Social Science Japan Journal Vol. 7, No. 2, pp 223244 2004 doi:10.

1093/ssjj/jyh027
Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo 2004
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan
Gill STEEL*
Although the literature on Japanese womens political behaviour is growing, no comprehensive account yet
exists. To contribute to this body of research, this paper surveys aspects of Japanese womens electoral
behaviour and interest in elections during the last 30 years. In contrast to some commentators, I argue, first,
that much similarity exists between womens and mens political behaviour and, second, that women are not
uninvolved in or uninterested in politics. Using data from the Society for the Promotion of Clean Elections
Lower House Election Surveys (Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai Shugiin Giin Sosenkyo or ASSK), I analyse the levels
and determinants of citizens interest in elections, non-alignment, voting rates and membership in koenkai
(the personal support groups of candidates and politicians).
1. Introduction
Profound structural gender differences exist that would lead us to believe the political values and
behaviour of women and men differ. Women live longer than men, earn less, are less likely to be part
of the labour force, and are less likely to be blue-collar workers. Women have primary responsibility
for childcare, may be more religious than men, and tend to be part of different networks. Political
scientists believe that all these factors significantly influence political behaviour, and many observers
assume that profound behavioural and attitudinal differences exist between women and men (Sugiyama
1985; Yamamoto Leghorn and Suzuki 1985; Flanagan et al. 1991: 112; Iwao 1993; Kubo and Gelb
1994: 120).
Recently, analysts have started to pay sustained attention to womens political behaviour. The
qualitative and quantitative bodies of literature are expanding. Some research examines womens
local level participation (Ogai 1998; LeBlanc 1999); other researchers examine womens values
(Pharr 1998), rates of political independence (Patterson and Nishikawa 2002; Martin 2004), voting
preferences (Steel 2002, 2003), and policy preferences (Steel 2001). But to gain a comprehensive
understanding of Japanese womens political behaviour, more research needs to be conducted.
In this survey, I aim to contribute to the growing understanding of womens political behaviour.
I analyse four measures of womens and mens political consciousness: the levels and determinants
of interest in politics, non-alignment,
1
voting rates, and membership in koenkai (candidates and
politicians personal support groups). I do so to gain a clearer understanding of womens and mens
political behaviour.
I aim to refute the supposition among some commentators that profound gender gaps exist in
Japanese political behaviour and attitudes. Despite the structural gender gaps that lead us to expect
Gill STEEL is a Research Fellow on the Center of Excellence Project, the Invention of Policy Systems in Advanced
Countries, in the Graduate School of Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo. Her research focuses on gender and voting
preferences cross-nationally. She can be reached at gsteel@alumni.uchicago.edu.
*I should like to thank Susan Stokes and the three anonymous referees of SSJJ for their incredibly helpful comments on an
earlier draft of this paper.
1. I use the terms non-alignment and independent interchangeably to refer to citizens who do not regularly support or
identify with any of the political parties.
224 Gill STEEL
that male and female political behaviour might be different, the differences are small and often
declining or are inconsistent. To the extent that there are some significant differences, they stem not
from deep differences in individual consciousness imposed by biology or overall life course, but from
modest and partly declining differences in the types of social networks in which men and women
participate. These social networks have slightly different implications for voting rates and partisanship.
I proceed as follows: first, I explain the data I use; then, before turning to the empirical evidence,
I begin each section with a brief outline of the previous research in the four areas.
1.1 Data
I use data from the surveys conducted after each election by the Society for the Promotion of Clean
Elections Lower House Election Surveys (Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai Shugiin Giin Sosenkyo or
ASSK). The ASSK are the longest running series of academic surveys in Japan; they have taken place
after every election since the early 1970s. The samples are stratified random samples, drawn from
the adult population. The surveys are administered in face-to-face interviews. I describe the coding
I use in more detail in Appendix A.
I also use qualitative data gathered in focus groups that I conducted in Nagoya and Tokyo in March
and April 2000 as part of my dissertation field research. I divided the focus groups by gender
and age: middle-aged and older women, middle-aged and older men, younger women, and younger
men.
2. Womens Interest in Politics
Many commentators assert that women are not interested in politics, and at least one commentator
asserts that women are not only disinterested, but actually repulsed by politics (Iwao 1993: 215).
Other studies suggest that women do not feel close to politics (LeBlanc 1999). Watanuki, in his
widely cited article, argues that women are less interested than men in politics because they are, on
average, less educated than men: women and men who have attained the same level of schooling are
equally interested in politics (Watanuki 1991: 3435).
2
Starting in 1986, the ASSK surveys ask respondents: What level of interest did you personally
have in the last House of Representatives Election? The respondents are given a show card and
asked to choose one of the following options: extremely interested, somewhat interested, not very
interested or not at all interested.
Women and men are not polarized in their interest in elections, but women are a little less
interested, on average, in elections than men are. Women tend to report some interest in politics,
whereas men tend to report a great deal of interest. Slightly more women than men say they have
hardly any interest in elections (see Figure 1). Note that mens levels of interest have come to resemble
womens, with men being decreasingly likely to report a great deal of interest as the 1990s progressed.
These small differences do not support the idea that women are completely uninterested in politics,
but compared with men, women areon averageslightly less interested in elections. To interpret
2. Watanuki analyses interest in politics, whereas I analyse interest in elections. The ASSK surveys do not ask respondents
about their interest in politics, but about their levels of interest in elections. The two questions are not identical, but I
expect similar, though not identical responses. Interest in elections is probably more volatile and election specific than
interest in politicsfor women and menbut it is reasonable to expect a high general correlation between the two
measures.
this narrowing gap as womens repugnance towards politics exaggerates the magnitude and importance
of this gap.
More people expressed higher levels of interest in 1990 than at any time since. The LDPs defeat
in the 1989 House of Councillors Election, and opposition to the recently introduced consumption
tax probably contributed to unusually high interest in 1990. Citizens interest in elections waned as
they got used to paying the consumption tax, and the promise of political reform seemed unfulfilled
as politics returned to business as usual.
To examine womens and mens interest in elections further, I regressed gender on interest in
elections (see Model 1, Table 1).
3
In 1986, if we consider each levelfrom not at all interested,
ranging to extremely interestedat each level of interest, women were 0.23 times less likely than
men to express interest. By 1996, this had fallen to 0.19 points. The time span is narrow, but the
difference between women and men seems to be narrowing, although it is still significant.
What accounts for womens slightly lower levels of interest in elections? In contrast to
Watanukis (1991) findings on interest in politics, I found that womens lower levels of education
do not explain their lower levels of interest in elections.
4
Education is a function of age. Because
levels of education have risen over time, older women are less educated than younger women.
We should expect education to be an intervening variable: more important is how old women
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 225
3. The analysis is limited to the elections during the years 19901996.
4. In earlier models that I do not report here, I regressed gender and education on interest in elections. Gender was still
significant, but the coefficients were smaller than in the bivariate models in which I regressed gender only on interest in
politics.
Figure 1. Womens and Mens Interest in Elections, 19861996.
Source: Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19861996.
are since their age determines their educational level. Age, in turn, influences their political
outlook.
I studied the effects of age and whether older women are less interested than younger people are
in elections (I included age and an interaction term which multiplied age with gender in the
analysis). I also included an age-squared term to test whether citizens interest in elections declines
when they enter old age. Womens greater longevity does indeed account for womens lower levels
of interest in elections: when the effect of womens and mens ages are taken into account, gender
becomes insignificant (Model 2, Table 1).
5
Although older women and men are slightly less
interested than younger people, older women are no less interested than are older men. The signs
of the coefficients of the interaction terms are negative; the coefficient was significant only in 1986
and 1990 (see Table 1). Older women may once have been less interested in elections, but as the
1990s progressed, this was no longer the case. Older women and men are equally interested in
elections, but because women live longer, there are more elderly women than men in the popu-
lation, and this accounts for womens average lower levels of interest in elections.
Analysts debate the relationship between age, or cohort, and political decision-making. Proponents
of the life-cycle model (age/senescence effects) argue that people become more conservative as they
age. On the other hand, proponents of the cohort model (generation model), argue that opinions
are acquired fairly early in life and are relatively stable (Butler and Stokes 1974). Other analysts have
226 Gill STEEL
5. In earlier analyses that I do not report here, I also investigated whether housewives are less interested than other citizens
in elections. Housewives do not have workplace socialization, nor are they members of trade unions or professional
associations, characteristics that we could expect to increase interest in politics. I found, however, that housewives
interest in elections was not significantly different from that of other voters. Housewives are not a group apart from or
with different interests than the rest of society. In fact, in 1996, housewives were more interested than other citizens in
the election.
Table 1. Japanese Womens Interest in Elections, 19901996.
Parameter estimates 1990 1990 1993 1993 1996 1996
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2
Intercept 3.498* 3.164* 3.287* 2.937* 2.950* 2.458*
(0.022) (0.078) (0.023) (0.085) (0.025) (0.088)
Female 0.78* 0.965 0.11* 0.43 0.86* 0.43
(0.030) (0.103) (0.032) (0.114) (0.035) (0.111)
Age 0.006* 0.007* 0.009*
(0.001) (0.002) (0.002)
Age*female 0.003 0.003 0.002
(0.021) (0.002) (0.002)
Standard error of regression 0.7010 0.6974 0.7635 0.7600 0.7964 0.7865
R
2
0.04 0.05 0.02 0.03 0.02 0.04
Sample size 2269 2269 2301 2301 2114 2114
*p0.05. Cell entries are ordinary least squares coefficients with standard errors in parentheses.
Source: Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19721996
found a combination of these two effects (Jennings and Niemi 1981). It is beyond the scope of this
paper to reach firm conclusions on whether the life-cycle or cohort model more accurately describes
the process of political decision-making, andmore importantlythese data sets do not contain the
definitive type of data necessary to reach firm conclusions (see Jennings and Niemi 1981: 190).
Both effects are probably in operation, but the life-cycle model seems to describe citizens interest
in politics more appropriately: older citizens are less likely than others to vote. As people age
particularly people who are not part of networksthey become less likely than younger people,
and less likely than they themselves were when they were young, to vote and to be interested in
politics.
6
The finding that older women are no less interested than others in politics is surprising, given
some of the claims in the literature. Ecological replacement may explain this change since, before
1993, older women were less interested in politics than older men. Alternatively, since politically
the 1990s were an unusual decade, my findings may be atypical. Older women during this period,
for example, may have been more interested in elections than they usually are because of their
opposition to the newly introduced consumption tax. This seems unlikely: the consumption tax as
a politicizing issue was of dramatic but transient significance, fitting well Carmines and Stimsons
(1989) hypothetical impulse-decay model.
7
In this case, as women became used to paying the tax,
their anger at the LDP waned, and their political interest returned to previous levels. Impulse-decay
effects on the consumption tax issue may explain the general volatility in interest levels in these data,
but do not explain older womens levels of interest.
In the focus groups that I conducted, some women did report a lack of interest in politics, but
the more common response was I dont understand politics at all. It seems socially acceptable,
particularly for women, to express ignorance of politics and to feel that politics is far or distant from
them.
8
Yet in answer to my question about problems and difficulties in their neighbourhoods or
cities, the same respondents eagerly discussed problems, many of which are political, and often
suggested solutions for these problems.
Environmental pollution was one of the main topics of discussion in the focus group. The
media had publicized a few high-profile pollution cases just before I conducted the focus groups, so
the participants were primed to discuss pollution in response to my general question about issues or
problems in the participants neighbourhoods and cities. Pollution and many of the other problems
the participants discussed are issues on which the government could legislate (i.e. political issues).
But the respondents did not seem to consider them to be political issues. When I asked about
solutions, the participants generally did not expect the government to solve these problems, nor did
they blame the government. I have argued elsewhere that citizens consider issues such as the environ-
ment and education to be public issues, rather than political ones (Steel 2003). Women do not
consistently vote on these policy issues, nor do they organize and petition politicians about them.
The disconnection between these public issues and politics also explains why female informants
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 227
6. In preliminary models, I studied the effect before 1947, that is, before women gained the right to vote. I did not find
strong consistent evidence that a distinct cohort of women, who aged through the course of these elections, behaved
differently than other women (or men). I tested various plausible ages for these cohorts, for example, women who were
20 in 1947, I then tried women who were 30 in 1947. Although some differences emerged, they were not convincing
as evidence of cohort differences (I do not report the results of these findings here).
7. Carmines and Stimson, in their study of race as an issue in US politics, suggest that it is possible for issues to have a short,
but powerful influence. As soon as the temporary stimulus is removed, the system rapidly returns to its pre-existing level
of stability (Carmines and Stimson 1989: 139).
8. Similar responses have been noted in previous studies (LeBlanc 1999).
professed ignorance of politics and felt that politics was distant from them, yet were knowledgeable
about problems in their neighbourhoods and towns.
Norms for Japanese women still emphasize, to some extent, their primary role within the household
as wife and mother. Women are concerned with public policy issues that affect their households, but
they do not see them as political, which may contribute to older womens lack of interest in elections.
The interests of these women underscore the limitations of the political/private dichotomy. In this
case, the boundaries blur: the private informs the public, but many women do not consider household-
related policy issues to be political.
3. Womens Political Independence
More women than men claim to be politically independent. Decades ago, commentators assumed
that independentscitizens who did not support any partywere apolitical. Curtis (1998) argues
that citizens who supported no party in the 1950s were typically older, male farmers, uneducated
people or women. With the large and well-documented rise in independence among voters that
occurred in recent decades, analysts are now less likely to stigmatize independents. By the 1970s,
many men and women in their 20s, white-collar workers and managers, and people with many years
of education reported no party affiliation or loyalty (Curtis 1988: 201, 273274, fn. 11). The image of
the typical independent as a woman, uneducated and non-urban has been replaced by the image of
the typical independent as an urban yuppie.
More recently, Patterson and Nishikawa (2002) argue that gender gaps in policy preferences
mainly account for gender-based patterns of support and rejection of parties. They argue that women
who focus on womens issues such as social welfare, the home and the environment are more likely
to support leftwing parties, whereas men, who focus on economic recovery, the budget deficit and
tax reform are more likely either to be non-aligned or to support one of the opposition parties.
9
More research needs to be done on womens policy preferences, especially since disparities exist
between the surveys. According to data from the ASSK surveys, which ask respondents whether they
consider policy issues in their vote choice, no consistent gender gap exists between the policy
preferences of women and men (see Steel 2001).
10
Nevertheless, we need to consider policy prefer-
ences as intervening variables between socioeconomic characteristicsincluding genderand party
identification. If a gender gap exists in policy preferences, we need to know why. Rather than the
gap in policy preference being an explanation in itself, the underlying cause of this gap probably, in
turn, explains the gap in independence rates. Martin (2004) argues persuasively that profound
differences exist between different types of independents. According to Martin, we need to under-
stand the differences between alienated independent women and strategic independent women,
rather than thinking that all independents are non-aligned for the same reason. This makes sense,
but to be sure that analyses of small subgroups are representative of the subgroups in the broader
population, we need to analyse data from larger samples or to oversample the subgroups that we
wish to study.
Research on Japan stresses that networks and mobilization in networks are crucial to citizens
party alignment. Deciding which party to support can take a great deal of time and effort: gathering
228 Gill STEEL
9. The relationship between the vote and party identification is necessarily unidirectional. Some evidence suggests that there
is reciprocal causation: that voting and issue preferences influence, and are influenced by party identification. To its
detriment, research on gender differences that includes party identification typically fails to present non-recursive models.
10. The disparity may be due to differences in question wording across the surveys.
and understanding information about parties, their policies, and candidates takes time and resources.
Networks can underwrite the cost of this process in important ways; candidates, parties, or activists
can either personally contact citizens or can contact people through mutual associates, thereby
encouraging them to support a specific party or candidate, and providing them with information
and reasons for so doing.
11
Mobilization occurs more easily and effectively when citizens are integrated
into pre-existing networks. Not only are citizens in networks more easily available than citizens who
do not participate in networks, they may be more amenable to mobilization attempts. As Rosenstone
and Hansen (1993: 23), in their discussion of the social nature of political life in the US, put it,
people in networks reward those who comply with expectations, and they sanction those who do
not. They praise, esteem, and owe favors to those who do act, and reprove, shun, and take note of
those who do not.
For some commentators, mobilization is not a cost-cutting heuristic, but a straightforward exercise
in vote-delivery. Commentators claim that koenkai play a leading role in the so-called vote delivery
system when they lobby organizations such as neighbourhood groups, business associations, and
farmers collectives (Cox, Rosenbluth, and Thies 1998: 456). In turn, the members of these groups
not only turn out to vote, but turn out to vote for the LDP.
12
Political scientists have paid little attention to gender-segregation in networks. Women and men
are largely part of different networks, and thus experience different kinds of mobilization, which
may affect womens higher rates of independence. There are more female than male members of
PTAs, womens groups and old peoples groups, whereas men outnumber women in trade unions
and professional associations (Steel 2003).
13
Members of ostensibly non-political groups report vote
solicitation through their membership in various community and occupation-based groups.
Before analysing some of the causes of independence, we need to know how different are the rates
of independence between women and men. The percentages of women and men who responded
that they did not support any party are presented in Figure 2. Most remarkable is that male non-
alignment increasingly resembles female non-alignment. The rates of non-alignment rose for both
women and men during the last 30 years, but the change was most rapid among men. In 1972,
almost 23% of women and 12% of men responded that they did not support a party. By 1996, these
percentages had risen to 35% of women and 28% of men.
To understand female non-alignment better, I estimated a set of models regressing structural
gender differences, network and social integration on non-alignment. I report the results of my
analyses of party support in Table 2. In these models, I analyse whether the structural gender
differences such as womens longer life spans, lower levels of education, greater likelihood to be
housewives, membership in different community and professional networks explain womens rates
of independence. I also include other measures of social integration in my analysis. I use community
size and the length of time that citizens have resided in their communities as indications of social
integration. People who live in smaller communities typically have more opportunities to develop
networks, use these networks as resource-saving cues, and may feel the weight of social expectations
more strongly than those who live in cities. People who live in one community year after year have
more opportunities to develop networks of friends, neighbours, colleagues, and acquaintances.
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 229
11. Rosenstone and Hansen (1993: 26), in their study of political behaviour in the US, refer to these processes as direct and
indirect mobilization.
12. Some recent research has begun to question this received wisdom and argues that a more complex pattern of mobilization
exists (see, for example, Flanagan et al. 1991: 143197).
13. The Neighbourhood Associations, in which equal numbers of women and men are affiliated, are an exception.
For ease of interpretation, I converted the estimates from my analyses of independence that I
presented in Table 2 into predicted probabilities. I report these probabilities as first differences in
Table 3 (the model is non-linear, and the effect of estimated coefficients depends on the values taken
by the other variables and coefficients) (see King 1989). I construct a hypothetical scenario to deter-
mine the probability that an average citizen does not align with a party. I set gender to one (female),
and all the other variables to their sample median values. In 1976, for example, this hypothetical
median female was 42. She graduated from high school, and she lived in a town with a population
greater than 100,000 for more than 20 years. She is a member in a neighbourhood association,
but she is not a member in any other community group, nor is she a member in a trade union or
professional association.
I then determine the probability that this voter will not be aligned with a party. Since 1976,
this hypothetical woman has a probability of being non-aligned which ranges from 0.20 to 0.38
(I give baseline probabilities for median voter at the top of the table). Next, altering one independent
variable at a time, I calculate the change in predicted probabilities of this hypothetical female being
non-aligned, that is, I calculate the partial effects of each independent variable on the probability of
non-alignment with other variables held at their median values. In essence, this is asking what difference
would it make if this hypothetical citizen were older, more educated or a member of a community
group, and so forth (see Table 3).
14
Womens greater likelihood of non-alignment, which was
230 Gill STEEL
14. I used CLARIFY to perform these calculations (Tomz et al. 2000).
Figure 2. Percentages of Female and Male Independents, 19721996.
Source: Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19721996.
apparent in correlations, was an artefact of their longer life-spans, lower levels of education and
participation in female-dominated networks.
Taking other causes of non-alignment into account, members in professional associations and farmers
co-operativesin which there are more men than womenare more likely than non-members to
support parties. Whereas membership in community networksin which women and men participate
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 231
Table 2. Logistic Regression Results Explaining the Causes of Non-alignment, 19761996.
1976 1979 1983 1990 1993 1996
Constant 0.369 0.587 0.700 2.348* 0.459 1.931*
(0.418) (0.398) (0.417) (0.462) (0.415) (0.412)
Female 0.359 0.499 0.382 0.045 0.013 0.052
(0.358) (0.338) (0.332) (0.363) (0.339) (0.346)
Age 0.029* 0.028* 0.030* 0.034* 0.026* 0.036*
(0.007) (0.006) (0.006) (0.006) (0.006) (0.005)
Age*female 0.016* 0.016* 0.015* 0.002 0.005 0.005
(0.008) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007)
Education 0.002 0.010 0.024 0.318* 0.024 0.018
(0.091) (0.081) (0.088) (0.091) (0.059) (0.060)
Housewife 0.123 0.126 0.032 0.086 0.016 0.019
(0.148) (0.133) (0.134) (0.143) (0.134) (0.137)
Membership in:
Womens Assn. 0.697* 0.392* 0.396* 0.302 0.273 0.292
(0.198) (0.168) (0.177) (0.192) (0.186) (0.200)
Religious group 1.064* 1.160* 0.870* 1.235* 1.046* 0.920*
(0.379) (0.379) (0.336) (0.440) (0.367) (0.342)
Koenkai 1.258* 1.201* 1.524* 0.959* 1.160* 0.921*
(0.248) (0.170) (0.225) (0.177) (0.175) (0.168)
Neighbourhood Assn. 0.250* 0.066 0.113 0.072 0.168 0.019
(0.113) (0.103) (0.107) (0.116) (0.104) (0.109)
Professional or Farmers Assn. 0.209 0.416* 0.627* 0.363* 0.639* 0.745*
(0.214) (0.174) (0.178) (0.175) (0.184) (0.224)
Trade Union 0.098 0.237 0.491* 0.175 0.099 0.330
(0.192) (0.168) (0.175) (0.180) (0.154) (0.175)
City size 0.147* 0.045 0.124* 0.110* 0.039 0.184*
(0.047) (0.026) (0.043) (0.046) (0.044) (0.044)
Length of 0.030 0.003 0.065 0.213* 0.073 0.034
residence (0.057) (0.054) (0.056) (0.058) (0.059) (0.059)
Sample size 2371 2416 2361 2269 2301 2269
Log likelihood 1073.855 1247.775 1208.895 1249.223 1384.426 1173.668
Degrees of freedom 13 13 13 13 13 13
*p0.05. Cell entries are logistic regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses.
Source: Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19761996.
equally or women dominatehas no effect on party support. This makes sense because members in
occupation-related groups have a clear sense of shared economic interest that influences their levels
of party support. The incentives for participating in occupational networks and supporting the party
that the network supports may be more immediately obvious in occupational networks because
discussion and mobilization may focus on issues related to livelihood and working conditions. The
incentives may includeto borrow Wilsons (1973) typology of incentives for US citizens organ-
izational participationmaterial incentives, specific or collective solidary incentives or purposive
incentives (Wilson 1973: 3051). In occupation-based networks, the incentives for participation and
party support are probably material incentives, that is, tangible rewards that can be priced, such as
a job or tax-reductions.
15
Taking other causes of non-alignment into account, womens association
members were more likely than non-members to support parties until 1990, but this is no longer
the case. No one factor accounts for this loss of support, and it happened gradually. In 1976, the
probability of non-support for members in womens associations was 0.08% less than that of non-
members, by 1983, it was 0.06%, and by 1990, membership gave no added bonus. In analyses that
I do not report here, I tested whether this was due to opposition to policy issues such as taxation
232 Gill STEEL
15. Wilson also includes improvements in property values, personal services and gifts (for which one would otherwise have
to pay), and so forth as material incentives. Solidary incentives are less concrete than material rewards, and include offices,
honours and deference. Collective solidary incentives develop from the social interaction that comes with participation, but
must be enjoyed by the group as a whole. These benefits include the fun and friendliness of participating in groups, and
the sense of exclusiveness and esteem that the group as a whole enjoys. Purposive benefits are the intrinsic rewards that
come from the sense of satisfaction of having contributed to something worthwhile (Wilson 1973: 3051).
Table 3. The Probability of Non-alignment, 19761996.
Variable 1976 1979 1983 1990 1993 1996
Baseline probabilities at sample median values 0.20 0.28 0.30 0.25 0.34 0.38
Female 0.05 0.09 0.07 0.01 0.00 0.01
Age 0.23 0.28 0.31 0.37 0.33 0.47
Age*female 0.23 0.28 0.26 0.03 0.09 0.10
Education 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.10 0.01 0.01
Housewife 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.00
Membership in:
Womens Assn. 0.08 0.06 0.06 0.05 0.05 0.06
Koenkai 0.13 0.17 0.19 0.13 0.19 0.16
Religious group 0.11 0.14 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.15
Neighbourhood Assn. 0.04 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.03 0.00
Trade Union 0.01 0.04 0.07 0.03 0.02 0.06
Professional or Farmers Assn. 0.03 0.07 0.09 0.06 0.11 0.13
Length of Residence 0.01 0.00 0.03 0.12 0.04 0.02
City size 0.09 0.05 0.09 0.08 0.03 0.16
Source: Analysis from Table 2. The data are from the Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19761996.
(the ASSK surveys did not ask specifically about the consumption tax or about prices), and found
that this was not the case. Rather, a combination of other factors accounts for the long-term decline
in party support among womens association members.
Unsurprisingly, religious affiliation increases party support. Some sects support the LDP, and
the Komeito itself was originally the political arm of the Soka Gakkai (the lay organization of the
Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist sect). Although the two have been formally separate since 1970, they still
maintain close ties.
16
The Gakkai provides the Komeito with a mobilisation machine.
17
The ASSK
data indicate that women and men are equally likely to affiliate with religious groups, and religious
affiliation appears not to influence womens lower levels of party support.
Commentators often assume that, because women are less likely than men to be part of the labour
force, women are less likely to be exposed to workplace political socialisation. However, housewives
are equally as likely as non-housewives to be party supporters. This makes sense: housewives are not
confined to the home; they are exposed to various forms of political socialisation. Living in smaller
communities generally increases levels of party support, but I found that length of residence has no
effect.
Older citizens are more likely to support parties, even after taking into account levels of network
integration. Depending on the election, for each year people age, the probability that they are non-
aligned decreases by between 0.23 and 0.47%. Yet until 1983, a significant genderage gap existed:
although men were less likely to be non-aligned as they grew older, older women, on the other hand,
were between 0.23 and 0.26 times more likely to be non-aligned. In 1990, this difference disappeared
altogether, and older women and men are now equally likely to support parties. It is tempting to
assume that the cohort model explains the existence and subsequent disappearance of this gap: older
women who came of age before they could vote were less likely to support parties and less likely
to vote than their male counterparts. By 1990, with the demise of these older women, and their
replacement by younger women who came of age after womens enfranchisement, this gender
generation gap disappeared. We should be cautious about conclusively interpreting these data as a
gendergeneration gap since, if this were the case, we would expect to see evidence of this cohort
ageing, with markedly different opinions to other cohorts, in the previous surveys. In preliminary
analyses, I divided the respondents into cohorts, rather than age, and did not find strong evidence
of a particular, less-aligned female cohort ageing as the years passed. Both effects are probably in
operation. Without panel data, it is extremely difficult to separate these two effects.
In sum, age and participation in networks explain womens lower levels of party support. Although
I do not investigate further here, it makes sense that not all citizens are independent for the same
reason. Examining average trends from aggregate level data can disguise the differences that exist
between subgroups of women. So, too it is likely that policy preferences influence the party alignment
of some citizens, but we need to know why. Non-alignment should not be equated with apathy,
and further research is necessary to determine the different reasons why people stopped supporting
parties.
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 233
16. Analysts estimate that around half of the Komeito votes come from affiliates of the Soka Gakkai (Watanuki 1991: 77).
17. Many households, rather than individuals, may claim a general religious affiliation. In some survey responses, when asked
about the particular sect in which they were members, more women than men claim affiliation with Soka Gakkai. The
ASSK surveys do not ask about specific affiliations. In 1983, among those with a religious affiliation, 48% of women and
44% of men were members of Soka Gakkai (JES I).
4. Womens Voting Rates
Among advanced industrial democracies, Japan has one of the least onerous voting registration
requirements. The simplicity of registration no doubt contributes to the comparatively high, albeit
declining, voting rates. When voters turn 20, they automatically receive an electoral notification
postcard from the ward office in the ward in which they reside, as they will before each election for
the rest of their lives. The electoral lists are compiled from the ward residence registration lists, in
which, by law, all residents are recorded.
According to actual data, not samples, published by what was then known as the Ministry of
Home Affairs, women were less likely than men to vote in Lower House elections in the immediate
postwar period. This difference was reversed during the 1960s and, since 1969, between 0.7
and 2.7% more women than men have voted (see Figure 3). The differences between the percentage
of women and the percentage of men who vote are small, yet much has been made of these
differences.
18
Watanuki (1991: 35)in his widely cited articleargues that because women are more likely than
men to respond that voting is a civic duty, womens higher voting rates are due to women being
234 Gill STEEL
18. I examine only Lower House Elections here, but women are also usually slightly more likely than men to vote in Upper
House Elections (Japan Statistical Abstract 2002).
Figure 3. Percentage of Votes Cast by Women and Men, Lower House Elections, 19552000.
Source: The Ministry of Home Affairs (1994: 692692; 1996).
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 235
more conformist than men.
19
Before looking at the results, it is worth briefly discussing the question
and the closed-ended responses that the surveys use. Asking respondents why they vote is problematic
for at least two reasons. The question assumes that citizens have considered the issue and are fully
aware of their own cognitive processes. This is asking a lot, especially as the rationality behind voting
has been a source of debate among political scientists for decades. Furthermore, we should be cautious
about considering top of the head responses (to use Taylor and Fiskes [1978] terminology), and
then concluding that women are more conformist than men. Zaller (1992), drawing on Taylor and
Fiske, argues that citizens attention to politics varies across time. People can react critically to
arguments they encounter only to the extent that they are knowledgeable about political affairs.
This leads to a situation in which citizens do not have fixed attitudes on every issue, but they
construct opinion statements as they confront new issues. People construct these statements from
the ideas that are most immediately salient to themthose that are at the top of the head. The
top of the head construction of opinion statements accounts for the variance in public opinion; it
also suggests that we need to be aware of the contexts that produce immediate salience. Womens
and mens work experiences, life experiences and participation in networks are different, which may
give them access to different ideas, thus producing different responses to public opinion surveys.
Whether this difference in responses indicates deeper differences in political consciousness is
questionable.
I suggest that Japanese voters are similar to American voters:
the connection between belief in a duty to participate and participation itself is distressingly close.
Undoubtedly, many people vote because they believe it is the right thing to do. Still, many people might
identify their duty as a reason for their participation because they cannot identify any other reason for it
(Rosenstone and Hansen 1993: 20, fn. 23).
It is debatable whether carrying out a civic duty is the same as conformity for either the women or
the men who selected this response. There are many reasons why citizens carry out civic duties, and
conformity may or may not be one of them. Informants in the focus groups that I conducted in
discussing voting did not voice any conformist reasons for voting. Participants in the focus groups
that I conducted generally, but not unanimously, felt that voting was important. Many conflated
the importance of voting with voting for the LDP. For them, it was important to vote to ensure that the
LDP remained in power, maintaining a competent, stable government, since no viable alternative
party capable of ruling exists.
Because of the margin of error inherent in sampling, analysing the influence of gender on the
decision to vote is problematic. The differences in the population are too small to register accurately
in the ASSK surveys, falling within the margin of error of the samples, which are drawn from repre-
sentative samples of the population. A further problem is that older men are over-sampled in many
of the ASSK surveys, which may bias the results of analyses of voting rates. The age distribution in
the 1993 survey most closely reflects the age distribution in the population, and may thus be a more
accurate guide to understanding the causes of voting than surveys from the other years. I use a
weighting variable in the analyses, which weights the proportion of women and men in the sample
to reflect accurately the proportions who vote in the population. In this section, to understand
19. Watanuki uses the ASSK data from surveys on the House of Councillors Elections until 1989. For 1990, he uses ASSK
House of Representatives Election data. There seems to be some discrepancy between his results and mine. Although
I do not have access to his data, it appears that even in Watanukis table, women are significantly different from men in
four of the eight elections (Watanuki 1991: 35).
womens voting rates, I first examine the reasons citizens give for voting and then turn to the causes
of voting or abstention. Although this is suggestive rather than conclusive evidence, knowing what
kinds of people are more likely than others to vote will go some way to explaining the different
voting rates.
20
When asked, In the last election, what prompted you to vote. Please choose a response from this
list, and given a show card in which one of the response categories was Because it is a citizens
duty, womens and mens responses sometimes differed (see Table 4). Women were significantly more
likely than men to select duty as the reason for voting in only one of the three years (1993). So even
if duty is equivalent to conformity, the reputation of female voters as conformist is inaccurate in
recent years. More women than men may have voted to fulfill a perceived duty in the past, but this
is not consistently the case now.
I suggest that it is important not to read too much into citizens responses to the question asking
them why they vote. Much variation exists across years, giving credence to the idea that these are
top of the head responses. Nevertheless, although not a discernible trend, in one of these three
elections, more women than men responded that they voted out of duty.
I contend that the reason that more women than men vote is not simply because women feel a
stronger sense of duty than men do. I hypothesize that the probability of voting among older
women and men is not the same. Older women came of age before women could vote and were not
socialised into the norms of voting. Given that women do vote more than men, older womens
lower voting rates do not lower the average voting rates among women. Women live longer than
men, but age has a curvilinear relationship with voting: the older people are, the more likely they
are to vote; but as they enter old age, this increase in probability tapers off. Physical difficulties,
retirement, and withdrawals from networks all account for the curvilinear relationship between age
and voting.
To analyse the relationship between gender, age and the probability of voting, I regressed gender
and age on voting. I also included an interaction term between gender and age, and age squared,
to test whether the relationship between age and voting is curvilinear, that is, the probability of voting
increases with age, but the probability of voting levels off as people enter old age. I also included
236 Gill STEEL
20. With the exception of 1993, men were more likely to report voting than women, although in the population we know
the opposite is true. The differences are within the margin of error for the sample.
Table 4. Percentages of Women and Men Giving Duty as their Reason for Voting, 19901996.
1990 1993 1996
Women 22.6 26.2* 30.6
Men 24.5 19.8* 27.8
Sample Size 2269 2301 2114
*p0.05 level.
Cell entries are the percentages of women and the percentages of men who responded that they had voted because it is a
citizens duty to vote.
Source: Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19901996.
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 237
measures of network integration and social integration (see Table 5).
21
As I did in my analysis of
non-alignment, I use the logistic regression models to calculate the varying probabilities of voting
for a hypothetical median woman (I present these probabilities in Table 6).
Membership in womens associations increases the probability of voting. Taking other causes of
voting into account, the difference in the probability that a member will vote, compared with a
non-member, varies across the years. Members are between 0.03 and 0.13% more likely than non-
members to vote (in 1990, there was no difference). In some years, a large and significant difference
emerges, which is a partial explanation for womens higher voting rates. In 1996, according to the
ASSK data, more than 15% of women were members of womens associations. Even though
the percentage is decreasing over time, this is still a considerable proportion of women. Participation
in womens associations increases the chances that members are mobilized. Furthermore, these
groups may be socialpsychological reference groups for participants. By this I mean that members
convey information to others about what kinds of behaviour and attitudes are appropriate.
Sometimes this will be overt, for example, by asking members to vote for a particular candidate.
Sometimes it is less overt, by simply voicing concerns, and so forth. The perceived benefits of voting
that members in womens associations enjoy probably include all the incentives that I discussed
earlier: material incentives, specific or collective solidary incentives or purposive incentives.
Network mobilization provides some clues to explaining why women are more likely to vote than
men. Gender is only occasionally associated with an increased probability of voting after taking into
account levels of social integration and membership in groups in which men outnumber women,
such as farmers co-operatives, professional associations, and trade unions. This is surprising, but
partially explains mens lower rates of voting: the networks in which they participate do not, in fact,
consistently increase their voting rates.
Some commentators suggest that housewives are apolitical because they are not subject to the
politicizing influence of the workplace. When in fact, taking into account other causes of voting,
my findings indicate that housewives are no less likely than others to vote. Several explanations are
plausible, although these data do not allow for firm conclusions. Workplaces may not uniformly be
politicising or, alternatively, any prior work experience of housewives may have been politicising.
Housewives are not a homogeneous group; they are just as interested in politics and voting as other
citizens are; they have a variety of sources outside the workplace to receive political information.
My analysis of the causes of voting indicates that, taking into account other influences on voting,
age generally has a curvilinear relationship with the vote: as citizens get older, they become more
likely to vote, but this increasing likelihood levels off as they enter old age. Older women used to
be less likely than older men to vote, but this is not always the case. In the 1990 and 1996 elections,
older women and older men were equally likely to vote. In general, taking other causes of voting
into account, middle-aged women have a high probability of voting, and probably cause the gender
disparity in voting rates. Older women came of age before women had the vote, and although this
may influence their voting rates, I did not find conclusive evidence that women who were socialised
before women could vote are less likely than others to vote.
22
This makes sense: we know that
21. Direct mobilisation seems to be extremely successful: women and men who recall being contacted have, until the last
two elections, always voted. Between 1972 and 1996, direct vote mobilisation by campaign workers, and between 1972
and 1990, mobilisation by telephone, perfectly predict the vote, so I exclude these measures from my analysis. Fewer
than 19% of citizens actually recall being contacted. This seems likely to be mobilisation based on existing networks of
supporters. Candidates attempt to use their limited resources effectively, keeping a record of and re-contacting supporters
(see LeBlanc 1999: 185186).
22. Some differences occurred, but strong, significant and consistent differences across the years did not.
238 Gill STEEL
Table 5. Logistic Regression Results Explaining the Causes of Voting, Selected Lower House
Elections 19761996.
Variable 1976 1979 1983 1990 1993 1996
Constant 4.800* 3.694* 4.958* 5.570* 5.095* 4.769*
(0.705) (0.649) (0.704) (0.865) (0.740) (0.666)
Female 0.607 0.615 0.782* 0.220 1.247* 0.034
(0.384) (0.374) (0.371) (0.434) (0.401) (0.376)
Age 0.189* 0.113* 0.145* 0.202* 0.158* 0.147*
(0.026) (0.024) (0.024) (0.028) (0.026) (0.024)
Age*female 0.017* 0.018* 0.024* 0.013 0.025* 0.012
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.009) (0.009) (0.007)
Age
2
0.002* 0.001* 0.001* 0.002* 0.001* 0.001*
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Education 0.274* 0.193* 0.463* 0.377* 0.312* 0.462*
(0.116) (0.099) (0.109) (0.139) (0.080) (0.079)
Housewife 0.068 0.027 0.292 0.239 0.324 0.337*
(0.183) (0.158) (0.163) (0.202) (0.187) (0.160)
Membership in:
Womens Assn. 0.528* 0.638* 0.596* 0.393 1.378* 0.850*
(0.256) (0.230) (0.251) (0.313) (0.402) (0.273)
Koenkai 1.009* 0.788* 0.663* 0.544* 0.805* 0.319
(0.303) (0.186) (0.229) (0.263) (0.223) (0.184)
Neighbourhood Assn. 0.307* 0.239* 0.416* 0.229 0.081 0.073
(0.137) (0.120) (0.128) (0.159) (0.136) (0.129)
Professional or 0.147 0.564* 0.848* 0.423 0.250 0.389
Farmers Assn. (0.274) (0.240) (0.250) (0.299) (0.234) (0.261)
Religious 0.703 1.019* 0.582 2.206* 0.614 0.538
(0.403) (0.394) (0.344) (0.969) (0.498) (0.402)
Trade Union 0.299 0.196 0.504* 0.184 0.319 0.136
(0.233) (0.196) (0.205) (0.244) (0.190) (0.207)
Length of residence 0.178* 0.307* 0.220* 0.215* 0.190* 0.090
(0.068) (0.059) (0.064) (0.077) (0.069) (0.066)
Community size 0.265* 0.146* 0.190* 0.277* 0.091 0.099*
(0.055) (0.030) (0.050) (0.063) (0.056) (0.049)
Sample size 2371 2416 2361 2269 2301 2269
Log likelihood 821.17 981.58 919.11 650.67 869.03 922.35
Degrees of freedom 14 14 14 14 14 14
*p0.05.
Cell entries are logistic regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses.
Source: Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19761996.
women are more likely to vote than men. If the opposite were true, since a large proportion of
women were socialised prior to gaining the vote, we would expect womens overall voting rates to
be low, but this is not the case. Japan seems to conform to the classic pattern, noted cross-nationally,
that turnout is lowest at the beginning of adult life, as younger people are not yet socialised into
voting. Turnout rises to a plateau in middle-age, and then declines as the middle-aged become
elderly. Some of the decline is probably due to physical infirmity, withdrawal from some types of
networks, and other socio-economic variables related to age.
5. Koenkai Membership
Men significantly outnumber women in koenkai but, as more women join, the gender gap in mem-
bership has narrowed considerably. In 1993, women were equally as likely as men to join koenkai,
although in 1996 a gap re-emerged since slightly more men than women claimed to be members
(see Figure 4). Womens lower membership levels may reflect womens lack of interest in politics
but, importantly, women are considerably less likely than men to be mobilized to join koenkai (see
Figure 4). Although the correlation between invitations to join and joining is not perfect, it certainly
seems that, as more women are invited to join, they do so. As with many associational groups,
people participate when they are asked to do so. As Rosenstone and Hansen conclude, in their study
of political participation in the US, The bottom line is very simple. People participate because
someone encourages or inspires them to take part (1993: 161). In Japan, parties, candidates, their
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 239
Table 6. The Probability of Voting in Selected Lower House Elections, 19761996.
1976 1979 1983 1990 1993 1996
Baseline probability at 0.94 0.90 0.91 0.92 0.92 0.81
sample median values
Female 0.037 0.055 0.065 0.012 0.093 0.005
Age 0.012 0.010 0.012 0.011 0.012 0.022
Age*female 0.001 0.002 0.002 0.001 0.002 0.002
Age
2
0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Education 0.017 0.017 0.039 0.021 0.023 0.070
Housewife 0.004 0.002 0.024 0.013 0.024 0.051
Membership in:
Womens Assn. 0.032 0.057 0.050 0.022 0.103 0.129
Koenkai 0.061 0.071 0.056 0.030 0.060 0.048
Neighbourhood Assn. 0.019 0.021 0.035 0.013 0.006 0.011
Professional or Farmers Assn. 0.009 0.051 0.071 0.023 0.019 0.059
Religious 0.043 0.091 0.049 0.122 0.046 0.081
Trade Union 0.018 0.018 0.042 0.010 0.024 0.021
Social Integration
Community size 0.016 0.013 0.016 0.015 0.007 0.015
Length of residence 0.011 0.028 0.018 0.012 0.014 0.014
Source: Analysis from Table 5. The data are from the Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19761996.
campaigners and supportersthose responsible for mobilizing othersno longer automatically
dismiss women as apolitical. There is a growing perception that womens votes are important, so
candidates and their supporters are making a deliberate effort to contact and mobilize women to
join koenkai, and to participate more generally in political activities. As they do so, womens partici-
pation increases.
Although the gender gap in koenkai membership has narrowed, womens and mens participation
is not qualitatively identical. In addition to the political functions of koenkai, they have a strong
social or community component which is organized along gender lines. Entertainment aimed
at appealing to women includes cookery classes, womens volleyball, flower-arranging, kimono
classes, and so on (Abe et al. 1990: 157).
23
As a result, the political and politicising role of koenkai
may be different for women and men. Furthermore, we should not expect all koenkai to be the
same; some groups may involve women and men equally in politics, regardless of the type of
participation. We should also bear in mind that joining koenkai may indicate political interest.
Although a unique mix of material, solidary or purposive incentives probably motivates individuals
to join, we should be cautious about interpreting koenkai membership as interest or involvement
in politics.
24
240 Gill STEEL
23. For brief summaries of the history and function of the koenkai, see Abe et al. (1990: 152160), Ishikawa and Hirose
(1989: 129), and Curtis (1971: 157232).
24. Numerous female-dominated activist groups exist, particularly in local level politics. The data I analyse here are
aggregated across nation-wide communities, so I am unable to study the extent of womens participation in local
movements.
Figure 4. Koenkai Membership and Invitations to Join, by Gender, 19761996.
Source: Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai, 19761996.
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 241
6. Concluding Remarks
Basing their insights on sociological models that use socio-demographic variables to explain behaviour,
some commentators assume that women participate less than men do in politics, and are indifferent
or hostile to politics. These models, however, explain only a small proportion of political behaviour
and decision-making. Other quantitative research highlights very small behavioural and attitudinal
differences between women and men. Still other perceptions of womens behaviour appear to be
influenced by research conducted in the 1950s that characterised women as politically parochial and
passive. Some more recent research focuses on the atypical behaviour of activists, whose behaviour
may not be generalisable to the broader population of women.
My findings suggest that we need to be cautious about assuming that large differences exist in
the political behaviour and attitudes of women and men. I demonstrated that some of the overall
political differences between men and women are slighter than previously believed. Some differences
have disappeared over time, and others can be explained by womens and mens participation in
different types of networks. But some puzzles still remained. Women, for example, are slightly less
interested and less likely to align with parties than men, but vote at higher rates. Network analysis
partly explains this puzzle: womens associations are better at getting out the vote than are the
networks to which men tend to belong. My findings lead to further important questions: how are
womens associations able to get out the vote without raising overall levels of political interest or
party support among women? Why do occupation-related groups fail to get out the vote among
men as effectively as womens organizations do? Taking other causes of voting and party support
into account, why are trade union members generally not more likely than non-members to support
parties or vote? Although members of professional associations and farmers co-operatives are
more likely to support parties than non-members, why are they not more likely than non-members
to vote?
I suggest that the influence of occupation-related groups may have been exaggerated. Certainly,
in some situations and at some points in time, these groups may be very influential. In tight-knit
farming communities, for example, or in times of economic difficulty, we would expect political mobil-
ization and activity to be high. But averaged over all communities and viewed over time, membership
in many networks does not significantly influence the behaviour of members.
Clearly, networks in Japan are not vote delivery systems, as some commentators suggest.
The reality is more complex: we need to study the kinds of mobilisation that occur in the different
networks, the differences between the kind of mobilisation that results in votes and the kind that
results in other types of political integration. We cannot assume that the types of mobilisation across
groups are the same or that citizens in different groups respond similarly to mobilisation. Are
women simply more conformist than men, or do womens associations provide their members with
a heuristic, a common contextual identity, which has implicit voting cues attached? If professional asso-
ciations and farmers co-operatives provide their members with such a common contextual identity,
why does this not extend to the act of voting?
More research needs to be conducted on mobilisation, how it works, when, and among which
groups it is successful. As one anonymous reviewer of a previous draft of this survey astutely pointed
out this finding teaches us that gender-conscious investigations of political life have as much to
teach us about the basic nature of political behaviour as they do about the more specific case of
women. It is impossible to answer these questions conclusively by analysing the limited range
of closed-ended questions that are included in these surveys, which themselves are not specifically
designed to study these topics. To understand these phenomena better, we need to utilize either
surveys designed to study this topic with a larger sample size or certain subgroups oversampled so
that we can be more confident in our statistical analyses. Perhaps utilising qualitative methods, such
as in-depth interviews or participant observation of networks, may be more illuminating.
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242 Gill STEEL
Appendix A
ASSK Studies
The data I use are from the Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai Shugiin Giin Sosenkyo (Society for the
Promotion of Clean Elections House of Representatives Election) studies 19721996. These data
were made available through Rikkyo University Law Library (for which I would like to express my
sincere thanks to Professor Igarashi Akio) from the Leviathan Data Bank, Tokyo. All ASSK Election
Studies have a national multi-stage stratified design, drawn from the nation-wide population of
adults. The interviews are conducted in-person.
Question Wording
Question and response category wording are exact across years, unless otherwise noted.
Gender. Coded by interviewer. Coding: 1 if female; 0 if male.
Interest in Elections. What level of interest did you personally have in the last election? Extremely
interested; somewhat interested; not very interested; not at all interested.
I recoded this variable so that high levels of interest are coded with high values. Dont knows were
excluded from the analysis.
Vote. In the last election, what prompted you to vote? Please choose one from this list. 1. Because
I preferred one candidate. 2. Because I preferred one party. 3. To reform politics. 4. To improve
politics 5. Because it is a citizens duty. 6. Because of union or organizational membership.
Occupation. What is your occupation? (Even if youre what we call housewife, and you help in the
family business at home, enter family business). I recoded this variable: Housewife: 1 if housewife;
0 if otherwise.
Education. Until when did you go to school? (Leaving a particular school before having graduated
is counted as graduating). [19721990] 1. Elementary; current system middle school graduate. 2.
Previous system middle school; current system high school. 3. Previous system high school, junior
college, university; new system university graduate [19931996]. In order to preserve basic compar-
ability, the four-item responses were recoded into the same three-item categories. Unclear responses
and dont know: system missing
Age. What is your age in full? [19761996]. Respondents age in years
Community Size. From sample information. Category changes: [19721976]: 1. Tokyo. 2. The other
nine large cities. 3. Towns with a population greater than 100,000. 4. Towns with a population less
than or equal to 100,000 5. Villages [1979] 1. Tokyo and Osaka. 2. The other eight large cities.
3. Towns with a population greater than 100,000. 4. Towns with a population less than or equal to
100,000 5. Villages [1983]: 2. The other ten large cities; otherwise as 19721976. [1990]: 2. The
other eleven large cities; otherwise as 19721976. [19931996]: 2. The other 12 large cities;
otherwise as 19721976.
Gender and Political Behaviour in Japan 243
Length of Residence. About how many years have you lived in this City (Prefecture, Town, Village)?
[19721979]: 1. Three years or less. 2. More than three years. 3. More than 10 years. 4. More than
20 years. [19831996]: 4. More than 20 years (ever since birth). Unclear and dont know
responses: system missing.
Group Membership. Are you a member of any of these kinds of groups? List includes: Neighbourhood
Groups (Chonaikai, Burakukai, Jijikai); [19721990] Womens Association and Young Peoples
Association. [19931996] Womens Association; Koenkai; PTA; Religious group.
Trade Union Member. 1 if member; 0 if otherwise.
Professional Association Member. Member in a business, commerce, farming or fishing association;
1 if member; 0 if otherwise.
Recommendations/Vote Solicitation from Networks. Whether it was useful or not, in the Election for
the House of Representatives, did you hear or see any [voting] recommendations? From this list,
please choose all.
Social Network Recommendation. Reported recommendation from one or more of the following
community-based networks: family, neighbours, friends; 0 if otherwise.
Workplace Recommendation. Reported recommendation from one or more of the following:
superior, colleague, professional association; 1 if member; 0 if otherwise.
Direct Mobilization. Reported recommendation from one or more of the following: a party member,
campaigner (in person) or campaigner (via telephone) (1993 and 1996) koenkai; 1 if member;
0 if otherwise.
244 Gill STEEL