Entering to the twenty first century, the backlash against feminism movement in Japan and gender policy incorporating their claims has been rapidly widespread. To begin with, we will first ascertain what the feminism movement has brought about up until 2001.
The feminism movement in Japan aimed at institutionalizing the concept of feminism and the mainstream in the establishment beginning of 1980s. Almost all universities had the lecture regarding women's studies, and also in primary/secondary education, overhauling gender discrimination in hidden curriculum [i.e. depicting male character aggressive and heroic while female character is described as passive and loving, in language textbooks. Through such stories on the textbook, students internally develops the idea that character represents the ideal image of male and female was gradually carried out. Under the pressure of such movements in the nation and the world opinions, Japanese government allowed the congress the assembly to pass some important new laws: Equal Employment Opportunity Law (1985), Law concerning the Welfare of Workers Who Take Care of Children or Other Family Members Including Child Care and Family Care Leave (Equal Domestic Responsibility and Rights to both Men and Women) (1995), The Basic Law for Gender-Equal Society (1999) and Domestic Violence Prevention Law (2001).
Underlying such legislation, there are some issues, as listed in a-d below, emerged due to the social changes in the end of the 20 century, and it seems that the institutional reform for gender equal society started as a total solution for those issues. The basic principle for the reform was criticism of gender roles and encouraging equal and exchanging job opportunities. a. Alternation of women's consciousness, b. Escalation of male alienation [in family and local community], c. Declining birthrate and an aging population of the society., d. Collapse of dependent's benefits system for male worker.
While these progresses were made in the end of the 20th century, there were already separate attacks on feminism from conservatives concerning individual topics. However, as entering to the 21st century, those inconsistent attacks were organized and rapidly gained its power, which formed today's backlash. It was "Sankei Newspaper" allied media, one of the most powerful newspapers with a strong tendency of conservatism and nationalism by nature, which promoted those assaults to link together.
In the end of the 20th century, the conservative and nationalistic people in Japan were enthusiastic about introducing the history textbooks that historical revisionists have written into public education. When their attempt was failed, they all turned their attentions to the gender issues. The contact point between the nationalistic historical rivisionist and gender issues was the issue of comfort women energetically accused by feminists such as Matsui, Yasuyori. Consequently, such critics hurt their sense of nationalism and gender awareness, and gave them a starting point to make a strong counterattack.
Following people belong to those conservative and nationalistic people: old and new right wing intellectuals, conservative politicians among Democratic Liberal Party and Democratic Party, religious conservatives, and grassroots conservative civilians. They defend gender discriminatory in school education, object to the sexual education based on reproductive health/rights, advocate the system of comfort women, hinder legal implementations of the Basic Law for Gender Equal Society at the level of local government, reduce budgets for the measures for gender equal society, attack individual active feminists and take advantages of media control for anti-feminism propaganda.
Nowadays, following U.S. government, Japanese government is carrying out neo-liberal policies. The neo-liberalism radically contradicts with nationalism, familism, traditionalism, which the backlash is based on. For instance, the collapse of dependent's benefits system for male workers taking place in neo-liberalism is detrimental to traditional familism advocators. However, the relationship between these two are not simple, as Koizumi administration promoting neo-liberalism has been backed up by Mori group taking most right winged position in Democratic Liberal Party.
Among those backlash people is Sintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo, who calls an ex-comfort woman a liar and claiming that aged women, without the ability to reproduce, have no use in society. However, such paternalistic behavior, together with his nationalistic remarks, has gained him with wide popularity mainly among those males in their 50's who now lead society.
Kanto Gakuin Univ.: Hosoya, Makoto