations Decade for Women have had an impact on the Japanese government, school textbooks, subject to rigorous inspection by the Ministry of Education prior to publication, are still filled with gender bias and sexual stereotyping, and ignore the contributions made by women. Gender issues, including those having to do with the “hidden curriculum,” are simply absent as a category from this inspection procedure, and thus textbooks function as an important vehicle for the perpetuation of gender bias with the Ministry’s authorization. This is further compounded by the fact that for the most part textbook publishers are unaware of gender issues.

In this essay it is impossible to undertake a comprehensive discussion of the hundreds of notable women who were active in different ways during the First Phase. Therefore, what I will do here is to portray briefly the lives of the following six women: Toshiko Kishida (later known as Shoen Nakajima) (1864-1901), ² Hideko Kageyama (later Fukuda) (1865-1927), Toyoko Shimizu (later Kozai, also known by her pen name, Shikin) (1868-1933), Suga Kanno (1881-1911), Kajiko Yajima (1833-1925), and Fusae Ichikawa (1893-1981). This list is not intended to be all-inclusive, but rather a selective illustration of different areas of commitment, persuasion, and inclination. One characteristic common among these women, however, though in different ways, is that they were all rebels.

A Real First: Toshiko Kishida

Toshiko Kishida (1864-1901) was a real first: she was the first woman to give public addresses in support of the Popular Rights Movement which focussed around issues of political freedom, individual rights, and representative government. Born to a wealthy merchant family in Kyoto, in 1879, at the age of fifteen she was called to Tokyo to give lectures on Chinese classics to the empress.³ Having grown up in a merchant family, however, she found the court life too conventional, superstitious, and unbearably hierarchical. After two years Kishida resigned, citing poor health as an excuse.

After resigning from her post, Kishida traveled extensively with her mother all over Japan, meeting people. It was a time when the Popular Rights Movement, which lasted from the 1870s to the 1880s, was at its height. Among the people she met during her travels were leaders in this movement, and she immediately became involved in it.

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In 1882 Kishida made her appearance before the public as the first female speaker for the cause of women’s rights, giving a speech entitled “Fujo no michi” (The way for women). She seems to have been a very good speaker, with an electrifying effect on the audience. In addition to being brilliant, articulate, and beautiful, the fact that she had served at the imperial court probably gave her a special aura. Her appearance on the political scene definitely had an impact on many women across the country, who were drawn to the popular rights ideas, many of them joining the movement.

This was the period immediately after the start of Japan’s modernization, and feudal conventions prevailed. Life was based on Confucianist moral principles, a convention in which women were held to be biologically inferior to men. They were there to serve men, and to maintain the family line. Kishida criticized this situation and called for changing it.

Alarmed by the heightening influence of the Popular Rights Movement, which attracted not only men but also quite a few women, the government embarked on a campaign of harsh repression. A speech Kishida made in 1883 titled “Maidens in Boxes, or the Imperfection of Marriage,” which criticized marriage based on a hierarchical relationship, led to her arrest, and indictment on the grounds of violating the Ordinance on Meeting.

It may seem extraordinary that a daughter from a merchant class could do such things, escaping the pressures from the family, but it was a period of transition and social change. Things were moving very fast in many directions. Prior to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 the samurai, or warrior class, had been the ruling class, followed by peasants and artisans, with the merchant class at the very bottom, in spite of their wealth. Toward the end of the feudal era, however, it was the merchants who controlled the whole economy. The samurai class was impoverished, and in debt to the merchants. Among the merchant class one could say that there was a considerable liberalism as well as criticism of the feudal system. In addition to these factors, in the case of Kishida, her mother’s supportive role was extremely important in terms of her intellectual development. It was her mother who encouraged her to study and pursue her ideas.

Kishida’s most representative article is one entitled “I Tell You, My Fellow Sisters,” which appeared in a Liberal Party newspaper in 1884.⁴ In it she refutes the commonplace argument that “men are strong and women are weak, therefore they can’t be equal,” saying that, if this contention refers to difference in physical strength, it reflects nothing but barbarism on the part of the speakers, whereas if it means differences in mental capabilities, it is only a distinction between the educated and uneducated. While urging women to be more self-confident, she turns to men, saying, “You men, alas, when you open your mouth you talk about reform or change, but then why are you so obstinately attached to old conventions when it comes to the issue of equal rights [between the sexes]?” Kishida continues to argue that the primary happiness for any human being will be realized only in a relationship built on love and compassion between equal men and women, and that an imperious attitude on the part of men is sure to destroy this happiness.

To Kishida, however, kokken (meaning “nationalism/patriotism,” the rights of the state) minken (people’s rights), and joken (women’s rights) were all identical, and they coexisted without any contradictions in her mind. This attitude was not unique to her but was shared commonly by most of the Popular Rights activists and theorists, for whom the rights of the state and those of the people were indistinguishable from each other. In Kishida’s article, for instance, she explains why she wants to call to her fellow sisters, saying, “There are good reasons for this.... I do this from a deeply felt concern for the state and the country.” Also, toward the end of the article, speaking about equal rights between the sexes, she says, “It should be a duty for any patriot concerned with our country’s fate to make our country more civilized by adopting what is good from the West and making up for our shortcomings.”

In 1884 Kishida married a politician, a Liberal Party leader, and withdrew not only from speaking engagements, but also from direct involvement in politics.⁵ Around this time Kishida and her husband were baptized and became Christians. Though in later years her writing lost the sharp edge it had in her earlier works, her rational and critical thinking did not wither until the end of her life. Their marital relationship seems to have been quite close to what she held as ideal—a relationship based on mutual love and respect. Kishida died of tuberculosis when she was thirty-seven (or forty, if she was born in 1861), two years after her husband, who also died of tuberculosis.

From a Popular Rights Advocate to a Socialist: Hideko Kageyama (later Fukuda)

One young woman who was very much inspired by Toshiko Kishida was Hideko Kageyama (1865-1927). She heard Kishida give a fiery speech in Okayama on the emancipation of women when she was about seventeen, and the speech made her determine that she would follow Kishida as a Popular Rights advocate.

Feeling the need for women’s economic independence and an education that would enable them to achieve it, Kageyama founded a private school (of a family business nature) for girls and women from ages six through the sixties, but it was closed down by the authorities within a short time. Her involvement in a subversive plot, a planned putsch in Korea in 1885, which has come to be known as the Osaka Incident, resulted in her arrest, trial, and imprisonment. As she was the only woman among all those involved, this incident made her famous as “Japan’s Joan of Arc.” This incident only reveals how narrow and superficial her Popular Rights ideas were, however, as this putsch conspiracy was a manifestation of chauvinistic, interventionist nationalism. It took quite some time for Kageyama to abandon her narrow patriotism.

Her own financial predicaments drove her to become more acutely aware of women’s need for economic independence, and this brought her to the Christian faith at one time. Later, her association with the then emerging socialist groups led her to socialism. In 1907, with the help of some of her male friends, she issued Sekai fujin (Women of the world) under the banner of women’s emancipation. In a front page editorial of the first issue, she described the purposes for publishing this newspaper, “When we look at the conditions currently prevailing in society, we see that virtually everything is coercive and oppressive to the true nature of women. This necessitates that we women rise up and form a social movement of our own.” ⁶ And in the third anniversary issue (no. 32, January 5, 1909) she claimed that the paper was meant for a readership of neither “good wives and wise mothers” nor “the successful” but, rather, for “the losers, the weak and the so-called hoodlums” for whom the paper wished to be a friend. ⁷ The paper was not, however, an undertaking exclusively of women, as was to be the case of Seito magazine published about four years later.

In 1890 the government had prohibited women from attending political meetings. This was in response to the growing campaign by women against licensed prostitution as well as to their increasingly active participation in political discussions. And in 1900 the Police Security Regulations were introduced. The notorious Article 5 of the Regulations placed a total ban on every sort of political activity by women. This made it impossible for women to hold meetings, make speeches, and attend meetings and conferences, let alone form political organizations. All women working for the improvement of women’s status became involved in a campaign against Article 5. Kageyama’s journal Sekai fujin, also took up this issue. While Kageyama’s argument was based on the “different but equal” theory, in one of her articles she referred to a “dual struggle.” According to this argument, women are subject to the rule of the “male class” and the “aristocrat and rich class,” and this dominance is founded on “the society’s class structure itself” (no. 4, February 15, 1907). In the meantime, she discussed elsewhere, the male-centered legal system “holds us women in contempt and abuses us,” and men, who greatly benefit from this system, are dead set against women’s rights. In order to change this she urged that women courageously stand up (no. 30, November 4, 1908). ⁸ Yet she did not elaborate on this argument. Her dedication and commitment to her paper allowed for it to continue to be published for two years in spite of severe repression by the government authorities.

Kageyama was a woman of action rather than a deep thinker. Her life was always a financially difficult one, as she was the main supporter of her family most of her life—her parents, her children, and her sick husband who died of syphilis in 1900, after eight years of marriage. She “always fought, never wavering because of any setback,” as she triumphantly writes in her autobiography.⁹ She died in extreme poverty at the age of sixty-three.

Independence versus Marriage: Toyoko Shimizu (later Kozai)/ Shikin

From the same generation as Kishida and Kageyama there is Toyoko Shimizu, also known by the pen name Shikin (1868-1933), who was influenced by the Popular Rights ideas, though she came upon the scene a little later than Kageyama. Known as a woman’s rights advocate, journalist, and novelist, Shikin was a feminist pioneer in the earlier half of her life. “Koware yubiwa” (A Broken Ring), her earliest story, published in 1891, and believed to be based on her own life experience, is strikingly feminist in that she portrays a woman who leaves her marriage out of her own will when she finds out that her husband had been married to another woman with whom he had continued to maintain a relationship.¹⁰ The story was literally a feminist declaration of independence, very much advanced for the period.¹¹

As in the story, in her real life, in 1899, she walked out of her first marriage, which had been arranged by her father, because of her husband’s involvement with other women. This unhappy experience helped awaken her to the cause of women’s rights, and she joined the Popular Rights Movement. The way in which she developed her own thinking distinguishes her from her predecessors such as Toshiko Kishida and Hideko Kageyama.

In 1890 Shikin moved from Kyoto to Tokyo and worked as a journalist for the Jogaku zasshi (Journal of women’s education), and that was where she wielded her critical pen against the repressive government and against society’s “common sense,” which backed the government’s contemptuous attitude toward women. All her editorials, such as “Why are not women allowed to attend political meetings?” and “In tears I call you, my sisters,” were written along this line.¹²

Her best novel, Imin gakuen (School for Migrants), published in 1899, dealt with the issue of the Burakumin (Buraku people), or the “untouchables,” for the first time in the history of Japanese literature. (See chapter 16 for a discussion of Buraku issues.) Although the story was idealistic, the ways in which she described society, and the relationship between men and women reveal how accurate and farsighted her observations were.¹³

Earlier, around 1891, while she was engaged in the Popular Rights Movement, Shikin was proposed ...