Since the 1980s, there has been no shortage of books on Japanese women. Many of these books, however, have treated all Japanese women as a single category. Other books have been about how women have been represented rather than about the actions and ideas of actual women. Much has been written about women as the objects of state policy. It is thus striking to have three books on Japan within a short interval (2016 to 2018) that have “feminism(s)” or “feminist” in the title. These titles give promise that the work of Japanese women to define themselves and to act on their own behalf will be taken seriously. Despite their common focus on Japanese feminism, however, the three books differ considerably. Reading them in relationship to each other, we see the many issues encompassed by the concept of feminism, the variety of ways that scholars study feminism, and the challenges of discovering and expressing the work of feminist activists.

The three books give voice to Japanese women in different ways. Japanese Feminisms, edited by Julia Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker and with articles by fifteen authors, provides insights into multiple expressions of feminism, for instance through organizing workers, writing fiction, and translating theories from other languages into Japanese. In her book Japanese Feminist Debates, Kano focuses on debates (ronsō), which she notes take place on the printed page, among academic, journalistic, and political voices. Needless to say, not all of these voices are female. In Our Unions, Our Selves, Anne Zacharias-Walsh offers us descriptions of the work of the activists who were part of her project and records their oral testimonies about their experiences. As books written in English about Japan, all three volumes reviewed here are implicitly transnational and all three explicitly address transnational or cross-border issues.

The approaches taken in the three books are so different that there is surprisingly little overlap in research topics or even in the scholarly literature cited. Virtually no historical figures or current activists appear in all three books and in only a few cases do the three volumes cite the same scholars—Mary Brinton, Andrew Gordon, Sally Hastings, Kanai Yoshiko, Vera Mackie, and Barbara Molony. Although these books differ in the literature they address, their methodologies, and how they present their findings, the three works are united in their acknowledgment of the difficulties that stand in the way of achieving feminist goals in Japan. It is ironic that one of the few individuals the three books have in common is Ishihara Shintarō (born 1932), former governor of Tokyo (1999–2012), who serves as a potent symbol of the conservative male politicians who maintain institutional sexism in Japan. In 2001, Ishihara said in an interview with a women's magazine, “Old women who live after they have lost their reproductive function are useless and are committing a sin.” Zacharias-Walsh uses these words as an epigraph at the beginning of her book, and Barbara Hartley invokes the same remark. Kano notes that Ishihara used political power and inflammatory rhetoric in his opposition to feminism, closing down publicly funded women's institutions that had promoted gender-free initiatives and replacing feminists who had served on advisory councils. Kathryn Hemmann reinforces the notion of conservative male politicians as the enemy of feminism when she cites former prime minister Mori Yoshirō’s statement, in a 2003 speech on Japan's low birthrate, that women who had never given birth were undeserving of public welfare benefits. Abe Shinzō, prime minister since 2012, is a politician of the same political party as Ishihara and Mori. His proposals for a Japan in which women will shine are treated in these books with much feminist skepticism.

Rethinking Japanese Feminisms developed out of a conference that drew together scholars from a number of disciplines. The editors divide the articles into four groups with titles that reflect issues often of concern to feminists—activism and activists, education and employment, literature and the arts, and boundaries. Despite the prominence of women writers in modernizing and contemporary Japan, this volume is the only one of the three reviewed here to devote attention to women in the arts.

The use of the plural in the title of the book serves to recognize that not all women who identify as feminists agree with each other. Hillary Maxson notes the contradictions between maternalism and “equal rights feminism” and settles on the term “matricentric feminism” to express how in the Mothers’ Congresses of the 1950s women transformed motherhood into a political force. Welker discusses the exclusion of lesbian women from the Women's Lib (Ūman ribu) movement of the 1970s. He also notes the tension within the lesbian community between those who grew up aware of their attraction to members of the same sex and those who identify as lesbian for ideological reasons. Setsu Shigematsu, aspiring to “Critical Transnational Feminism,” critiques several other forms of feminism. She distances herself from liberal feminism that prioritizes gender equality as well as from academic feminism and state feminism. She declares the Women's Lib movement of the 1970s to have been an example of “radical Japanese feminism.” She accepts the concept of “Japanese feminism,” but demands that it be examined in the light of the “racialized epistemologies” used to research and represent it. She describes transnational feminism as a critical response to Western cultural imperialism, a concept that builds on the work of women of color, Third World feminism, and postcolonial feminism. She asserts that Critical Transnational Feminism must recognize violence, power, aggression, and potential abuse among feminists and must consider how Japan's history as a non-Western imperial power has shaped Japanese feminism.

Several chapters in Rethinking Japanese Feminisms consider the ideals of feminism in the context of queer studies, thus transcending the simple binary of male and female. Sarah Frederick shows how Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980), through her translation of a work by Edward Carpenter (1844–1929), shed light on the complexity of gender categories. Welker traces the ways that the Women's Lib movement of the 1970s and 1980s, although not initially inclusive of lesbians, nevertheless contributed to the development of Japanese lesbian feminism and to the creation of the lesbian community that now exists in Japan. Keith Vincent highlights the work of the literature scholar Takemura Kazuko (1954–2011) in mediating the transfer of feminist and queer thought from the United States to Japan.

In the chapters of this book, we learn much about specific activists. There are two chapters devoted to the thought of the socialist Yamakawa Kikue. Maxson treats the organizers of the Mothers’ Congresses as feminist activists. Bullock's chapter on coeducation in prewar Japan is at the same time a study of the thoughts and activities of the educator Koizumi Ikuko (1892–1964). Akwi Seo recounts the history of women's activism among Korean women residing in Japan and shows how the issue of forced military prostitution created a new awareness of how patriarchy and nationality intersected in the oppression they experienced in Japan.

In other cases, scholars use a feminist perspective to analyze artistic works that are not usually characterized as feminist. For instance, Leslie Winston argues that the painter and magazine illustrator Takabatake Kashō (1888–1966), pivotal in the creation of “Taishō chic,” challenged traditional gender norms to such an extent that he should be considered feminist. His female subjects rebuffed the norms of feminine behavior and sometimes sported male qualities, while his male figures had characteristics normally considered feminine. Takabatake thus challenged the causal relationship between gender and body. Kirino Natsuo is not ordinarily described as a feminist writer, but Hemmann argues that by allowing her female characters to narrate their own lives, Kirino engages in feminine activism. Hartley analyzes two women writers, Ariyoshi Sawako (1931–84) and Sono Ayako (born 1931), who are rarely categorized as feminists, treating them as articulate witnesses to the ways in which patriarchal authority has subordinated women. Hartley's approach is unusual in the case of Sono, who has been prominent in the backlash against state feminism.

The chapters by Nancy Stalker and Chris McMorran defy the usual expectation that women's work is within the home. Stalker shows how, after 1945, women have been able to disrupt the patriarchy of the male-dominated hierarchy in the practice of ikebana, Japanese flower arranging. Some women were able to use their skills in this traditional art to earn a living. McMorran explores the ryokan, the traditional Japanese inn, as a place of women's liberation, arguing that it is a place where women can perform the care work generally associated with wives in a situation that provides them with housing and food, without the constraints of the Japanese family system. It is unlikely that either the practitioners of ikebana or the women working in Japanese inns would consider themselves feminist. In these two chapters, rethinking Japanese feminisms seems to mean approaching the lives of Japanese women in new ways.

Tomomi Yamaguchi investigates not feminist activists but rather their opponents, those creating a backlash against feminism. She discovers well-planned campaigns financed and organized by conservative religious groups opposed in one case to anything that undermines the traditional family system, in another instance to homosexuality. At the same time, Yamaguchi criticizes academic feminists for their ignorance of their opponents and is sympathetic to anti-feminist claims that the purpose of the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society (1999) is unclear. She suggests that the prominence given to elite women—for instance, feminist scholars who were invited to give lectures—stirred up resentment, as did the assumption that rural prefectures should follow the model of metropolitan areas such as Tokyo. Yamaguchi documents that a significant portion of the opposition to the Basic Law came from grassroots organizations.

In the conclusion, Kano reflects on the flexibility and the limits of Rethinking Japanese Feminisms. The editors were inclusive; the volume features male as well as female authors, queer as well as heteronormative perspectives, and information on the opponents of feminism as well as its proponents. Although Ueno Chizuko, one of the keynote speakers at the conference that inspired this volume, contended that Japanese feminism began in the 1970s, a number of the authors referred back to activists of earlier decades such as Kishida Toshiko (1861–1901), Fukuda Hideko (1865–1927), Yamakawa Kikue, and Hiratsuka Raichō (1886–1971). Kano ends her conclusion with a question about whether one should be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Japanese feminism. She notes that among the keynote speakers, the historians, who take a longer perspective, were more optimistic than the sociologist, who examines the present.

In her book Japanese Feminist Debates, Kano explores Japanese feminism in terms of the intellectual debates about questions of sexuality and gender in modern Japan, from the nineteenth century to the present. Driven by questions about women's happiness, Kano promises in her subtitle to analyze sex, love, and labor. She organizes her substantive chapters around three topics: sexuality (chastity, prostitution, and pornography), reproduction (abortion, birth control, and eugenics), and labor (motherhood protection, housewives, and employment). Kano admits that these groupings have the unusual effect of omitting both marriage and motherhood as discrete categories. She ends her study with a discussion of recent state feminism and the backlash against it.

In her chapter on sexuality, Kano reviews the debates of the 1910s about chastity and prostitution, the arguments for and against the abolition of licensed prostitution in 1956, and the discussions of the commodification of sex in the 1980s. Her chapter on reproduction focuses on abortion with respect to four major themes: economic distress, eugenics, nature, and the complexity of women's lives. The terms with which Kano analyzes sexuality and reproduction—discursive, commodified, controlled, and congruent—are distant from the vocabulary of everyday life. Although “love” appears in the subtitle of Kano's book, it appears only three times in the chapter on sexuality, once when Ueno Chizuko criticizes romantic love as deeply ideological. Yasuda Satsuki (1887–1933) and Hiratsuka Raichō are left as the only feminist voices explicitly asserting that sexuality should be linked to love.

Love plays a larger role in Kano's chapter on labor. Here, in a chapter focused mainly on the debates surrounding the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) of 1985, Kano articulates the long-standing, implicit assumption in Japanese policy-making that all women are potential mothers. She traces this theme from the motherhood protection debates of the early twentieth century, through contention over the role of the housewife in the 1950s, to more recent debates about equal employment. Although the 1947 Constitution guaranteed equal rights to women and the 1947 Labor Standards Law stipulated equal pay for equal work, postwar industrial and welfare policy were designed to support families with a male breadwinner and a full-time housewife. The EEOL was the product of both domestic and international pressure. Japan's ratification of the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women required modifications of laws in directions that made it possible for more Japanese women to pursue professional careers. The debate that surrounded the passage of the EEOL was between those who wanted to retain protections for women workers and those who argued for abolishing the protections in the interests of equality.

Although the EEOL removed some barriers to women's paid employment outside the home, it did not change societal expectations of mothers. Kano describes the labor-intensive expressions of love—labeling school equipment, preparing decorative lunch boxes, recording home activities for the records of childcare centers—that Japanese mothers are expected to do as they send their children out into society. She also notes how the expectations for mothers, for instance attending mid-day parents’ meetings, conflict with the expectations of full-time employment. Her chapter raises, then, important questions about women's roles as mothers and housewives, whether and how the state should support such roles, and how reproductive labor should be compensated.

Kano's last substantive chapter is on the passage of the 1999 Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society and the backlash against the law, which some saw as favoring strong women over weak men. “Gender free,” which was associated with the law, had a genealogy of its own from among feminist educators and activists. Conservatives bitterly resisted the term. Kano astutely observes that the introduction of the concept of “gender free” occurred at the same time that sexual minorities became more visible in Japan. She identifies potential in “gender free” to connect the various populations in Japan constrained by their society's rigid gender norms. She thus sees in the backlash against “gender free” a reassertion of heteronormativity.

Kano provides careful definitions and chronological, national, and international contexts for the concepts she analyzes. Thoroughly familiar with the scholarly literature in both English and Japanese, she contextualizes her work within the scholarship of others and thus contributes to our understanding of feminism as a global phenomenon. Her citations provide a roadmap for those with the language facility to read further on Japanese feminism. Perhaps most important, she treats the various forms of Japanese feminism as valid versions among many rather than as imperfect or incomplete Western feminisms. She concludes that Japanese women who conform to societal expectations are reasonably happy. But contradictions remain between motherhood and employment. A recent shift in scholarly attention from gender to class, she notes, highlights the plight of the weak male and obscures the existence of female poverty.

The words “feminist labor unions” in the subtitle of Our Unions, Our Selves by Zacharias-Walsh are slightly misleading. This book is a thorough and admirably self-critical account of an “international grassroots exchange project” (p. xiii) carried out from 2004 to 2006 with funding from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. Zacharias-Walsh and her associates worked closely with Women's Union Tokyo, a women-only union, one example of the community unions and individual-membership unions that began developing in Japan in the 1980s outside the traditional enterprise unions. The Women's Union Tokyo, like most Japanese women-only unions, was founded by feminists who sought to operate in accordance with feminist principles. Zacharias-Walsh, a self-described freelance labor activist, is interested in these unions, not for their feminism, but for their resistance to capitalism. Although she applauds the efforts of Japanese women to stand up and organize unions in the face of pervasive subjugation, she often deplores the ways that feminist principles interfere with what she assumes to be the most effective methods of labor organizing.

Zacharias-Walsh and her colleagues were aware that there has been a long-standing pattern of Westerners arriving in Japan to educate the putatively backward Japanese. They recognized that their lessons on how to organize a labor union might seem to replicate that colonial dynamic. Despite these articulations of the dangers of viewing Japan from a superior position, in writing this book, Zacharias-Walsh positions Japan as a backward country, “arguably the most gender recalcitrant society among industrialized nations” (p. 163). She seems oblivious to how her rhetoric about Japan's “anachronistic gender relations” (p. 2) posits a pattern of progress through time in which Japan has not kept pace. Her observation that the working conditions of Japanese women resemble those of her mother's or grandmother's time places Japan two generations behind. Needless to say, describing male comments in the workplace as astonishingly “Fred-Flintstone-like” extends Japanese backwardness by several millennia. Categorizing the activists of her acquaintance as “first-generation” (p. 155) denies Japanese labor activists their history; the resistance of women workers dates back to the Meiji era (1868–1912). Zacharias-Walsh demonstrates a sound grasp of the scholarly works she cites on Japan. It is unfortunate that she was not able to read more widely, for instance the works of Elyssa Faison, Glenda Roberts, and Patricia Tsurumi.

Of these three books, however, the one by Zacharias-Walsh is by far the best at providing us with knowledge of the workplace problems of ordinary women and of the everyday lives of feminist activists. In the pages of this book, we see feminist activists answering telephones, taking turns on the hotline, collecting legal documents, lobbying, and accompanying union members to negotiations with employers or to court. This information is all the more important when we note the short shrift given to labor in Rethinking Japanese Feminisms. As Kano notes in Japanese Feminist Debates, the reality for most Japanese women since the 1980s has been to shoulder two types of undervalued work, part-time employment and housework. It was to address the workplace problems of such women that the Women's Union Tokyo was founded.

The biographical sketches of the activist lives of the two paid employees of Women's Union Tokyo show that their grassroots labor-organizing efforts are rooted, as in the case of the Women's Lib movement, in the anti-government, anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the women was a college student when she opted to participate in a strike rather than fulfill a graduation requirement. The other woman was a factory worker whose labor union activity drew her into the struggle against the construction of Narita Airport. The two women met through the National Union of General Workers–Tokyo. Impatient with the indifference of traditional unions to women's issues and fed up with sexual harassment within leftist movements, the two participated in the establishment of the Women's Union Tokyo.

The fact that all three of these books were published by university presses attests to the fact that Japanese feminism is well established as a subject worthy of academic study. These sound scholarly works are important at a time when the Japanese popular press, with occasional leakage into the world press, blames sensational crimes, as Hemmann points out, on overly ambitious women or produces pseudo-scientific works on the negative effects on women of not bearing children. This scholarship also counters an older literature that blamed Japan's societal problems on bad mothers and more recent books that emphasize the loneliness of Japanese career women.

Given that the books are from university presses, it is not surprising that the scholarship presented is stronger on theory and thought than on organizations and actions. Kano is an expert on drama and literature, and the majority of the authors who contributed to Rethinking Japanese Feminisms are scholars of literature or history. If more political scientists and sociologists had been in the mix of works considered here, perhaps there would have been less emphasis on words and more attention to numbers. Numbers lurk in the shadows behind any book on Japanese feminisms, for there are international indices that measure the condition of Japanese women against the situation of women elsewhere. Both Kano and Zacharias-Walsh cite the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum. In 2014, Japan ranked low both for economic participation and opportunity and for political representation. Kano points out that we need to consider these numbers in the light of other indices, for instance the Human Development Index, on which Japan ranks high for longevity, health, education, and wealth. These characteristics of Japanese society, along with good childcare and public transportation, are surely of benefit to women as well as to men.

Given the agreement across all three volumes that the enemies of feminism are conservative men holding high elected office, such as Ishihara and Mori, it is striking that none of these books explore the possibility of ameliorating the situation of Japanese women by electing women to office. Kano acknowledges the importance of Ichikawa Fusae (1893–1981) and other Diet members in the formation of the International Women's Year Liaison Group in 1975. She also credits Diet members Doi Takako (1928–2014), Dōmoto Akiko (born 1932), and Inoguchi Kuniko (born 1952) and a number of women in the bureaucracy for the drafting of the Basic Law in 1999. Numerous other women who served in the Diet—Kamichika Ichiko (1888–1981), Kōra Tomi (1896–1993), Oku Mumeo (1895–1997), and Tanaka Sumiko (1909–95)—appear in passing as activists, thinkers, or authors, but their time in political office is not even mentioned. Dōmoto, the feminist governor of Chiba, has a place in Yamaguchi's narrative, not for her success but for her inability to win passage of the gender equality ordinance bill she submitted to the prefectural assembly.

From these three books, we see repeated contention among feminists over decades as to exactly how to improve the condition of women in Japan and throughout the world. The legal steps forward—constitutional guarantees in 1947, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in 1985, and the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society in 1999—required the cooperation, and sometimes even the leadership, of political parties, some of whose members have articulated outright misogyny. Imagining a better future, Kano calls for shorter and more flexible working hours, more and more flexible childcare facilities, and lower expectations of mothers. The realization of these goals and the ideals of equality, inclusion, and recognition of an imperial past that are expressed in these books will require changes in society and compromise within a political system still dominated by men. The election of more feminist women to high office can only help.