Making Our Own Possibilities: The Japanese Feminist Movement and the Politics of Engagement

This dissertation investigates the Japanese feminist movements in the two policy areas of labor and education. Employing an ethnographic approach combined with analyses of media and government data, the study examines what contributed to the disparate outcomes of Japanese feminist mobilizations in labor and education. Despite commonality in the two movements' culture and level of resources, those mobilizing in the area of labor won legislative gains and political clout, while their counterparts in education initially brought success but later experienced a retrenchment when an anti-feminist backlash emerged. This dissertation argues that the interaction between the particular institutional environment of the given policy area and feminists' strategy resulted in such outcomes through what I term "visibility." The level of visibility of movement actors and their issues influenced the different levels of policy success and the movement's particular resilience to opposition. These findings contribute to our understanding of the contemporary feminist movement in Japan by applying an institutional approach to movement activities at the local and global levels in terms of gender equality. While examining grassroots identity, culture, and historical backgrounds of the two feminist mobilizations, the study shows that state-movement interaction is a dynamic process involving allies, opposition, and the public.