On Rethinking Japanese Feminisms

CON CLUSION • On Rethinking Japanese Feminisms Ayako Kano Why We Need to Rethink Japanese Feminisms Now The first word of the title of this volume, “rethinking,” points toward moments of reflection and reconsideration. The second word, “Japanese,” raises the question of national boundaries, and the third signals multi- plicities in the plural “feminisms.” Why feminisms rather than feminism? What is the plurality that must be attended to? Why Japanese, what does the modifier mean, and what is the status of the national as a modifier? And why is there a need to rethink Japanese feminisms? Why now? And how? To answer these questions, this chapter begins by considering the present moment, and then weaves together the insights of three feminist scholars, Ueno Chizuko, Vera Mackie, and Barbara Molony, whose keynote addresses originally inspired this volume. Why rethink Japanese feminisms now? In the wake of the massive earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown of March 2011—a disaster that shook the nation and its people’s faith in government—the Liberal Democratic Party returned to power after ousting the Democratic Party of Japan. The new prime minister, Abe Shinzō, was a distressingly famil- iar face to feminists in Japan because he had spearheaded a conservative backlash against them in the late 1990s to early 2000s, as discussed in Tomomi Yamaguchi’s chapter in this volume.1 Cleverly, and initially a little confusingly, this time he proposed a series of measures highlight- ing women’s roles in boosting national confidence and economic growth, while at the same time seeming to expect them to remain “good wives and wise mothers” in the conventional sense. Under the term “womenomics,” Abe made a number of eye-catching feminist gestures.2 At 267 6715_Book.indd 267 8/3/17 3:43 PM 268 Ayako Kano one point, his cabinet contained five women, roughly 30 percent of the total number of ministers, thus fulfilling a “quota” set as a national goal. Increasing the number of women in leadership positions was a highly visible gesture, although most of the women handpicked by Abe were known to have conservative views. That Abe Shinzō, who less than a decade earlier had espoused strongly anti-feminist rhetoric, now found it politically expedient to per- form such gestures can perhaps be read as a sign of the tectonic shift that has occurred during this time. It is striking that Abe’s public announce- ments on “womenomics” were made initially in international contexts where it was necessary to project Japan’s bona fides as a nation leading the world in women’s rights. These were strategically crafted at a moment when the Japanese government faced severe criticism from multiple sec- tors, for failing to atone for the violation of women’s human rights during World War II, especially on the so-called “comfort women” issue.3 As such, the very fact that this international pressure was strong enough to motivate Abe’s feminist speech acts might be interpreted as a hope- ful sign. One also senses this shift when surveying the pages of conservative news outlets such as the Sankei shinbun. Even while its op-ed pages con- tinue to be filled with rhetorical statements to the effect that men should be strong and defend the nation and that women should stay at home and raise healthy babies, making one doubt that the last seventy years have existed for some of these pundits,4 news articles in the paper also describe women juggling career and family, and men stepping up to shoulder more housework and childcare. While much of this coverage is still ori- ented toward the national and nationalist goals of boosting economic productivity as well as the birthrate, it is nonetheless a change from the celebration of conventional gender roles that one saw in the same pages in the 1990s and 2000s. Thus, it is not outside the realm of the possible that Japanese feminists have survived the backlash, and that at least some of their ideas have become embedded in what could be called national common sense. A tentative voicing of such a possibility, however, is immediately muffled by doubts. Some propositions may now be shared by conservative leaders and feminist activists alike, but this is surely not enough, and the divisions are just as important. Yes, the conservatives might agree, some women can be good leaders. And yes, under some circumstances, if 6715_Book.indd 268 8/3/17 3:43 PM Conclusion 269 it does not hurt their role as mothers, women should participate in soci- ety beyond the home, especially if it helps the economy and the nation. But soon the points of contention arise: Are numerical quotas for women and financial incentives for promoting women the right answer? How far is the political leadership willing to take the dismantling of conven- tionally gendered divisions of labor? And how far is it willing to take the blurring of sexual and gender differences? Can we—should we—be “gender free”?5 In other words, have Japanese feminists won? Or only some feminists? In the second decade of the twenty-first century, we face all of these questions and more, suggesting that the definition of feminism, never unambiguous in the first place, is facing a particular kind of pressure right now. And what about the adjective “Japanese” to modify feminisms? This volume was initially conceived at an international conference, which itself was an outgrowth of several panels at major academic conferences that had initiated the process of “rethinking” the history of Japanese feminism in English. The very nature of this multiyear scholarly project calls the meaning of Japanese-ness into question. All of us participants are interested and academically invested in the study of Japan, but our degrees of affiliation and identification vary widely, and that is a good thing: it allows us to question the “assumed isomorphism of race, space, and culture”6 according to which Japanese ethnicity is coterminous with Japanese territory, the Japanese nation-state, Japanese culture, and Japanese language. Some of us are Japanese citizens but reside elsewhere, and some of us have different citizenships but are long-term residents of Japan. Some of us reside elsewhere but have a longtime engagement with Japanese studies. Some of us have Japanese ancestry or family members. Some of us work in Japan, and many of us collaborate with colleagues there. Some of us feel more strongly interpellated by the term “Japanese” than others, and some of us identify or dis-identify more strongly.7 Our diverse subject positions and modes of address reflect the diversifica- tion of Japanese studies as a field, as well as the internationalization of Japanese academia—both are ongoing phenomena, fraught with diffi- culties and limitations, but also allowing us to shake loose some of the assumptions of knowledge production: assumptions about who “we” are, and for whom and about whom we write. Both the need to question what it means to advocate feminism as a state policy at this historical juncture, and the need to question the 6715_Book.indd 269 8/3/17 3:43 PM 270 Ayako Kano assumed isomorphism of “Japanese” ethnicity, nation-state, and language, lead us to rethink Japanese feminisms at this moment in time. The remainder of this chapter organizes this questioning around the fol- lowing three issues that emerged out of the 2013 conference: canonization vs. contention, the national vs. the transnational, and the optimistic vs. pessimistic arcs in narrating the history of feminism in modern Japan. Canonization vs. Contention Among those who joined us in our project of rethinking Japanese feminisms, there were three prominent scholars who have shaped the field. Vera Mackie is the foremost English-language scholar on Japanese feminism, and has published the most comprehensive monograph on the topic, Feminism in Modern Japan (2003). She also has written and edited a number of other important books on the history of gender and sexual- ity in Japan from the Meiji period (1868–1912) to the present, including Creating Socialist Women (1997) and Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan (2014).8 Barbara Molony has been an important advocate for scholarship on Japanese feminism and gender history in North American academia as associate editor of the U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal and as co-editor with Kathleen Uno of the groundbreaking volume Gendering Modern Japanese History, as well as author of many important articles on Japanese women’s history. As a manuscript reviewer of many book projects, she has also enabled the careers of numerous young scholars in the field.9 Ueno Chizuko is one of the most prominent feminist scholars in Japan and has published a long list of groundbreaking books, spanning an astonishingly wide range of topics and disciplines. As of this publi- cation, two are available in English translation: Nationalism and Gender and The Modern Family in Japan: Its Rise and Fall.10 She mentored a gen- eration of feminist sociologists as a professor at the University of Tokyo and remains a high-profile public intellectual. These scholars hailed from different parts of the globe—Japan, Australia, and the United States—and from different disciplines—litera- ture, history, and sociology. Their keynote speeches on the history and current situation of Japanese feminism articulated commonalities but also instructive differences. 6715_Book.indd 270 8/3/17 3:43 PM Conclusion 271 On the one hand, it is indeed remarkable that one can speak of a canon of Japanese feminist writing. As described in the introduction to this volume, Japanese feminism at this point has a long history, and many names that appear in these pages have become iconic figures.

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