Feminism fractured: An ethnography of the dissolution and textual reinvention of a Japanese feminist group.

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Japanese feminist women attempt to gain their voices by engaging in activism and by representing their activities of the past and present. I focus on the twenty year history of a Tokyo-based feminist group called <italic>Kodo-suru Onna-tachi no Kai</italic> (The Women's Action Group), whose dissolution I observed during my fieldwork. The media coverage of the dissolution as a symbol of declining feminism caused the members to rethink their activist past and present, and represent the history of the group and their involvement in it. By examining the history of <italic>Kodo-suru Kai</italic> and the reasons for its dissolution, I analyze how the group members constructed their own feminisms through their past and present interactions and conflicts among themselves, with other feminists, and with mainstream society. I show that the group's commitment to the issues of labor equality and sexism in the mass media are the major factors that established the group's identity. I argue that the group's actions related to the body, such as abortion rights and protests against beauty contests, worked as remarkable unifying forces for Japanese feminist activism, but its stances on labor, the mass media, the emperor system and academic feminism caused friction among themselves and Japanese feminists generally. <italic>Kodo-suru Kai</italic>'s history writing project, which was started after the group's dissolution, is a central element of my dissertation. I analyze how they interpret and reconstruct the history of Japanese feminism through the process of writing historical narratives and creating <italic>nenpyo</italic> (a chronological list of historical events). Based on my three-year participant observation and in-depth interviews with the <italic>Kodo-suru Kai</italic> members, I examine the activism of a historically significant Japanese feminist organization, the achievements of and problems facing late twentieth century Japanese feminism, and the politics of memory and history-writing in contemporary Japan.