Japan has undergone drastic demographic changes in the past few
decades. To cope with the needs of being an ageing society, the government
has enacted a Long-term Care Insurance Law for the elderly that
was implemented from 1 April 2000. The new legislation was conceived
as a political compromise to appease two strongly opposed forces:
reformists and the old guard. In the process of drafting reform, new political
players, including ordinary citizens and mayors of small-scale municipal
governments, have emerged. Two citizen action groups participated
in the reform process, and succeeded in reflecting their preferences in its
policymaking. The mayors who supported the new system started
reforming social welfare administration systems, challenging traditional
local politics. This article focuses on a few of these groups and how they
have changed the Japanese political scene. It concludes that their political
activities have contributed not only to promoting social policy reform,
but also to revitalising politics in this country.
This article discusses how women's movements in Japan function as political agents that change the political status quo. Japanese women's movements can be seen to comprise three groups: elite-initiated, feminist and non-feminist participatory. Despite differences in their outlook and attitudes, they share two common characteristics. First, their identities tend to be centred on motherhood. The language of motherhood has been a key idea behind Japanese women's mobilization. Second, their campaigns link women's demands with politics. Women's movements provide Japanese women, who are largely excluded from formal political processes, with an alternative channel for political participation. When they exercise practical influence on politics, they make effective use of channels both outside and inside formal political institutions, i.e. non-institutional and institutional channels. In the former case, the traditional style of Japan's policy-making makes political influence possible for the women. Use of institutional channels means electing female candidates to political office. Women's movement organizations provide those candidates with support for their election campaigns. It is clear that women's political involvement at the grassroots level has contributed not only to improving women's social conditions but also to developing a more democratic political system in Japan.
The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the socio-political significance of women's collective activities in Japan. I attempt to demonstrate that the Japanese women's movements act as a role of democratic agency through their commitment to social reform and to changes in the political status quo. In the first three sections, I give an overview of Japanese women's movements from the early post-war period to the present day, categorizing them into three types: the elite-initiated, second-wave feminist, and non-feminist participatory. Subsequently, I discuss the confrontation and reconciliation between feminists and non-feminists. In the final section, I examine what role the women's movements play in socio-political reforms in terms of civil society discourse, and I conclude that the diversity of Japanese women's movements has contributed to strengthening democracy at the grassroots.
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