Remembering Ourselves - A Discussion on Women in Japan
In the early 1900’s Mochizuki Yuriko (Japanese anarchist and feminist) asked what it meant to fully liberate women from family, economics, and political ostracism. Poetically she answered, \"We must put ourselves forward in the land of freedom.\" To do so meant that women would need the right to vote, have access to birth control, and better job opportunities, but most importantly, women would need the right to be political, to be able to change the course of history. Mochizuki-san dared to say this in the early 1900’s, and I imagine the climate for women in those days was extremely poor.
So, here we are in 2001. How much have we gained? Have we entered the political arena? Are our governments half female? I decided to ask some women during my one year stay in Japan about their thoughts on gender, as that remains to be one of my favorite forms of activism - the story of one’s life in this world. We all live within the realm of socialization and in my opinion patriarchy, so we all are an authority of sorts. The people I interviewed range from women’s rights activists to teachers who are trying to get the politics into the classroom. They are all women with a bias for freedom. I also interviewed two men, both who support women’s equality and believe that a male hegemony exists in Japan, like most other countries.
According to the UN (in a report issued June 22, 2001), of 70 countries, including non-industrialized nations, Japan ranks 40th out of 70 countries on a scale measuring the equality between men and women. Now that’s pretty bad. While a country advances, history has shown that women still lag behind. Maybe they are better off then they were in Mochizuki-san’s time, but the roles which women and men must play are still alive. The fear of violence when alone on a street, the silence of sexual abuse, low paying jobs, and the overall realization that this is a male world and women are second class, has NOT disappeared.
The women and men I talked with do not represent everyone in the countries (Japan, Canada, USA) they come from, but they do offer a definite strand of reality that often goes on unheard, silenced before the voices can make it to the mainstream media. Try to talk about being talked over, reprimanded, ignored, invalidated, de-valued, and objectified during your morning work meetings and I think you’ll get a good laugh or an uncomfortable one at that. The silence that is so much a part of a woman’s life has left her alone to feel that her desire to be free is a selfish and useless idea. These words are an attempt to show that one’s desire to be free is hardly selfish or useless; rather it is a liberation into the world of truly knowing yourself and others.
Sue, a first year English teacher from Canada, sits gangly on the tatami, relaxed but a little perturbed as, like most of us, she has few to talk to at work or at home about what really matters to her. I asked, \"Sue, what does it mean to be a woman here for you?\" \"At school it means I am ignored a lot. There are some people who are threatened by me as a woman. I think some of the male teachers don’t like me coming in and taking over their class.\" (Sue)
According to Nariko, a Japanese human rights and women’s activist, once you talk about women’s issues in today’s society the majority of people think that you are too selfish. \"In Japan we teach from China that women have three obediences. First is to obey your father when you are a child, second, husband when you are married, and third, your first son when you are married.\" (Nariko)
She also spoke of the imbedded imperial system within the Japanese family. \"So, when you are married, the husband becomes the new emperor to follow. The culture came from a long time ago. Now the situation has changed, but I think the society’s conscience has not changed\".
Saori, a French-Japanese grad student and volunteer for the feminist group IMADR, deals with the identity of being a foreigner within her own Japanese skin. She says, \"On a structural level, there are lots of girls who graduated from the same master’s program as me, brilliant, speaking several languages, and possessing a graduate diploma of one of the best schools in Japan who still end up with a rank and file job in the mainstream Japanese company.\" (Saori)
Because Saori refuses to pour drinks for the men in her department, she is called \"boyish\" by some of her colleagues. But, some of the worst discrimination she has experienced is from the women themselves who alienate those who do not follow the traditional role for women. \"They make me feel I am marginal, wrong, even ‘boyish’. How can I try to free up other women who do not realize they are imprisoned in a system of oppression that they themselves create and maintain?\"(Saori)
The reality in which one woman lives can be quite different from another woman as each woman must deal with oppression based on her race, sexuality, age, class, and disability. Saori realizes that though it is not easy for her in Japan, there is much worse. \"Even though I feel quite oppressed here, the kind of discrimination I face is nothing comparable to that of Korean, Buraku, or Okinawan women. I have interviewed ten minority women, mostly Korean and Buraku. And it seems like the oppression they suffer has no escape: facing the racism (even stronger than the sexism) from the Japanese society, they have no other choice than seeking refuge in their community. But Korean and Buraku communities are often times more patriarchal than the Japanese, so the more they emphasize their ethnicity and try to get pride in it, the more they have to endure the inherent and induced gender discrimination. One of the Buraku women told me that her father used to beat her mother, and that her boyfriend did the same to her, but the only conclusion she came up with was that this is what I have to endure from being born as a woman in this community. This is where it becomes unacceptable.\" (Saori)
In the past there seemed to be a sense of unity as women struggled for rights that all women did not have, but as some women gained access to power and other women did not, a huge divide appeared. \"There is a sense of superiority among some of the women who do work, so they do not work together to change the overall treatment of women in Japan.\" (Nariko) The higher some women go, the harder it is to accept feminism for all women as this may actually threaten their high ranking status.
Of the women I interviewed, all had negative emotions about being a woman in Japan except for one. Kahoko, a Japanese part-time college instructor, was able to find strength with the restrictions she faces. As a woman she is faced with many traditional barriers, \"but\", she says, \"I enjoy the challenge, believing a small step still means a lot to advance women’s cause.\" (Kahoko)
With a minimal attention to women’s issues in the mainstream media, I wondered if feminism still exists here or if it ever really had. Ruth, a 29 year old English teacher from the USA, said, \"There does not seem to be a women’s movement in my area. Women don’t seem to want to change their roles in society\". For Lei, a 25 year old Japanese Tengu foods employee, \"I think there are lots of active women who deal with different kinds of issues in Japan. I’m not aware of any active women’s movement right now, but I’m sure if I look for one, I can find one\". According to Kahoko, \"Yes, at least in some limited areas, for example, academic groups of feminism, consumer, environmental groups, and grass-roots political drives\".
Japan has had a definite history of women who fought back, starting with the influence of the British Bluestockings in the early part of the 1900’s. In Japan they were called Setosha - \"se\" for blue and \"to\" for footsteps. But it wasn’t until the 1970’s that women’s liberation and feminism started to deeply affect women. \"Movements spread all over (women’s liberation in the 1970’s) and in Japan as well. The energies spread all over. In Asian countries they were against militarization and for a democracy movement . . . after the UN’s Women Decade, feminism became more popular. So, many women networked in Asia. There were women’s groups in Japan before the 1960’s, but on a global level a network happened in the 1970’s. There was feminist consciousness in Japan.\" (Nariko)
So . . . what happened? Why does feminism seem to be a totally western concept if it indeed took seed in Japan? According to Nariko, \"The situation for Asian women is changing for Japan, Singapore, Korea, and Hong Kong. Those countries are more developed now and are economically stronger. So, the women’s sense is changing. Now women are more focused on getting careers and into their own life rather than in their community.\"
\"But\", she says, \"as a developed country, we exploit other women form Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, so we have to find a way to create solidarity with those women. We have the responsibility of changing our Japanese structure, because it does affect women in other Asian countries (through sweatshops, sex tourism).\" While Nariko is able to see the movement within Japan due to her activism, other Japanese and foreign women have a harder time seeing it or believing it. \"Here I feel if there is a movement, it is virtually invisible. How many women have you met that you can say defy even the smallest scale of tradition? I know one woman. Recently I talked to an Australian woman about a feminist bookstore that just closed down and I was really disappointed. A really great store, really grassroots and the owner, she had been through the women’s movement. So I was telling this story to the woman and she said something like, ‘Oh, but all the dirty work is done now, we just have to sit back and enjoy what these women did for us’. So, you think that’s it, that now we have the respect we deserve? How selfish to think that all the other women did that for us and now we can just sit back and reap the benefits of ‘equality’.\" (Sue)
I suppose one of the hardest realities for me personally to deal with in Japan was the onslaught of sexualized female consumer images and the openness of pornography. Whether reducing a 30 year old woman to a child of 10 in an ad for a toilet bowl cleaner or seeing a woman dressed in only an apron on a telephone booth for a hostess club ad, I thought to myself, is there not a place where I can get away from the sexual exploitation of women? I am not against sex, but I mean, come on . . . what do my third grade students think when they see so many naked hostess ads in a public phone booth? Would they think it is normal for a grown woman to pleasingly serve drinks with a smile wearing only an apron? I don’t think I am being culturally insensitive here when I say that these ads are offensive to women as well as to men’s intelligence.
So, if the media won’t depict a woman as strong or at least as semi grown-up, I decided to ask some of the women who or what a strong woman is. Nariko had never heard of such a thing until she attended the 1992 Asia-Pacific Women’s Assembly in Sri Lanka. There she came across the phrase \"strong woman\" many times. \"During the last seven years, I have tried to understand the meaning of ‘strong woman’, and I have been dreaming that one day, I would be that woman.\" When I read the report Nariko had written about her experiences in Sri Lanka, I realized that a lot of women, as well as men, do not have a community that supports them in defying oppressive cultural traditions. Few of us have a role model of what an open and supportive community might look like. After being away for only one year from my supportive friends, I realized how alone I could feel due to my ideas and beliefs about freedom. A community makes you feel like you aren’t the only one and that you are indeed not crazy. After Nariko’s long search, she found that a strong woman was one who turned her \"pain, sadness, and tears into the energy in their lives\". With the help of the women she met, she realized, \"this is the energy that they share with other people and use for social transformations. Their commitment and struggle made them strong\". (Nariko) The women in India, Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere are on the forefront of social change, because, in part, of their great and rich commitment to one another. Without which the birth of a new country will not arise.
With all that women have historically done to change the world, where does that leave men? According to Kei, a 27 year old Japanese restaurant worker and activist, \"The cultural norm of Japan has forced me to play the role of a Japanese man, taking care of the weak ones, including women. Do all the dirty work for them. And now being demanded to have a shiny car or two, more money in the bank account, and an adoring woman to feed. This seems very familiar in another culture. So, for the weak men or less skilled ones, you have already lost the game. But, by being a man in Japan, it gives you more opportunities in the working field, family, and in most social systems. It is easier to live. It is also easier for me to break that norm. The social pressure is less. My actions, whatever I do, are more tolerated. It’s rude to burp or fart or piss in public, but it is tolerated because I am a man. Having seen all these male-centered circumstances in every taste of the culture, I feel guilty of fully participating in this unfair game from the beginning. So, I do social monkey wrenching wherever I can, to create (or re-create) the reversed, female centered or earth-oriented atmosphere in the society.\" (Kei)
As it stands now, it is acceptable for women to play the male role, to an extent, but there is no way our countries will take on the role of peace and kindness, a general female stereotype, for there is no profit or power in such qualities. Susan Bordo, an American sociologist, describes the new male masculinity as \"penetrateable\". This is not in the patriarchal sense where women have been continually penetrated through sexual images exposed in the media, rather it is a willingness for men to allow others to see who he really is. In modern cultures he exists as the mysterious one, ever in control, when deep down he is juggling his emotions with his duties as a man. But, as Bordo says, \"femininity and masculinity are truly the mirror-image of each other, for while orthodox men’s desire may whither under too powerfully defining gaze, the feminine woman may require constant external definition (that she is attractive, desirable) from the gaze that (she believes) constitutes her\" (p. 297, Bordo, Reading the Male Body). \"The key,\" according to Bordo, \"is of real awareness and attentiveness to one another, both of which are almost non-existent in our ‘instrumentalist culture’\" (p. 301).
Benjie, a 29 year old English teacher from the USA, feels feminism can offer him an understanding for what the other half of the population is experiencing, his role in it, and how to subvert it. \"Of course, the results of this exploration are increased trust, an open exchange of ideas, and the identification of common goals. When we start to work together we can take on the other systems of oppression. The current way we keep people down is to divide them. So, doing away with a system that makes half of the people second-class citizens from the start is an important place to begin.\" (Benjie)
Like all forms of oppression, a single action or a single person will not alleviate the struggles. It takes a community, friendships, and a movement for real change to occur. How you choose to resist and create is your choice. Saori talks about one Korean woman she works with at IMADR who said, \"her way of transforming her negative identity to a positive one was to engage in activism and show that race, gender, or class are social constructs that are created by a majority that always need a minority to feel strong and united.\" As for Saori, she engages herself in a lifelong journey of understanding the complexities of sexism. \"Since any woman has a multiple identity (ethnic, sexual, physical, etc.), we have to tackle the problem from multiple points of view. Until the least favored minority group gets liberated, one cannot talk of real liberation.\" And it is through the women she works with that she regains her inspiration to struggle for a just world.
For Sue, her struggle is a daily one, where she must constantly maintain a smiley face, but then not let her male co-workers override her dignity. Recently she has started speaking up about sexism to her students. And her students had a lot to say. On one exam she made, she asked them to give an example of discrimination. Most of the answers reported some form of sexism. One girl wrote, \"Girls have to put on skirt . . . it is difficult for woman to get job . . . even new women don’t have the vote in cert(ain) country. I want to emancipate women from old restrictions.\"
Perhaps it is impossible for some of us to feel like we can fight back and create equity in our workplace or home. And when you do work 50+ hours a week and have a family, there is little time to change the social situations you are under. \"Sisterhood\" has been the backbone of my strength and validation in a world that denies women the right to such power. We have had to create it and support one another through our struggles no matter how ugly it may look. \"Whenever I feel weak or discouraged, I can see the women who are struggling in a harder situation and I am happy to have such sisters in my heart . . . it is like an emotional network we share\". (Nariko)
Through this \"emotional network\", I have seen women overcome childhood abuse, leave an abusive husband, find strength within themselves, educate themselves and ultimately find a way to deal with and change the oppression at hand. It doesn’t necessarily get better when you cross the seas to a new land; women are still struggling everywhere for their dignity or for simply a right to exist like the women in Afghanistan. But even in the most quiet of places and behind the masks we all wear, there are women and men who find the strength to defy the aspect of their culture that denies them their right to being a whole human being.
Sometimes I wonder if it is just me who believes all persons are capable of strength and dignity - that it’s just a preference. But then I hear the stories of these \"soft\" women and girls, damning those who refuse to acknowledge them. The stories of men who can never take off their masks and be penetrated. One calm and thoughtful woman told me one day that she often lies awake at night repeating the same question in head about her husband, \"Do I choose love or freedom?\" Why should this question even exist? As I tell her real love requires both freedom and commitment, I think to myself, this is not a mere preference, this is the natural state of humanity - to be free.
\"The secret of joy is resistance.\" - Alice Walker (from Possessing the Secret of Joy)
Jennifer Sauer Comments? Questions? Email me: kindlady76 (at) hotmail.com
|
