A Voice from Troubled Japan

Abstract

A Voice from Troubled Japan Noriko Kawahashi (bio) The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion was a source of encouragement and inspiration for me when I was a Princeton University graduate student from the late 1980s through the beginning of the 1990s. I would read the articles by the shining stars in feminist studies of religion and wonder when I, too, would be able to write and publish articles like these. Eventually, I became a professional scholar in Japan, where in 2003 I was privileged to be a guest editor with Masako Kuroki of “Feminism and Religion in Contemporary Japan,” a special issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, an English-language journal published by Nanzan University. In our preface, we wrote that JFSR “is a ground-breaking journal of work in religion and feminism. It is our hope that this special issue will serve as the occasion to initiate, at some point in the future, a Japanese journal similar to JFSR. We expect that will require us not only to improve the quality of researchers and raise the level of work in the fields concerned but also to carry out institutional reform of religious studies in Japan.”1 Today, more than a decade later, there is still no journal like JFSR being published in Japan. However, the roundtable discussion on “Feminist Theology and Religious Diversity” in fall 2000, for example, and the articles in the twentieth anniversary issue in fall 2005, inspired and empowered my colleagues and me. We have learned a great deal from those pages. At present, I am a member of the international board and occasionally take part in editorial review work on JFSR. Thinking back to when I was a graduate student, I feel very proud of my JFSR involvement. The present state of religious studies in Japan, however, is nothing to feel very proud about. Women make up only about 10 percent of the board of directors of the Japanese Association for Religious Studies. What I have noticed in pursuing religious studies in America and conducting my research in the academic community in Japan is the existence of a double standard in the Japanese academic community. That is, international conferences such as the International Association for the History of Religions may give the impression that religious studies in Japan is concerned about gender parity and feminism, but the reality is different when attending a Japanese conference. The “patriarchs” of Japan’s religious studies understand that it would be politically incorrect to make light of gender issues when they speak at a meeting of the American Academy of Religion, for example, but they appear to think such statements are acceptable at domestic conferences. [End Page 153] Furthermore, some Japanese male religious studies scholars are lenient toward sexual harassment. Regarding the gender discrimination to be found in religious studies in Japan, see the article I co-authored with Kayoko Komatsu and Masako Kuroki, “Gendering Religious Studies: Reconstructing Religion and Gender Studies in Japan.”2 I would point out also how unfortunate it is that such outstanding feminist theologians as Hisako Kinukawa and Satoko Yamaguchi have been unable to find full-time posts in Japan. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in March 2011, Japan has seen increasingly widespread discussion of the public role to be played by religious studies and the social contribution to be made by religion. Regrettably, however, gender is often lacking from that discussion. There is an assumption that religion should play a disaster relief role, and this assumption has just further hardened conventional views of gender roles. In a sense, humanitarian aid has had a contrary (i.e., nonhumane) effect of reinforcing gender imbalance, and this phenomenon deserves a critical look. Moreover, there are even religion professionals and scholars who, though they are women, are not prepared to take a gender-critical point of view. I strongly reject the orientalist view that Japanese women in general are backward and still imprisoned within patriarchy. However, JFSR has an important role to play because its feminisms provide a critical force and impact that can serve as pressure applied to Japan from the outside, and so can...