Rethinking Japanese Feminisms ed. by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rethinking Japanese Feminisms ed. by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker Marnie S. Anderson (bio) Rethinking Japanese Feminisms. Edited by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2018. viii, 301 pages. $65.00. Rethinking Japanese Feminisms is a groundbreaking volume that emerged out of a conference on the same topic at Emory University in 2013. Consisting of 14 chapters plus a marvelous conclusion by Ayako Kano, the volume appears slightly longer than most of its kind, yet the essays are on the short side. The editors have divided the book into four parts, each centering on a set of themes and paired with a concise introduction. The contributors, who come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including literature, history, anthropology, sociology, and feminist studies, take on topics ranging from the activism and translation work of socialist feminist Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980), to the opportunities available to postwar women teaching ikebana (flower arranging) and working in ryokan (traditional Japanese inns), to reflections on the legacy of the ūman ribu (women's liberation) movement of the 1970s. The book joins other recent collections on women and gender in Japan including Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan (2014), Modern Girls on the Go (2013), and Recreating Japanese Men (2011). What makes Rethinking Japanese Feminisms stand out is its sustained attention to feminisms; feminism hovers in the background of many studies of women and gender, but here it is foregrounded. The plural feminisms is crucial as the editors and contributors do not adhere to a single definition of feminism. Rather, they embrace debate and contestation as they sort through "our interpretations of the past, our engagement with the present, and our outlook for the future" (p. 8). Part 1 focuses on activism and begins with Elyssa Faison's chapter on Yamakawa Kikue's work as an activist and bureaucrat rather than a theorist [End Page 121] as Yamakawa normally appears in English. Faison highlights Yamakawa's understanding of women's rights as a crucial part of proletarian rights, distinguishing Yamakawa from her contemporaries in the suffrage movement. Yamakawa, Faison explains, "refused to trade off considerations of class for those of gender, or vice versa" (p. 16). Hillary Maxon examines the first Mothers' Congress of 1954, a moment when Maxon argues that members contended with the legacy of the Asia-Pacific War. They "rebuked the state-constructed ideal of martial motherhood … and reimagined an empowered, pacifist, and politically engaged motherhood" (p. 39). James Welker traces the emergence of lesbian feminism in Japan, especially in the 1990s. He finds that the ūman ribu movement of the 1970s and 1980s enabled the rise of lesbian feminism even as the movement itself did not address—and sometimes actively suppressed—lesbian issues. Tomomi Yamaguchi's chapter takes on the last two decades and analyzes the backlash to the mainstreaming of feminism in the early 2000s. It is a tour de force and, therefore, I offer a few additional comments on it. Yamaguchi interviews the people who were at the center of the backlash against feminism and asks what motivated them. Her analysis focuses on the publications of two religious groups: Shinsei Bukkyō ("New-born" Buddhism) and the Tōitsu Kyōkai (the Unification Church, known derisively as the "Moonies" in the United States). She finds that much of what feminists had assumed about the activists was wrong. Antifeminist conservative activists did not take marching orders from a central conservative organization: rather, "Leadership came from small-scale organizations with deeply committed members" (p. 75). What's more, some activists were not opposed so much to gender equality ordinances as to ideas about sexuality and sex education. Yamaguchi suggests that feminists would do well to learn from what has happened with attempts to mandate feminist policies and to avoid using the language of "women's active participation in society" which has been "co-opted by conservatives" (p. 80). Part 2 on education and the labor force begins with Julia Bullock's essay on educator Koizumi Ikuko (1892–1964) and the latter's 1930s treatise on coeducation that was "radical for its time, and remarkable for its anticipation of Occupation...