Japanese Women and Party Politics

Abstract

WA; OMEN SAMURAI are all small-grained.' In Japan the negative attitude toward women reflected in this statement may be found in all levels of the public media. Women entering politics, seeking permanent skilled occupations or professional careers (only the performing arts are excepted), engaging in citizen activism-all are perceived with a critical eye which is not focused on men qua men. Nor is the housewife and mother who remains in the home excepted. Criticism focuses on her preoccupation with children's education (the kyoiku mama, education-obsessed mother, phenomenon) and her myhome-ism. The women's suffrage movement in Japan had a formidable seventy-year history. Not the least of women's efforts was assistance in obtaining the male franchise, but although the polls were opened to males in I925, the political franchise was not shared by Japanese women until I946. Throughout Japan's modern century the woman issue has easily been engaged in public forum, and it is apparent that Japanese women still have a low public image. Underlying causes may be rooted in the social psychology of a nation whose women have been legally and socially disadvantaged for at least four centuries prior to the 1946 Constitution, women who nevertheless, far from losing strong matriarchal urges, possessed the ingenuity to enhance them. But the rapidity and drastic nature of postwar socio-legal and economic change have thrust Japanese society into future shock. In the I950S one often heard the comment: two things have grown stronger, women and nylon stockings. Almost forgotten, the remark came into vogue again in I975 during Inter-