Women on the Right: Conservative Gender Movements in Japan

Right-wing social movements have been increasingly active in Japan since around 2000. Female members of right-wing political parties and other women activists on the right, including ＂＂internet right-wingers,＂＂ strongly criticize liberal statements by other women, slandering female victims of sexual violence and comfort women, and opposing gender equality initiatives. This work seeks to understand why this happens by comprehensively exploring the activities, mentalities and consciousness of women who participate in conservative activism, using discourse analysis, interviews and fieldwork observation. ＂＂I feel ’she’ is not that far. While struggling with her relationships with her husband and mother-in-law, she has taken on domestic care labor for many years in an environment where housework, childcare, and nursing care are the responsibility of the wife, and by doing so, she wants to take care of ＂＂her own family＂＂ that she has built. The experience of a movement where, despite being her own motivation, a homosocial space is instantly created when a few men get together to talk about sexual jokes, and she is excluded from it. Rather than recognizing her as a ＂＂cult＂＂, I hope this book will help readers to think about the ways that she has something similar to us.＂＂ (by the author)

Ayaka Suzuki, Associate Professor at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba. The original book in Japanese received the 20th Osaragi Jiro Prize in 2020, which honors outstanding research on Japanese politics, economics, society, culture, and international relations.