Equal but never free: Conservatives, ideology, and gender politics in contemporary Japan

Japan has seen the emergence of a political movement of conservatives against the sex-equality legal measures and more general move of the state toward the adoption of sex-egalitarian gender norms. Given the understanding that Japan is fundamentally a conservative country on the issue of gender, especially when compared with other similarly industrialized democracies, it seems to be a rather natural development. However, a closer look at the involvement of conservative forces in gender politics reveals an interesting complexity. In particular, conservative forces were not equally resistant to the legal measures to promote gender-equality that were discussed around the same time; nor were they necessarily against sex-equality while they had trouble with accepting the concept of gender. This dissertation seeks to explain the varied reactions of the conservatives in Japan by unpacking the 'gender conservativeness' of the Japanese conservative forces and through the analysis of the effects of the conservative ideology on their perceptions and actions in gender politics.;My in-depth analysis of the reactions and arguments of Japanese conservatives in relation to sex-equality legal measures and gender norms demonstrates that their main concern was the meaning of 'equality' of men and women that has been espoused in the official discourse of the state rather than the ideal of equality between sexes per se. The findings of my research remind us of a more complicated nature of the 'backlash' that goes beyond outright rejection of any sex-equality ideal. In addition, paying attention to the details of gender conservativeness or traditional gender norms in a given country also can call into question an implicit assumption held in many studies of gender and politics that the conflict between the advocates of the domestic traditional gender norms and those of the global sex-equality norms is outright clash between the two incompatible views. Noting such nuances of the contestation over gender norms can help us avoid drawing a misleading pictures of gender norms of a given country or actors using simplified labels such as 'being advanced' and 'being backward' in terms of the acceptance of sex-equality ideas.