Asian Anthropology

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Women in politics in Japan: beyond housewife

activism

Lynne Y. Nakano

To cite this article: Lynne Y. Nakano (2018): Women in politics in Japan: beyond housewife
activism, Asian Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2018.1458405

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2018.1458405

Published online: 03 May 2018.

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Asian Anthropology, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2018.1458405

Women in politics in Japan: beyond housewife activism

Lynne Y. Nakano
Department of Japanese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article examines the obstacles preventing women from Japan; women; gender;
entering national-level politics in Japan and reviews research by politics; leadership
political scientists and sociologists who use methods associated
with anthropology such as participant observation and interviews
to investigate the rise of women’s political activism at local levels. The
article discusses “housewife” activism that has propelled significant
numbers of women into political office but relies on associations of
women with domestic roles. It argues that in spite of the advantages
obtained by the model of housewife activism such as inclusive, caring,
and egalitarian politics, we need to move beyond this model and its
reliance on the gendered division of labor if we are to obtain greater
political participation for women at national levels and for politics to
better represent the interests of voters.

In spite of talk early in 2017 that Japan might have its first female Prime Minister,1 the October
2017 national election for the Lower House of Japan’s bicameral legislature provided a
reminder that Japanese politics is still very much a man’s world. The ruling Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) and a coalition of smaller parties secured slightly more than the two-thirds of
seats needed for a majority, paving the way for Shinzo Abe’s reelection as Prime Minister.
The LDP, which has ruled in some form throughout most of the postwar period, has an
exceedingly poor track record in promoting female participation in politics. In the latest
election, only 7.7% of its candidates for the Lower House were women compared to the
overall average of 17.7% among all parties (Asahi Shimbun 2017). In the October 2017 elec-
tion, women won 47 of 465 seats representing a mere 10.1% of legislators in the national
legislative body. While an improvement upon elections of past decades, the figure is by no
means impressive. Japan continues to have one of the lowest rates of female representation
in national politics in the world. Before the national election, Japan ranked 164 of 193 coun-
tries in this regard according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (2017). After the national
election, Japan’s ranking may have moved up a few notches, but remains behind all other
industrialized nations including its neighbors of South Korea, Singapore, and China.
In international comparisons, Japan performs poorly in the areas of women’s economic
participation and political empowerment. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap
Index (2016) ranks Japan 111 of 144 countries. Yet Japan does well in other areas, obtaining

CONTACT  Lynne Y. Nakano  Lynnenakano@cuhk.edu.hk

© 2018 The Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2   L. Y. NAKANO

high scores in women’s education and health parity. Women in Japan are taking up more
leadership positions in regional levels, and are central in local consumer and social move-
ments. Japanese women have a long history of political activism, high levels of educational
achievement, and high levels of workforce participation. The overall situation shows gradual
movement toward gender parity outside of the conspicuous and important areas of employ-
ment, economics, and political participation. In the area of employment, recent studies have
found that male-dominated corporate cultures and emphasis on long working hours impede
women’s advancement (Nemoto 2013a, 2013b). These barriers may in part explain why in
spite of an increased proportion of women in the workforce, women have withdrawn from
“regular” employment (with job security and welfare packages) over the past two decades
(Gordon 2017, 26). In 2013 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched so-called “womenomics” as
part of a package to revive the Japanese economy. Four years later, Abe’s policies promoting
gender equity have had little effect in part because no penalties were imposed on companies
that failed to meet numerical goals for women’s participation in leadership positions.
This paper considers women’s roles in politics in Japan and how political processes may
be improved through women’s participation. Politics in Japan is of interest because it is
widely perceived to be one of the most persistent bastions of male-dominated culture and
is imbued with negative associations of corruption, covert deal-making, and abuse of power.
In contrast, women’s activism, primarily occurring at local levels, is observed to be open to
newcomers, egalitarian, caring, and committed to assisting others. Often deriving legitimacy
from their claims to be “housewives,” women politicians address issues emerging out of
women’s roles as wives and mothers such as childcare, elder care, education, environment,
and consumer safety.
Women have the potential to bring about change in national-level politics including
greater transparency, sensitivity to voter concerns, and more gender-equitable policies, yet
women politicians face serious obstacles in obtaining national political offices. Many of these
obstacles stem from the widely held belief that women are primarily responsible for the
home. As a result, while “housewife” platforms have been undeniably successful in bringing
women into politics, they also limit women’s participation in national politics and limit the
range of issues that are seen as appropriate for women politicians to address.
In response to Japan’s poor performance in international comparisons of women’s par-
ticipation in politics, there has been discussion in Japan of implementing electoral reforms
to address gender imbalance. This writer believes that electoral reforms promoting gender
equality such as the quota system should be fully pursued to allow female politicians greater
access to elected bodies given their disadvantages in obtaining funding and access to elite
political networks. Electoral reforms alone, however, may bring more women into elected
office, but may not necessarily bring about desired changes such as more transparent polit-
ical processes and greater representation of voters’ concerns. For further progress, women
politicians may need to step away from the housewife platform and find ways to move
forward with the tools that women have developed through local politics, including flexi-
bility, transparency, and representation of voters’ interests.

Few women in national politics

The dearth of women in national politics in Japan is not due to a lack of educated women
interested in political change. Starting in the early twentieth century, educated urban women
 ASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY   3

in Japan led women’s rights and suffrage movements. Although their impact at that time
was limited (Pharr 1981, 5), prewar suffragists such as Fusae Ichikawa helped prepare a pool
of women who were ready to run for office when Japanese women were granted full political
rights in 1945. Suffrage and political rights were not gained through domestic political move-
ments, but were imposed by the Allied Occupation government following Japan’s defeat in
World War II. In the first postwar elections in 1946, 79 women ran for seats in the Lower House
and 34 were elected, constituting 8.4% of total members (Igarashi and Shurâzu 2012, 3–4).
After changes in electoral regulations, the numbers of women legislators declined and it
would take some five decades before equivalent numbers of women held this high a pro-
portion of legislative seats.
In 1993, the ruling LDP that had held power since 1955 lost control of the Lower House
of the Diet and electoral reforms were introduced to include proportional representation, a
system that political scientists associate with higher proportions of women in legislative
bodies. In the next two elections held in 1994 and 2000, the percentage of women legislators
in the Japanese Lower House increased. The figure rose from 2.7% in 1993 to 4.6% in 1996,
and then to 7.3% in the 2000 election (Dalton 2015, 41). By the 2012 general election, 38 of
370 members elected to the Lower House were women. While an improvement over previous
years, the proportion of women elected in this election (8.1%), was lower than the proportion
of women elected in the first election in which women were allowed to vote and run for
office in 1946, when 8.4% of elected lawmakers were women (Dalton 2015, 2).
Women leaders have emerged in Japanese politics at the national level in the past. In
1986 Takako Doi was elected leader of Japan’s major opposition party, the Japan Socialist
Party (later known as the Social Democratic Party). Doi expanded the party’s base by includ-
ing women and women’s organizations in the so-called “Madonna strategy” that resulted in
the election of a number of high-profile women candidates. Although Doi resigned from
party leadership in 1991, in 1993 she was elected Speaker of the Lower House as part of a
coalition government; it was the first and only time a woman has served in this high-level
position.
Political maneuvering swept women into office again in 2005, when the LDP leader
Junichiro Koizumi recruited relatively large numbers of women for the Lower House elections
in an effort to promote his reform agenda. Koizumi personally selected many of the candi-
dates, choosing newcomers from diverse backgrounds who would support his efforts to
reform the postal system. Koizumi supported these candidates by placing them at the top
of party lists. As a result, 16 of the 83 newly elected legislators in the 2005 election were
women, more than double the number of the previous election. In 2001, Koizumi set another
record by appointing five women to his first cabinet as Prime Minister, a historic number
that has yet to be reproduced.
The national government has made highly publicized efforts to help women ascend to
leadership positions. As mentioned above, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promoted “wome-
nomics” as part of structural reforms introduced in a 2013 policy package to revive the
Japanese economy. “Womenomics” refers to the promotion of policies that encourage
women to remain in the workforce and raise the numbers of women in leadership positions
(Dalton 2017, 96). Dalton (2017, 96) and others point out that womenomics is not a new
concept – the term is traced to a 1999 report by Kathy Matsui, chief Japan strategist for
Goldman Sachs – and similar policies have been discussed in the Japanese government
since the 1990s. The Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society, implemented in 1999, followed
4   L. Y. NAKANO

by the Basic Plan of 2000, established gender targets for leadership positions in private sector
and local councils. The latest version of the plan (4th Plan of the Basic Law) provides updated
figures and proportional targets for women’s participation in a range of areas and jobs includ-
ing local government, police, medicine, professors, legislators, and private enterprise. These
and subsequent laws urge companies to take action to meet gender targets, but are not
binding and do not impose penalties for failure to follow the guidelines (Dalton 2017, 98).
As a result, in spite of these laws, women remain underrepresented in corporate leadership
positions. According to the Gender Equality Bureau, in private companies, the proportion
of women at the rank of section chief or equivalent is 18.6%, director or equivalent is 10.3%,
and department manager or equivalent at 6.6%. Only 3.4% of officers in listed companies
are women (Gender Equality Bureau 2017).
Women tend to be somewhat better represented in government service. According to
Gender Equality Bureau figures, women constitute 37.1% of members in national advisory
councils and committees, and the proportion of female national public employees through
the national examination for public service is 34.4%. The figure for women in the position
of “Section Chief at Headquarters or Equivalent” stood at 23.9%, but the numbers fall at the
highest levels. Women comprise only 9.4% of directors at regional levels and only 4.1% of
directors at headquarters or equivalent levels. The figures for prefectural and municipal
leadership follow a similar pattern, with representation reaching about 30% at the lower
levels of leadership, but falling steeply to below 10% at the highest levels (Gender Equality
Bureau 2017).
In recent years, a few women politicians have reached the national stage. Former LDP
politician Yuriko Koike was elected governor of Tokyo in July 2016. Koike, who holds a degree
from the University of Cairo and speaks fluent Arabic, worked as a TV news anchor before
entering politics in 1992. She served as Environment Minister in 2003 and served briefly as
Japan’s first female Defense Minister in Abe Shinzo’s government in 2007. In 2016, Koike
created waves in the political world by announcing her candidacy for the Tokyo governor’s
office without first obtaining her party’s (the LDP at that time) endorsement. She proceeded
to win the gubernatorial race, defeating the LDP choice. In September 2017 Koike announced
the founding of a new party, the Party of Hope (kibō no tō), creating speculation that she
would run in the Lower House election which would challenge Abe’s leadership in that
legislative body, and create a path toward Koike becoming Japan’s first female Prime Minister.
Later, however, she announced that she would not run and planned to remain in her post
as Governor of Tokyo to lead the city in its preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Even if
elected to the country’s highest office, however, it seems unlikely that Koike would offer
policies that particularly favor women. She is known to be a right-of-center candidate whose
policies mirror that of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The only areas in which she has
asserted a discernible difference from the LDP are her opposition to an increase in the sales
tax and her view that Japan should abandon nuclear power while Abe favors restarting
nuclear reactors.
Two other women have reached the top of Japan’s national political scene in recent years.
In August 2016 Abe appointed Tomomi Inada to the post of Defense Minister. Inada, a lawyer
who previously served as the ruling party policy chief, supports Abe’s goal of revising the
Constitution and is known to regularly visit Yasukuni Shrine, which is considered a symbol
of Japan’s militarism by the governments of China and South Korea. Inada’s tenure as defense
minister was short-lived as she resigned in July 2017 to take responsibility for a scandal
 ASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY   5

involving the cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the deployment of Japan’s Self-
Defense Forces on a peace-keeping mission in South Sudan. The second woman politician
in the headlines, Renho, who goes by one name, was elected head of the opposition
Democratic Party in September 2016, becoming the first woman to head this main opposition
party. The daughter of a Taiwanese father and a Japanese mother, Renho’s background
became an issue when it was revealed before the election that she held dual nationality.
Although she had not broken any laws, the incident drew negative attention to her back-
ground and left the impression that she had mishandled the issue (Osaki 2016). In contrast
to Koike and Inada, Renho, as an opposition candidate, campaigned on promises to provide
an alternative to the ruling party. She pledged to provide greater investment in education
and provide higher salaries for nursery school teachers. While some hold hope that Renho
may one day serve as Prime Minister, it will not happen in the near future, as she stepped
down from the position as head of the opposition party in July 2017 to take responsibility
for its poor showing in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections. Given her relative youth
– she was born in 1969 – Renho may yet emerge as a contender for the nation’s top elected
position if the opposition party is able to reorganize.
These women stand out in part because of their rarity in national politics. None of Japan’s
political parties have been particularly bold in fielding women candidates, and the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party has consistently been resistant to reforms that would increase the
number of women and newcomer candidates. Moreover, all three women were chosen by
elite men, and the two conservative politicians, Koike and Inada, did not particularly appeal
to women voters or campaign on women’s issues. Without female leaders who appeal to
women voters, political scientist Mari Miura (2017) argues, it is difficult for a new political
culture based on gender equity to emerge.

Obstacles to women’s participation in politics

The reasons for low rates of women’s participation in politics in Japan have been widely
discussed. Perhaps the most often cited reason is the gendered division of labor in which
women are expected to care for family and home while men are expected to financially
support families. This expectation takes a toll on women’s political ambitions as it promotes
the idea that women are not suited for political careers. Even if they take up political careers,
women still feel responsible for taking up childcare, housework, and elder care in their fam-
ilies (Dalton 2017, 23; Kubo and Gelb 1994, 34). Pharr’s (1981) study in the 1970s highlighted
the enormous sense of role strain experienced by young women involved in politics and the
high social and psychological costs political life entailed. Recent studies suggest that role
strain continues to be a serious obstacle to political life for women. A survey conducted by
the daily newspaper Tokyo Shimbun asked female members of the Tokyo Metropolitan
Assembly why the numbers of women politicians remain low. The top reason provided was
the lack of time for oneself and one’s family. “A legislator’s job revolves around others so in
the end there is no time for one’s family and oneself,” wrote one legislator (Tokyo Shimbun
2016, 62). Another wrote,
Pregnancy, childbirth, raising children – these in the end need to be done by women, but the
legislator’s job starts in the morning and continues through the night. Without support from
others, it’s impossible to do this job. That’s the main problem. (Tokyo Shimbun 2016, 63)
6   L. Y. NAKANO

A second major obstacle is that the political world is seen as a particularly unwelcoming
and harsh environment for women. A series of highly public incidents of male politicians
harassing women has punctuated this point. In June 2014, Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly
member Ayaka Shiomura was addressing the assembly about measures to support pregnant
women when she was heckled by male legislators with jeers such as “You should hurry up
and get married” and “Aren’t you able to have a baby?” LDP assembly-member Akihiro Suzuki
later admitted that he had shouted “Why don’t you get married soon?” and publicly apolo-
gized but Shiomura commented that others had also jeered and did not come forward
(Kameda and Nagata 2014). A national survey of prefectural assembly women conducted
by Kyodo News found that around 60% of prefectural assemblywomen across Japan have
experienced sexual harassment, either by their male colleagues or voters (Japan Times 2016).
Surveys conducted by Tokyo Shimbun found that women members of the Tokyo Metropolitan
Assembly found political culture to be unfriendly or even hostile to women. One woman
legislator wrote: “Politics is not a place for women and children” – that kind of atmosphere
persists. The world of politics is one that excludes women. The rules in this world are clear:
“Politics is for men and women should stay away” (Tokyo Shimbun 2016, 64).
A third major impediment to women’s participation in politics is the power structures
that have developed under the LDP in the postwar period. The LDP was the ruling party
between 1955 and 1993, after which it briefly lost control and then regained power through
coalition governments with smaller parties. The party was defeated again in 2009, and then
recovered control of the Lower House in 2012 and the Upper House in 2013. The party’s
long-term conservative rule, made possible because of Japan’s economic success, resulted
in the development of power structures that rely on connections with industry and corporate
funding (Dalton 2015, 15). Candidates need to rely on support groups (kōenkai) and factions
within the party to fund their campaigns. Although revised in 1993, the electoral system
continues to support incumbents or successors of incumbents who are reelected because
they provide resources to constituencies. Many politicians come from political families in
which younger generations inherit offices and supporters, and large numbers come from
an elite group of top universities, from the bureaucracy, and from donating companies.
Newcomers and women are highly disadvantaged in trying to enter this world.2 To succeed
in an election, for example, it is often said that candidates require “3 ban – kaban (money),
jiban (organization), and kanban (publicity)” (Igarashi and Shurâzu 2012, 138; Kubo and Gelb
1994, 133). Scholars have pointed out that women have difficulty obtaining funding because
they are less likely to be in full-time employment, and are less likely than men to be involved
in large organizations with the ability to fundraise (Dalton 2017, 22, 124; Steel 2004, 231).
The lack of sufficient party competition may also explain why women have not fared well
in national politics. Miura points out that in other societies competition often leads political
parties to advance women candidates to win women’s votes. She states that after electoral
losses, left-of-center party typically put forward women candidates. To remain competitive,
conservative parties follow suit with their own women candidates. In Japan, the Socialist
Party adopted this strategy in the so-called “Madonna Boom” under Takako Doi in the 1980s,
but the LDP did not respond by similarly raising the number of female candidates (Miura
2017). The dominance of the ruling party and its conservative ideology may explain why
this strategy has not succeeded in Japan.
The LDP’s framing of gender roles has also been detrimental to women’s aspirations for
leadership roles in Japan (Dalton 2015; 26–30). LDP governments have implemented laws
 ASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY   7

and policies that reinforced a conservative model of the family based on a gendered division
of labor with men devoted to companies and women dedicated to reproduction and caring
for the family and home. Social welfare policies of the 1960s and 1970s, for example, empha-
sized the family as a self-sufficient unit in which women would provide child care and elder
care. As women increasingly entered the workforce, and the population aged, however, it
became clear that such a policy of relying on women for social welfare was untenable. Peng
notes that women’s groups such as the “Women’s Committee for the Betterment of the
Ageing Society” actively criticized these policies as contradicting the realities of women’s
lives. Women’s organizations created study groups, appeared in the media, and cultivated
candidates for political office. The efforts of these groups led to social welfare reform in the
1980s and 1990s in which the state provided greater social welfare support and benefits
(Peng 2002, 421). In spite of an increase in social welfare benefits, the LDP continues to view
women as responsible for domestic care of children and the elderly. This prevailing attitude
that women’s main roles are limited to the domestic sphere constrains women’s ability to
take political stands outside of “women-related” issues both inside and outside the LDP. To
address gender equity in national politics, political scientists have raised the issue of electoral
reform, to which this article now turns.

Fair representation
The most commonly discussed electoral reform to address gender equality is the quota
system. The quota system refers to controlling gender ratios for legislative seats or political
candidates and may be set by the government or voluntarily by parties. The quotas may set
various percentages and may be used to insure representation by women, men, and sexual
minorities. Globally, the average number of women serving in national legislatures has risen
to 20%, and political scientists attribute this rise to the introduction of quotas; currently
about half of the world’s countries employ some form of quota system. Miura notes that in
Asia quotas are in place in societies where female legislators comprise more than 30% of
legislative bodies. The highest percentages can be found in East Timor (38.5%) and Taiwan
(38.1%). In South Korea, which has legally instituted quotas for candidates, female legislators
comprise 17.0% of legislative bodies, significantly higher than the 10% in Japan (Miura 2017).
In Japan, as long as the Liberal Democratic Party maintains power, the quota system is
unlikely to be introduced. The ruling party has maintained its hold on power through the
current system and would probably lose seats if a quota system was implemented. The
typical arguments against the quota system are that it discriminates against men and under-
mines selection processes based on merit. But the counter arguments are that women and
men do not have an equal opportunity to become elected to political office. As women are
disadvantaged and face discrimination in the political system, supporters of the quota system
argue that it should be used to rectify that disadvantage.
The debates regarding the quota system raise the issue of how fair representation should
be achieved in Japan. For example, can we assume that when elected to office women will
act in the interest of other women? Studies so far have not produced clear answers, as quotas
are relatively new and the numbers of women legislators are low. Experience in Japan shows
that women may work together across parties on women’s issues – 11 women legislators
worked across party lines to include restraining orders in the Domestic Violence Law of 2001,
but the bill was also supported by the bureaucracy, women’s groups, the LDP, and the
8   L. Y. NAKANO

Socialist Party (Gelb 2003, 75). In other words, the presence of women alone may not be
sufficient to pass legislation supporting women. Broad support from other parties and
groups is necessary. The issue of quotas also raises the question of why we believe that
women are better representatives of women than men. Is there something inherent in
women that makes them better at representing other women? Phillips argues that this may
not necessarily be the case; assemblies composed equally of women and men may address
the issues of some groups of women and ignore the claims of others (Phillips 1995, 82). Fair
representation, she argues, is a process that cannot be achieved overnight and that simply
introducing quotas may not guarantee satisfactory representation of women’s views (1995,
83–84).
Japanese feminists do not necessarily embrace quotas. In an interview with Tokyo
Shimbun, pioneering feminist sociologist Ueno Chizuko stated that she has no preference
regarding the gender of the politician. She explained:
The age when we thought that all we need to do is increase the number of female legislators is
over. We need politicians who take responsibility for their own decisions instead of politicians
who are pawns of political parties. We need to look closely at who the candidate is working for.
What we need are legislators who are making an effort to work for the people (shiminha giin)
and not for the party (Tokyo Shimbun 2016, 76).
In a book in which Ueno served as supervising editor titled “How to become a city counselor
for the people: You can change society if you take action” (shiminha ni narutame no hon –
anata ga ugokeba shakai ga kawaru) (Terada, Terada, and Chizuko 2014), the authors argue
that all regional legislative seats should be made into part-time positions. Ueno explains:
We should get rid of the privileges given to career politicians and make politics into something
performed by “paid volunteers.”3 If one can be a politician part-time, many hurdles will be low-
ered. The cost of quitting their jobs to become legislators is too high for young people. Councils
and subcommittees can recruit people according to the issue. For child-raising issues, we can
include young mothers. For living environment issues, we can recruit people who are living in
that area. We can include disabled persons using skype or have people participate in wheel
chairs. If we make politics a part-time job, it is easier to include minorities. It may seem like a
weird idea but this is the future of “self-governance.” (Tokyo Shimbun 2016, 76)
Political scientist Mari Miura supports quotas as a means to achieve gender parity but she
also encourages other methods such as the introduction of a multiple-entry ballot. In this
kind of ballot, a voter may choose several candidates; one vote may go to the local candidate,
another to a female candidate who supports child-rearing policies, and a third to a young
candidate with fresh ideas (Tokyo Shimbun 2016, 60). While it is widely accepted that women
and women’s interests are underrepresented in politics, it is not clear what fair representation
will look like in Japan. Disappointment with elite politics has led to beliefs that simply insert-
ing women into national legislative positions may not be the answer. This writer believes
that electoral reform is important and necessary, but alone cannot address Japan’s fair rep-
resentation problems. For further progress, Japan needs to address assumptions that wom-
en’s primary place is in the home. This view of gendered roles, it should be noted, limits
women’s and men’s opportunities in Japanese society. But it should also be recognized that
structural limitations are also “productive” – in Foucault’s sense of the term – as it has created
unintended opportunities for women in local politics.
 ASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY   9

Women and local politics

In contrast to the national political scene in Japan, women are highly active in local politics.
While the world of elite politics is often seen as involving masculine competition over
resources, unscrupulous relationships with big business, and competitive networking, the
world of women’s local level civic organization is observed to be flexible, open, egalitarian,
and caring (LeBlanc 1999, 201). Local civic associations are dominated by women who iden-
tity as “housewives” (LeBlanc 1999) and focus on issues such as education, child-care, elder
care, environment, and food safety that are immediately relevant to women in their roles as
wives and mothers. It is often said that women are not interested in politics, but Oyama
suggests that women are not interested in the way that elite males define politics, and elite
males are not interested in issues that concern women. Oyama (2016, 93) writes: “Women
are said to have little interest in politics but this may be because those issues that interested
women are not valued politically.”
LeBlanc, a political scientist, used ethnographic fieldwork to conduct her study of local
women’s political activism. She described locally active women as “bicycle citizens” because
their primary mode of transportation is the bicycle as they traverse backstreets in their
neighborhood to pick up children, buy groceries, and attend meetings. She contrasts the
political world of the housewife with the mainstream elite politics populated by “taxi citizens”
or elite, educated men (LeBlanc1999, 25). LeBlanc addresses the paradox in which women’s
exclusion from elite political life has created caring, egalitarian, women-oriented local pol-
itics. She writes:
The housewife activist challenges us to find a way to preserve her ethic without preserving
the repressive aspects of gender relationships that make it her ethic. After all, we can argue
that bicycle citizens are necessary to high quality democratic life because they represent the
importance of forming and fulfilling obligations to other human beings. Political commitment
without a sense of such obligations is only interest competition, and in the world of interest
competition, the richest, best organized and most powerful tend to win (LeBlanc 1999, 201).
LeBlanc argues that dismantling obstacles to women’s participation in elite politics is important
as many women are not satisfied with the local world of the housewife, yet in some ways the
political life of the housewife is ideal democratic life (LeBlanc 1999, 202). If women are granted
entry into the world of elite politics, they may lose the values and political culture that makes
women’s political activism valuable and important. Other political scientists have recognized
the value of women’s political culture. These researchers argue that instead of focusing on
opening the elite male world to women, we should shape the elite male world in the image
of women’s local politics. Igarashi and Shurâzu (Schreurs) (2012, 338) argue that male elite
“hard politics” based on competition for resources needs to learn from women’s “soft politics”
that address the needs of communities. They urge that there should be a movement from
“interest politics” based on accumulating profit according to the party to “lively politics” based
on promoting the greater good of the community (Igarashi and Shûrazu 2012, 338).
For several decades, women politicians have used the housewife (shufu) image of a local
person humbly living day-to-day life in communities (seikatsusha) as a means of obtaining
votes. This strategy effectively distinguishes female candidates from men, as female candi-
dates emphasize that they are clean, fresh amateurs in contrast to the corrupt male political
world. This strategy may help win elections yet is problematic because, as Oyama and
Kunihiro point out, to be effective in office women politicians need to learn the ways of the
10   L. Y. NAKANO

(male) political world. In doing so, they lose their legitimacy as fresh and clean candidates.
They write:
In general, the image of politicians is not good. They flout power, become involved in misuse
of funds – and the image presented by the media is far from that of contributing to society. The
image of women politicians is said to be clean but when they are asked to become involved
in politics, and if they enter the political world, they will become skilled in managing political
relationships, human relationships and money issues. That kind of resolve is necessary (Oyama
and Kunihiro 2010, 96).
In other words, women need to learn the ways of negotiating in the male political world to
be effective as politicians, and the housewife platform is not sustainable through a mature
political career. The “housewife” platform is also problematic in that it reproduces gender
stereotypes of women as primarily caregivers and limits women politicians’ areas of expertise.
Dalton writes:
The argument that women bring something special to politics is attractive. Yet the way it is
presented by many female politicians and Japanese media often has the effect of consolidating
stereotypes about women. When certain political women argue for the importance of women
in politics by referring to women’s experiences derived from their social roles as mothers and
wives, unfortunately they do little to break down two important barriers to women entering
politics – gender role socialization and gender stereotypes ... This makes it difficult for female
politicians to embody a broader and more independent subjectivity outside mothering and
caring for others. (2015, 99–100)
Women politicians’ emphasis on themselves as representatives of community life and on
the importance of women’s reproductive roles is not surprising given that these are the
issues that concern the government and the LDP.
Recently local networks are producing more female candidates who are able to move up
to municipal, regional, and national levels. Oyama and Kunihiro provide an example of a
woman whose career in the city council began with neighborhood voluntary activities:
E was a member of Kanagawa Net (consumer network party) for about two years before becom-
ing their candidate. Before joining Kanagawa Net, she had accompanied her husband to Fukuoka
where he had been transferred by his employer. There she became involved in a lifestyle coop-
erative union (seikatsu kyôdô kumiai) for her children and got involved in neighborhood mutu-
al-help type activities. This changed her. When she returned to Kanagawa she became a member
of the “lifestyle club union” (seikatsu kurabu kumiai) and joined the Seikatsu Club.4 In 2001 she
joined Kanagawa Net and through the workers’ collective, became involved in elder care welfare
facilities movement. She was asked to serve as the representative of a particular neighborhood
and was then nominated to serve as candidate for city council by the local election committee.
Hers is an example of a female politician who entered the political world through community
activities for her children. (Oyama and Kunihiro 2010, 96)
Studies suggest that this growing pool of local women politicians such as “E” described above
is leading to more women attaining regional and even national positions of leadership. The
number of female mayors has increased steeply in the past two decades. As of August 2016,
28 of 32 women serving as mayors of cities have been elected since 2000, and 19 of 34 women
who have served as town or village mayors were elected since 2000 (Tsuji 2017, 37).5 Women’s
local civic leadership seems to have led to slight increases in women in national level posi-
tions as well. Oyama found that in the 1990s most women politicians were celebrities but
the 2000s saw a rise in the numbers of women who entered national politics after first serving
in NGOs and other local civic organizations. Such candidates currently comprise approxi-
mately 25% of the total (Oyama 2016, 94). Tsuji points out that Japan’s first female governor
 ASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY   11

was elected only in 2000 (Fusae Ohta served as Governor of Osaka Prefecture from 2000 to
2008) and has increased gradually. Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko, elected in 2016, for example,
is just the seventh woman to serve as a governor in Japan.
In local politics, women have increasing leverage not only as politicians, but according
to Sherry Martin (2011, 5), as voters. Martin points out that the average voter in Japan is
female and not affiliated to a party. Women voters, she suggests, are cultivated through the
government’s support of lifetime learning opportunities at community levels. Women’s par-
ticipation in lifetime learning opportunities, she believes, creates voter confidence and
demands for a “more inclusive democracy” (Martin 2011, 25). Basically, she argues that
women voters have the potential to sway elections because they may come out in large
numbers to support candidates who they feel listen to their voices. The success of local or
regional candidates due to this vote puts pressure on national level candidates to change
the way they operate; they may feel pressed to have a closer relationship with voters and
pay more attention to voters’ opinions (Martin 2011, 51). Interestingly, Martin (2011, 39) finds
that these voters do not necessarily prefer female candidates; rather they prefer younger
candidates of any gender who are able to reflect the interests and thinking of voters. This
finding suggests that female voters wish to vote according to issues and the politicians’
responsiveness to their views, a welcome change from the LDP politics of party loyalty and
rewards. This shift would bring in women candidates but more importantly would represent
a shift in the way voters and politicians interact.
The rise of women’s activism at local level politics is a highly promising development in
Japan. It is conceivable that as larger pools of experienced women candidates become
available, we will see more women elected at regional and national levels. The movement
is important not only because the candidates are female, but because they make strong
claims to represent the interests of voters and challenge the political system seen as corrupt
and unresponsive. That being said, the “housewife” candidate emerges because women and
other outsiders are excluded from mainstream male-dominated political processes. As dis-
cussed earlier, the housewife platform provides women with a path to political office, but
at the price of reproducing the gendered ideology that restricts women’s political partici-
pation. The platform also limits the range of issues that women are seen as qualified to
address; women politicians are accepted when they speak on education, consumer issues,
and healthcare, but not taken seriously when they address economic policy, labor conditions,
energy, and international relations; issues that dominate national politics. Another limitation
faced by housewife platforms is that they represent a certain kind of woman’s voice, poten-
tially excluding large numbers of women who are single, childless, elderly, and sexual minor-
ities. The way forward, I believe, is to step away from legitimacy based on feminine domesticity
and focus instead on the values of flexibility, openness, and responsiveness to voter opinions
that female politicians have successfully developed at local levels.

Conclusion
Feminists such as Sarah Hoagland have criticized the male-dominated world of politics,
arguing that men focus on “state authority, police and armed forces, control of economic
resources, control of technology, and hierarchy and chain of command” (Hoagland 1988,
115) and that men “generally regard politics and ethics as distinct” (115). She urges women
(speaking specifically to lesbians) to develop a diverse, ethically-grounded community in
12   L. Y. NAKANO

which women try to empower rather than control one another (Hoagland 1988, 156). Her
criticism of male approaches to politics would be echoed by observers of Japan. While it is
important to avoid advancing an essentialist perspective that women are naturally ethically
superior to men, there does seem to be merit in the argument that women’s structural
exclusion from avenues of power in Japanese society has created vibrant arenas of political
activity that seem grounded in sensitivity to voter concerns and mutual support. In Japan,
the advantages that have been gained by women’s structural exclusion – such as inclusive
politics, representation of voter interest, and concern for others’ welfare – need not be limited
only to housewives or to women; anyone may embody these political values. Women, how-
ever, are particularly well positioned to bring these values to the national level given their
experience in local politics.
Japan observers worry that if women are admitted into national politics, the values that
have made women successful in local politics will be lost, that women will be absorbed into
the corrupt national political system or that local-level politics will lose its distinctiveness
and come to resemble elite national politics. To some extent, this may be true. If the barriers
to women’s participation in elite political culture break down and political culture becomes
more open and representative of voter concerns, the need for challenges from apolitical
women becomes less pressing. If the gendered division of labor loses its hold, “housewife”
candidates may have fewer opportunities to enter politics. But in my view, the advantages
to be gained outweigh the costs. Political women in Japan have demonstrated their ability
to create a vibrant political counter-culture, and women in Japan, both voters and politicians,
are obviously highly educated and experienced in the labor market. The current political
system has been ineffectual in addressing issues that involve women including falling birth-
rates, depopulation, and elder care. A more open political system would enable more effec-
tive tackling of these critical issues.
The obstacles to women’s participation in national politics may be addressed on many
fronts. Electoral reform must surely be one of the tools used to dismantle elite politics as
currently practiced in Japan. Labor laws may be enacted to reform the employment system
that demands long hours, making it difficult for women to have careers. Tax laws may be
reformed so that they no longer penalize families in which women earn more than a sup-
plementary income. As women enter national politics, they may be part of larger political
coalitions – as they will continue to be minorities in the Diet even with quotas – to reform
the corporate and political systems that undergird the gendered division of labor. Challenging
the corporate model of long hours and poor working conditions would benefit women and
men and allow greater lifestyle choices for both. Women’s movement into politics is one of
many ways that Japan may move toward greater gender equality and improved quality of
life for women and men.

Notes
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike announced the formation of a new national political party, Kibô
1. 
no tô (the party of hope) a day before Prime Minister Abe announced snap elections for the
Lower House, and it was expected that she would announce her candidacy for a legislative seat.
If her party toppled the LDP in the Lower House, she would have a chance to be elected Prime
Minister. A few weeks later, however, Koike announced that she would not run for a legislative
seat and would fulfill her term as Governor.
 ASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY   13

2. 
See Dalton (2015, 13–22) for a comprehensive description of the structural obstacles to
newcomers and women that have developed and persisted under LDP rule.
3. 
“Paid volunteers” in Japan refer to people who perform social service work with the primary
intention to provide service rather than to make a profit. They may be paid a small salary but
not so much that it would be the main reason for performing the work.
4. 
Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union is a Japanese consumer cooperative that also
runs campaigns for political office.
5. 
Tsuji identifies three main factors that explain the increase in the number of female mayors
in Japan. First, the pool of qualified candidates is growing; some were career civil servants or
professionals, and others were housewives who became involved in community activities or
citizen movements. They entered local assemblies, leading to a growing number of women
who were qualified for a position of mayor (2017, 42). Second, after the 1990s, electorates have
become concerned about elder care and child care, creating a demand for female candidates
who were perceived as being capable of pressing the state to address these welfare issues.
A third factor is the decentralization of state authority in recent decades in which more fiscal
autonomy is given to local governments. As local responsibility for social welfare care expanded,
voters welcomed female mayoral candidates who ran campaigns promising to bring reform
(2017, 43). The larger picture behind the demand for reform was the change in the Japanese
society and economy. During the economic growth period, governors and mayors needed to
forge strong ties with the central government to bring in subsidies (Tsuji 2017, 44). However, as
resources were decentralized and fiscal constraints implemented after the economic downturn
of the 1990s, voters increasingly turned to candidates who could bring about reform in the
context of the ageing society, low birthrates, and fiscal restrictions (Tsuji 2017, 44).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Lynne Y. Nakano is Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong
Kong. She is the author of Community Volunteers in Japan: Everyday Stories of Social Change (2004),
and is working on a book manuscript about single women and changing social values in Tokyo, Hong
Kong, and Shanghai.

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