Women in Japan

The very best course I took in college was a history of modern Japan. It was essentially a graduate-level discussion course, there were just ten of us in it. The midterm was at the end of the first week of classes. It was a multiple choice names, dates, and places factual-type test, designed to ensure that we knew something about Japan.

Each of us picked a topic relevant to modern Japanese history that interested us, researched it, and presented our findings to the class. I think that mine was giri and ninjo as they apply to modern Japan.

One of the women in the class asked the instructor if she could present on the women’s movement in Japan. She was directed to find another topic because “there was no women’s movement in Japan”.

All of that came flooding back to mind when I read this piece in the New York Times on the upcoming ascension ceremony of Naruhito:

Under the Imperial Household Law, which governs the line of succession as well as most matters of protocol related to Japan’s monarchy, women in the royal family are not permitted to be in the room when the new emperor receives the sacred regalia signifying his rightful succession to the world’s oldest monarchy.

But the prohibitions go much further. Women are not allowed to reign on the throne. In fact, women born into the royal family must officially leave it once they marry, and none of their children can be in line to the throne.

Apparently, there are some things which have not changed greatly over the intervening years. I am told that public opinion in Japan favors an expanded role for women. Since Japan is a consensus society that itself suggests that there have been a few changes.

If the women’s movement in the United States were worthy of the name it would be more engaged in the role of women all over the world. In much of the world the situation is still pretty medieval if not neolithic. As it is the women’s movement in the United States appears to be primarily a movement of upper middle class white women, given the lack of interest in real women’s lives outside that group.