Gendering the Japanese New Left -- Naive Politics: A Maiden Sacrifice for Postwar Democracy -- "My Love and Rebellion": The Politics of Nurturing, the Logic of Capital, and the Rationalization of Coeducation -- Is the Personal Political? Everyday Life as a Site of Struggle in the Campus New Left -- "When You Fuck a Vanguard Girl . . . ": The Spectacle of New Left Masculinity -- "Gewalt Rosas": The Creation of the Terrifying, Titillating Female Student Activist -- Revolutionary Desire.
Chelsea Szendi Schieder, a political scientist at Tokyo's Meiji University, describes how, in the wake of Japan's triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown), the country has moved to fortify national harmony and women's place in the traditional family unit. But Schieder writes that, for women struggling to extricate themselves from violent households, these "bonds that link families become bondage." She discusses how policies under Shinzô Abe, including a proposed constitutional revision, seek to strengthen the neoliberal order at the expense of women.
This article discusses a global theatrical spectacle that Moral Re-Armament (mra), a spiritual movement originating in the United States, produced in 1961. mra used contemporary protests in Japan, and actors ostensibly involved in them, as a strategy to bolster its authority in the context of U.S. Cold War policy in East Asia. How it claimed to represent Japan to the world and attempted to transform itself into the spokesman for the "Free World" offers insight into the symbolic position of East Asia in the United States and the areas it sought to influence during the early 1960s, a key moment in the intensifying U.S. involvement in East Asia, and offers a case through which to explore Christina Klein's model of "Cold War Orientalism." mra tapped into this more inclusive discourse and also exploited ignorance in the United States about Japan to bolster widespread misconceptions about demonstrations in Tokyo. While introducing mra's history, this essay teases out a gap between the reality and representation of Japanese politics and protest in the case of The Tiger, which reflects the historical context in which popular culture excluded real knowledge about how U.S. foreign policy affected, and often threatened, local political autonomy.
Are young women in Japan on a wildcat baby strike? In 2005, for the first time since Japan began collecting population statistics in the late 1800s, the nation's birth rate dropped below its death rate, marking a new low in the ongoing "baby bust," which first came to public attention in 1990. The fewer children there are, the more crushing the weight of the health and pension systems are on each individual citizen. And a baby bust means not only fewer future workers, but also fewer future consumers to buy the products Japanese factories make.
Blame for this baby bust tends to fall on young women. In 1999, sociologist Masahiro Yamada described a generation of young people who live with their parents well into adulthood, spending their earnings on a new computer or a designer bag or a car. These "parasite singles" can be male or female, but in the popular image, it is the young women who are the ones rejecting the austerity of marriage and children, preferring conspicuous consumption. Mari Ozawa, a sociologist and women's activist, noted in 2004 how deeply ingrained the link between the dropping birth rates and the social advancement of women had become in the popular imagination. She questioned the real basis for this link, which is a standard sociological explanation in industrialized nations, and also the frantic imperatives to "reverse the tide" of the declining birth rate, favoring an approach that tries to "navigate" the conditions of the baby bust. Others have emphasized that it is not women's empowerment but a lack thereof that contributes to a decline in births. This refusal to reproduce suggests a deep dissatisfaction with contemporary Japanese society. Can this be read as a political refusal? How can one read a collective "tide" that is not based on collective action but on individual decisions?
