The Japanese sex-gender system has rarely been applied uniformly across social classes, much less before the 20th century; instead, it is known the existence of a series of customary norms that would have affected mainly the aristocracy, allowing commoners to enjoy relative sexual freedom and movement at the end of the Tokugawa era . However, in the process of building the modern Meiji State opposed to the notion of popular sovereignty, the elites intend to classify the cultural elements in force in the society of that time according to their functionality or uselessness with respect to the imperial cause, showing a true contempt towards public opinion and going so far as to censor newspapers and magazines prone to political commentary by imposing sanctions from 1871, although these did not usually fall on their peers, in a socio-economic sense, who were considered fully included in the debate around the next steps to be taken by the empire.
I. Political participation of women in the Movement for Freedom and People's Rights ( jiyū minken undō and the danshi shakai )
In this context, it was taken for granted that neither men lacking status or sufficient means to contribute to the Treasury a higher amount of money for taxes, much less women, regardless of their purchasing power, were in conditions to leave its mark on the history of the newly founded Imperial Diet through the election of its parliamentary representatives. Even so, the latter was exceptionally subverted in some local assemblies, where members of the Movement for Freedom and Popular Rights gave up their positions to their wives as a sign of protest against the central government, influenced by reading Western works translated into their native language related to the suitability of extending the status of citizens to their female counterparts: for example, in 1877 Herbert Spencer's Social Statics is disseminated, where a justification for resistance against illegal authority and notions about freedom of expression are formulated , sexual equality and educational rights, arguing that human happiness constituted the Divine Will and was valid for the entire population; Likewise, The difference in sex is published as a subject of the jurisprudence and legislation of Sheldon Amos in 1878, who considered that women should obtain property rights and access education in order to position themselves in higher quality jobs, also advocating for the abolition of prostitution, since regularly checking the health of prostituted women did not help to nip the problem in the bud.
As part of this movement in full swing, especially after 1882, we find the activist Toshi Kishida, who for the first time calls for equality between both sexes (danjo byôdô) effective, in a context of incorporating neologisms such as kenri (rights), joken (women's rights), and danjo dôken (equal rights for all). Ultimately, their requests would be ignored, and in 1898, with the entry into force of the Civil Code, patriarchal relations would be formally legitimized through the attribution to the head of the family of numerous prerogatives and advantages with respect to his relatives (such as, for example, being the sole holder of the power to grant consent on his own behalf and on behalf of others, especially his wife, for matters related to the public and private spheres, indistinctly). Likewise, it is determined that married women, after actively participating in an episode of adultery, had to get divorced and enter a prison for two years, while men involved in a similar situation were allowed to continue with their conjugal and extramarital life. , without fear of returning to singleness at the behest of the wife.
In any case, the perception begins to prevail during this initial collective experience of mobilization for the achievement of democratic ideals, which, despite appearances, were still too far away, that it was not being attacked in a direct enough way. against masculine privileges, such as polygamy or patrilineality; many of its participants felt dissatisfied with the degree of support and attention dedicated to the specific problems of women, and open their eyes to the need to organize politically and proselytize feminism in meetings led by them where neo-Confucian morality or positions of power in the home, among other matters of vital importance (something that in theory was prohibited, according to the Law of Associations and Political Assemblies of 1890). Regardless of such limitations, the collective imagination was undergoing a very rapid process of transformation, and it is no longer possible to ignore the growing popular concern for the inclusion of the marginalized in decision-making; thus, starting in 1882, numerous articles, adjusting to official guidelines, review the growing activity of women, attracting many more and giving rise to the proliferation of dialogues between them, until then almost completely silenced.
II. Early 20th-century feminism in Japan and the rise of suffragism
Although during the first years of the Meiji era women's suffrage was not assumed as a crucial objective to achieve in the process of conquering women's rights, little by little a discourse inspired by the ideas of John Stuart Mill was introduced in the archipelago. that emphasized the urgency of providing women with higher formal education as a means of acquiring the necessary subjectivity to exercise the vote, for example. In addition, the example of Western women at the beginning of the 20th century helps to lay the foundations for a justification for starting a similar project in Japan, understanding that they were no longer the only ones dissatisfied with the status quo. However, as we all know very well, at this time it was more about cultivating an ethical and moral character in the Confucian sense, with a view to turning them into impeccable wives and mothers, and, therefore, some pioneers, such as Tomoko Shimizu , pose the debate from a nationalist and retrograde angle, even in order to achieve greater acceptance of their ideology and, above all, avoid their criminal prosecution in an oppressive environment of new absolutism. That is to say, while Japanese intellectuals tried to model Japan on the ideas of the Enlightenment, they had to limit themselves to somehow fitting into the political program of the oligarchy.
It would not be until 1912, after the beginning of the Taishô era, when suffragism gained sufficient strength, giving rise to the foundation of an Association of New Women (Shinfujinkyôkai), which must have already been mentioned above, whose representatives advocated extending the identification of the female population as a separate class, highlighting Raichô Hiratsuka and her text Towards the unification of women, whose exposition would be followed by the articulation of two types of female rights: those of women themselves (joken) and of mothers (boken). ). The truth is that, even before the aforementioned example, other societies with similar purposes had emerged in different prefectures of the country, such as the Aikô Fujo Kyôkai of Kanagawa (1884), made up of the wives and daughters of the members of the Jiyû minken undô, or the Toyohashi Fujo Kyôkai of Aichi (1883), led by Murasame Nobu (who, in fact, participated with her husband in the Chichibu Incident and another in Osaka, two peasant revolts against the Government), Satô Nishikawa, Kaneko Tô, and Kondô Rui, although a relational, rather than individual, conception of the faculties they intended to exercise continued to prevail, declaring from the beginning their intentions to support men in their vital projects and patriotic aspirations.
In fact, some criticized the superficial methods that were being used in such groups to achieve their ambitious objectives, such as letting men be an active part of them, or even taking care of writing their regulations, and considered it necessary to acquire a greater degree of autonomy. training in these matters without external interference. They also argued that women were not taking advantage of their full potential, despite having the same mental abilities as the opposite sex, because they lacked knowledge and had accepted without question the criticism of society towards displays of intellectual curiosity on the part of the women. of this. In addition to universal suffrage, there were other areas of public and private life that required immediate attention, such as guaranteeing greater access to healthcare, eradicating poverty, obtaining better working conditions, providing full protection for maternity, etc., and since the Association of New Women began to push for the drafting of a law that would exempt women from having to marry men affected by sexually transmitted diseases, and seeking care for those who had already been infected.
In 1923, after the amendment, a year earlier, of article 5, clause 2, of the last of the laws that were part of the Government's plans to preserve public safety since 1894, the Great Kantô Earthquake led activists to join efforts to collectively deal with the humanitarian crisis, thus discovering the importance of cooperation; as a result, the Tokyo Federation of Women's Organizations (Tôkyô Rengô Fujinkai) is founded, and after completing the tasks of distributing food and clothing to the poor and finding shelters for the homeless, its members continue to meet. In 1924, the Federation is divided into five sections: society, employment, work, education, and government, and the participants debate tirelessly.
The section on government, specifically, focused on political rights, and a meeting in December of the same year gave rise to the League for the Achievement of Women's Suffrage (Fujin Sanseiken Kakutoku Kisei Dômei), viewing these rights as essential to improving women's status. of Japanese women: “1. It is our responsibility to destroy the customs that have existed in this country for the past two thousand six hundred years and build a new Japan that promotes the natural rights of men and women; 2. Since women have been attending public schools with men for half a century since the beginning of the Meiji period and our opportunities in higher education have continued to expand, it is unfair to exclude women from universal suffrage; 3. Political rights are necessary for the protection of almost four million working women in this country; 4. Women who work in the home must be recognized before the law to realize their full human potential; 5. Without political rights we cannot achieve public recognition at the national or local government level; 6. It is necessary and possible to bring together women of different religions and professions in a movement for women's suffrage”.
When, at the end of February 1925, the House of Representatives approves the male suffrage bill, according to which the previous restrictions were eliminated, the feminists decide to take advantage of the opportunity to convince several young parliamentarians to bring to the Diet the debate on the amendment of article 5, clause 1, of the Law cited above, the promotion of higher education among the female population, and the reform of the Civil Code, in order to enable them to at least present their candidacies for public office to local level, achieving a partial success that would motivate them to continue their struggle, but soon, the rise of militarism since 1931, would lead the institutions to crush any claim on individual rights for their subversive potential, and it would not be until the 10th of April 1946, already under the American occupation regime, that women vote for the first time.
III. Class and sex: what about the workers?
Despite the good intentions of these suffragettes, the truth is that there was a sector of the population that was not fully represented by the movement, which was mainly composed of the Japanese middle class; Liberal feminists did not see the capitalist state as inherently unjust, so working for change from within existing institutions was one of the main long-term goals. In this sense, it is criticized that suffragism, being based on the demand for a more institutionalized recognition of national belonging and democratic rights, had interests inevitably in tune with those of the State, and that the creation of official women's organizations nationalists during the war was enough to endow many activists with a sense of total subjectivity within the Empire, thus making them willing to renounce their previous positions until the end of the conflict.
Faced with this situation, intellectuals such as Yamakawa Kikue proposed a socialist alternative, founding the Red Wave Society (Sekirankai), whose founding manifesto (from 1921) denounced capitalism for having inevitably led to imperialism, depriving women of their loved ones, and their conversion into slaves both at home (as housewives) and in the public space, by condemning them to prostitution: “There is absolutely no way in a capitalist society to alleviate the misery of female workers. We believe it is a sin to waste the strength of women workers on a time-consuming...Diet movement, that is, on any movement that deviates from the only path to women's salvation, the destruction of capitalism. However, bourgeois ladies, since they cannot imagine or trust in a society beyond capitalism, concentrate their energies on alleviating the misery of female workers in a perfunctory and ineffective way” (Yamakawa Kikue, "Shin Fujin Kyôkai to Sekirankai ," Taiyo, 27 (July 1927), pp. 135-137).
This thinker, who was active in organizations with a majority male presence, contributed to the cause by contributing writings, such as "Women of the Mitô domain: memories of samurai family life", and a lot of saliva, since much of the time was spent trying to convince to his comrades, who perceived women as private property, of the importance of identifying the interests of the struggle of the proletariat with those of women's liberation. Thus, in a text written by Yamakawa and the Women's Division of the Political Studies Association, led by Sano Manabu and affiliated with the Trade Union Council, they express the measures they considered appropriate in order to follow the path of socialism in Japan, in a context of imminent creation of a mass proletarian party: 1. The abolition of the family head system. 2. The abolition of all laws relating to the [political] incapacity of women regardless of their marital status; equal rights of men and women in marriage and divorce. 3. Equal opportunities for education and employment for women and peoples of the colonies. 4. The implementation of a living wage standard. 5. The implementation of equal pay. 6. The provision of rest rooms for women with infants and the provision of at least thirty minutes every three hours for breastfeeding. 7. Prohibition of the practice of firing women for reasons of marriage, pregnancy and childbirth. 8. The complete abolition of licensed prostitution.
On the first two points, Yamakawa shared much with his colleagues on women's suffrage, but on points three, four, and five, Yamakawa differed substantially, as the League was oblivious to issues of inclusion of peoples colonized by Japan. This points out the most basic problems that affected working-class women, such as the inability to access stable and well-paid jobs both before and after pregnancy, or their vulnerability to the prostitution system. In addition, Yamakawa focuses on female factory labor and its relationship to the newly codified family system to argue that capitalist leaders were involved in a feudal "master/slave" relationship, extending it to the bedrooms of their families. own factories, exercising control over the movements of female employees by locking their crowded rooms. All this prevented the acquisition of a general awareness of the reality: that they were selling their bodies for two cents.
If we stop to examine this aspect of Japanese history, we will see that victimization in the workplace was extremely common: they were forced to perform monotonous and strenuous tasks for long hours of manual labor without security measures, they were fined or their savings were confiscated (which was possible due to the ambiguous wording of the factory regulations, which the foremen took advantage of to arbitrarily penalize them monetarily based on alleged infractions, which sometimes consisted of simple misunderstood glances). Thanks to this, the administration saved a good part of the salaries, since the pressure to avoid resting or eating was sometimes not enough to stop succumbing to hunger or fatigue. In addition, sexual harassment was so common that it became a permanent claim in the strikes that were called between 1880 and 1890, and could consist of sexual abuse and assault, as well as mere favoritism towards single employees or those considered physically attractive.
Some fled or committed suicide, others were totally isolated, being recruited from far away under the promise of easy money, leisure, and educational opportunities, having signed contracts that made resigning a position of one's own free will cost a penny. . On the other hand, the situation of poverty of the ascendants of these women used to be used to grant advance payments with high interests that forced them to renew contracts before their termination. Over the years, the government's imperialist propaganda began to infiltrate the factories, with the aim of making the workers link their interests and those of their families with those of the company and the nation, but it would not penetrate too much.
Bibliographic references
Molony, B. (2000). Women's Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870-1925. Pacific Historical Review, 69(4), 639-661.
Mesa, Virginia. The first cry of women's liberation. In Voices of Japanese women (Ed. Yoshie Awaihara), Colegio de México.
Tsurumi, EP (1994). Yet to be heard: The voices of Meiji factory women. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 26(4), 18-27.
Patesio, M. (2004). Women's Participation in the Popular Rights Movement (Jiyū Minken Undō) during the Early Meiji Period. US-Japan Women's Journal, 3-26.
Faison, E. (2018). Women's Rights as Proletarian Rights: Yamakawa Kikue, Suffrage, and the “Dawn of Liberation”.