“Female Students Ruining the Nation”: The Debate over Coeducation in Postwar Japan

Abstract

After Japan's defeat in World War II, Occupation authorities extended to women a host of new rights that abolished legal authority of prewar paternalistic household (ie) system. The U.S.-authored draft of postwar Japanese Constitution included an article explicitly mandating the essential equality of sexes, which required Japanese to rewrite those parts of their Civil Code that conflicted with this basic precept. 1 As a result, Japanese women were granted many new rights, including rights to vote and hold office, to choose their own spouses, and to enjoy equal opportunity in education. But while these Occupation-era reforms established a legal basis for gender equality, women attempting to exercise these newly awarded rights found that these efforts conflicted with persistent cultural values and beliefs upholding more conventional roles for women in Japanese society. In early 1950s, as Occupation ended and Japan reevaluated its postwar legacy, conservatives began organizing to repeal some of more progressive legal reforms. They were met with fierce resistance from grassroots organizations of citizens from all walks of life, who feared a return to prewar militarist autocracy and passionately defended new freedoms granted to them by these reforms. 2 In this heated debate between conservative and progressive camps, problem of new roles for women in Japanese society featured prominently. Men fretted that their wives had become scary by failing to behave with due deference to household patriarch. An influx of women into workplace incited heated debate about women's role