Dressed Up and On the Go: Women Cyclists in Modern Japan

Abstract

Ranking alongside the top bicycling nations of the world, Japan today boasts of a deeply engrained cycling culture. While the technological prowess of Japan’s bicycle industry is well known, there exists no scholarly study investigating the socio-cultural impact of cycling in Japan, specifically its role in emancipation of women. How the modern women of Japan scaled barriers to mobility riding their way to modernity in an oppressive male-dominated society is not yet known. The objective of this paper is to examine women cyclists in Japan in the context of modernisation. On the one hand, viewing bicycles helps examine the Japanese economy from the perspective of ordinary women as active consumers (as against their passive image) whose demand for bicycles was certainly an essential ingredient for the growth of bicycle industry. On the other hand, it serves to question the predominant view of consumption stagnation in interwar Japan. Most importantly, as countries around the world continue to make laudable efforts to encourage women cyclists, a leaf can be drawn by policymakers from the history of forgotten cycling heroines of Japan to accelerate women’s socio-economic empowerment.