Strengthening Democracy at the Grassroots Level: Women and Local Politics. Mikiko Eto, Hosei University, Tokyo

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1 - 1 - Strengthening Democracy at the Grassroots Level: Women and Local Politics, Hosei University, Tokyo Introduction Is democracy in Japan functioning impartially? Democratic institutions of Japanese politics are formally established and they have penetrated Japanese society for six decades. In reality, however, political rights are not equally distributed between men and women. Although Japanese women were granted the right to vote in December 1945, they still endure second-class citizenship politically. The latest proportion of female Lower House members is 9.0 % (September 2005) and that of Upper House is 12.4 % (July 2004). Women s under-representation is not only in Japan but it has been a trend common to all countries historically. The general reason for this is that political institutions steeped in men s culture and customs impede women who are political latecomers from going into the political world. As Young points out, liberal democracy secures universal equality between men and women, but its universality means to be blind to individual and group differences (1990, p. 114). The standard of universality is formed by men s norms and culture, because it is men who have engaged in politics long before women were given their suffrage and who have founded the political institutions based on their own habits. Women as political latecomers are scarcely used to the male-defined conventions of political practices and the way of thinking behind them. It would take a long time for women to develop their political careers. Dahlerup and Freidenvall illustrate this by the Danish case where Danish women have a high level of representation in the parliament of 38 % at present but they note that this achievement took almost eighty years (2005, p. 28). The Japanese case seems to illustrate an incremental track (ibid.) as well, but its pace of increase is slow and the level remains low. In fact, Japanese women s representation lags far behind other nations, ranking as 105th among 187 nations

2 - 2 - (Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU) 1. Recently, many non-western countries attain encouraging outcomes of female representation (IPU, 2005). For example, Rwanda has the highest proportion of women national parliamentarians at 48.8% in2003, exceeding Sweden, and twenty countries in the upper ranks include seven from Africans and three from Latin America. The most successful Asian country is Afghanistan with 25.5% women in 2004, and South Korean, which had previously lagged behind Japan, jumped to 20.1% in Their remarkable performance has been brought about by their governments introduction of gender quotas for increasing women representatives. Their quotas, distinguished from the party-based voluntary system in Northwestern Europe, are a compulsory system prescribed by a constitutional amendment or electoral law 2. Although party-based gender quotas for election candidates, as Northwestern European countries verify, have a significant effect, the legal quotas system is more influential for a rapid increase in women representatives (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005, pp ). It is a failure in Japanese democracy that women s under-representation has been left as it is. Democratic politics is not the monopoly of the central government. Originally, it meant a measure of governance by laying heads together, in a common debate in which as many as possible are agreed in accepting (Mansbridge 1998, p. 144). Industrial capitalism and mass society changed it with a matter of voting (ibid.). Since our society is more complicated, we can no longer sustain the system of democracy, but mass democracy could be supplemented by a more participatory style of democracy. Democracy originated in small city states, like Athens, and it is therefore in small-scale regions that participatory democracy is realized. Local governments, specifically municipalities, where citizens can easily access the center of decision-making, are the basic institution for democratic politics. Nonetheless, local democracy had been marginalized in Japanese politics. In the late 1980s, reforms for decentralization were undertaken. Local governments have gradually enhanced their competence, yet the reforms are not enough for democratic local governance. 1 See its website, 2 While party-based gender quotas are prevalent among more than fifty countries, legal quotas are introduced by approximately forty countries (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005, p. 26).

3 - 3 - There is an activism of Japanese women to strengthen democracy at the grassroots level. These Japanese women not such a large number stand up to change political unfairness by their own power from below, without relying on state feminism of electoral quotas from above. Their activities are focused on local politics. They are confident that local politics is not only more important for their everyday lives than national politics but it is also essential for framing a more democratic regime. Their challenge presents a dynamic dimension of Japanese democracy. In this paper, shedding light on women s involvement in local assembly elections, I will examine women s own actions to increase women representatives in local politics. This paper comprises three sections. First of all, I will attempt to explain the reasons for Japanese women s under-representation through comparative perspectives, and second, I will show that a national project for improving women s under-representation or political party s women-friendly election policies are absent from the Japanese political scene, and I will demonstrate that this absence allows Japanese women to get involved in a local movement to improve their political status quo at the grassroots level. In the final section, I discuss the way in which the women have challenged male dominated local elections, taking into account the socio-political circumstances of local women. In doing so, I suggest that the women s active engagement in local politics promotes more democratic politics in Japan. Japanese Women and Representation The post-war electoral body in Japan comprises two chambers of the Diet, the Lower and the Upper Houses. In the Lower House election of April 1946, Japanese women first exercised their right to vote, and seventy-nine female candidates ran for election. Surprisingly, thirty-nine women out of seventy-nine were elected. Yet many of them disappeared as quickly as they appeared, and the number of elected women decreased to fifteen in the general election of April 1947(Takeyasu 1995, p. 198). Since then, the number of female parliamentarians has stagnated as shown in Figure 1 and 2.

4 - 4 - Figure 1. Changes of Female Proportion to the Lower House Members Percent Year Sources from Danjo Kyodo Sankaku Kyoku (the Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office), 2005 Figure 2. Changes of Female Proportion to the Upper House Members Percent Year Sources from Danjo Kyodo Sankaku Kyoku, 2005 Local assembly elections appear to be more severe for Japanese women than those at the national level. The local government system in Japan comprises a two-tiered structure, with forty-seven prefectures and 1,821 municipalities. The municipalities, regarded as the basic governmental entities, are divided into three types, namely, city, town and village, which number 777, 846 and 198 respectively, as of March A

5 - 5 - municipality must have a population of more than 50,000 to be called a city, while a town must have more urban characteristics than a village. There is, however, no major difference between the three as to the operation and function in their competence. Some cities whose population exceeds 500, 000 and which possess higher levels of administrative competence are called cities designated by ordinance (Designated Cities), and as of March 2006, fourteen cities are designated. Moreover, the twenty-three wards in Tokyo, called the Special Wards (tokubetsuku), are classified as self-governing administrative bodies and authorized to exercise almost the same administrative competence as general municipalities. Based on such a categorization, Figure 3 presents six kinds of trends of the women s proportion among members of local assemblies. When we look at the latest data as of 2003, although the average of all local assemblies is 7.9 %, each proportion is diverse according to the type of local entities: the highest level of women s representation is Tokyo s twenty-three Special Wards at 21.5%, the second place is the Designated City at 16%, the third is general cities at 11.9%, and the lowest is towns and villages at 5.6%. The prefectural proportion, 6.9%, is a little higher than the level of town and villages but is lower than the average. Figure 3. Changes of Female Proportion to Local Assembly Members Percent Year Prefectures Cities Designated Cities Towns and Villages Special Wards in Tokyo Total Sources from Danjo Kyodo Sankaku Kyoku, 2005 The European Parliament s survey shows the proportion of female local

6 - 6 - assembly members in fifteen EU countries (European Parliament 1997, pp ). The average female proportion in local assemblies of fourteen countries except Austria is 20%; among them, the highest is Sweden at 41.3% (as of 1994) and the lowest is Greece at 3.3% (1994). In contrast, the average of all Japanese local assemblies in 1994 is 4%, which is only a fifth of the EU average. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) presents thirteen countries statistics on the proportion of female members in their local assemblies: 33.3% in India, 33.3% in Bangladesh,33% in Pakistan with, 31.5% in New Zealand, 24.1% in Nepal, 26.3% in Australia, 22.1% in China, 19.8% in Vietnam, 16.5% in Philippines, 9.8% in Malaysia, 6.7 % in Thailand, 6.2% in Japan and 2% in Sri Lank (as of 2000) 3. Japan has the second lowest women s local representation, only above Sri Lanka. What is the cause of such a difference in women s political attainment among countries? Previous studies suggest four factors that affect women s representation, namely, electoral system, party attitudes, political culture and welfare states (e.g. Norris 1993; Iwanaga 1998; Park 1999; Siim 2000; Caul 2001; Opello 2004). Indeed, empirically comparative researches clarify a strong correlation between the level of women s representation and the type of electoral system. A worldwide comparison of 162 countries indicates that countries where levels of female parliamentarians in the lower or single house have achieved 25% or more have a proportional or mixed electoral system and that those with female parliamentarians proportion of 10% or less have mostly a majoritarian system (European Parliament 1997, p. 5). Political parties attitudes to women have a significant impact on women representation. For example, a party s gender quotas for parliamentary candidates spur an increase in women parliamentarians. Caul demonstrates that shortly after parties have adopted quotas, the number of their women parliamentarians jumped far above that of the parties without quotas (2001, p. 1222). However, even though women-friendly electoral systems and party platforms encourage women to be lawmakers, women may still hesitate to go into politics unless they can cope with both their gender role and political activities (Park 1999, p. 442). The Scandinavian case shows that 3 The source comes from UNESCAP,

7 - 7 - women-friendly social services as well as egalitarian social values mitigated the role conflicts the women faced (Siim 2000). Iwanaga investigates factors constraining progress in Japanese women s representation in comparison with Scandinavia, concluding that Japanese women lack political and socio-cultural facilitators that Scandinavian women enjoy (1998). The political and socio-cultural facilitators that he employs are almost the same as the four factors shown above. The male-dominated culture is still prevalent in Japanese society, as is demonstrated in its low rank of the Gender Empowerment Measures (GEM) 4. Japanese social policy is still indifferent to women (Osawa 2002). In particular, Japan s electoral system, which has been characterized by majoritarianism despite the changes in the size of constituency and the number of seats, is an immediate factor that impedes an increase in the number of women s representation. When thirty-nine women were elected in the general election of 1946, the Lower House election was conducted by a large-size and multi-seats constituency system with plural ballot. In 1947, however, it changed to a medium-size and multiple-seats constituency system with single ballot. In 1994, it was further changed to a new dual system in which a small-size and single-seat constituency is combined with proportional representation of parties (PR). Party-authorized candidates who run for the single-seat constituency can be nominated as those of proportional representation by their party. These dual-nominated candidates, even if they were defeated in their single-seat constituencies, have an opportunity to be elected in the PR system based on the size of the votes that they and their party obtained. Under the single-seat constituency system, the competition between candidates is so severe that parties choose candidates who have a fair chance of winning, such as incumbents or their successors. Thus the single seat constituency, compared to other electoral systems, is less advantageous to women who scarcely enjoy such privileged positions. Out of the 480 Lower House s seats, however, 180 seats are elected by the PR system where the nation is divided into eleven broad regions and each voter casts his/her ballot for a party. The PR system seems to slightly remedy the negative effect of 4 The GEM accesses the extent to which women share managerial jobs, professionals and policy-making. The more patriarchal culture is influential in society, the lower the GEM ranking is. Japan ranks as thirty-eight of 173 countries (Human Development Report Office 2004).

8 - 8 - the single-seat constituency on women s representation. In the general election of September 2005, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) endorsed twenty-six women candidates: among them, four ran only for PR, and the rest were dual-nominated candidacies. Due to the large number of votes the LDP polled, the women s nominations high on the PR list led to the election not only of the PR candidates but also the defeated single-seat constituency candidates. All twenty-six women were successfully elected as a result. The Upper House electoral system is composed of both constituency and the PR. While 146 seats are elected by prefectural-based constituencies 5, 96 are by the PR system with a nationwide single district. In 2000, the nomination method of PR candidates changed from a binding register of names to a non-binding register of names. Iwamoto argues that the binding register method was more advantageous to female candidates than the non-binding method. She explains that whereas the previous method involved some flexibility in which party leaders decided to register women candidates higher up on the list, nomination ranking of the new method is decided by competition among candidates, making it more difficult for women candidates who often lack electoral resources to be placed in higher ranks (2004). The success of the twenty-six LDP s women in the September 2005 election was a reflection of the binding register method adopted by the Lower House PR system. In this election, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi decisively placed them on higher ranks on the PR list because he identified them as the flag-ship of his reformist strategy 6. At the local level, both the size of constituency and the number of seats vary according to the type of local government. In the case of general cities, twenty-three Special Wards, towns and villages, the area governed by each municipality constitutes a single constituency; i.e., one constituency consists of one municipality. The constituencies of prefectures and Designated Cities are divided into several districts 5 The number of fixed seats in each prefectural constituency ranges from one to four depending on its population size. 6 In the general election of September 2005, the main issue was postal service privatization of which the Prime Minister took the initiative. Mr. Koizumi refused to endorse LDP s incumbents who opposed his privatization policy as the party s candidates, and instead, he recruited and pitched the new candidates, including the twenty-six women, against the anti-privatization incumbents.

9 - 9 - according to their administrative demarcation. The fixed number of local assembly members is also different in each local government according to its population size. The number of seats allocated to each constituency in prefectural assembly elections is limited to one to three, with some exceptions, and that of Designated Cities is around ten on the average. General municipalities secure a large number of assembly seats, ranging from twenty to fifty. These differences in the number of seats could lead to different outcomes of women s representation among the six types of local government: the larger number of seats the local assembly s constituency secures, the more chances women candidates have to be elected. It is easier for women to be elected in local assembly elections than national elections. Figure 4 shows the probabilities that female candidates could be elected in the latest elections at national and local levels. It can be seen that the probabilities of women s success in local elections are much higher than those in national elections. Figure 4. Probabilities that Female Candidates Can Be Elected Town and Village Assembly Election (2003) City Assembly Elecion (2003) Prefectural Assembly Election (2003) Lower House Election (2005) Upper House Election (2004) Percent Sources mainly from Ichikawa Fusae Kinenkai, 2003, pp These statistics imply that the more women run, the more female local politicians there will be. Based on this implication, Takeyasu identifies the small number of female candidates as a main cause for Japanese women s under-representation in local assemblies, and she examines what hinders women from running for local assembly elections. She points out three obstacles to low levels of local women s candidacy, namely, women s own consciousness internalizing the notion of gender division of

10 labor, their family s/relatives disagreement with their candidacy and the bias of members of their community against female political engagement (2002). These obstacles are more serious in depopulated areas than in urbanized areas. In depopulated regions, traditional values and conservative thinking remain and put a brake on women s motivation. In urbanized regions, by contrast, a liberal climate derived from social openness and flexibility allows women to be involved in politics more freely. The twenty-three Special Wards located in central Tokyo are the most urbanized areas with higher population densities that can command a larger number of fixed seats. That is why the Special Wards assembly group presents the highest proportion of women representatives. In municipalities suffering from depopulation, not only their conservative culture restrains women s political activities, but their political custom also excludes women from local politics. Most municipal governments have for a long time been financially dependent on the central government. In particular, depopulated towns and villages with aging population cannot sustain their administrative budget without central government subsidies. For this reason, it is important for politicians in these regions to build a cordial relationship with the central political elite in the ruling party, which has been mostly monopolized by the LDP 7. Many local politicians support the ruling party s candidates of general elections in their campaigns to be elected by local constituencies, and in response to their support, the ruling party rewards the local politicians by allotting generous subsidies for the municipal budget. The local politicians connected with the ruling party, more importantly, are secured in being re-elected so that they often serve as local assembly members for a long time, and their seats are passed to their successors after they retire. Such rigidity of local elections is hardly compatible with bringing in new candidates outside the conventional political circle. Like depopulated municipalities, provincial prefectures suffer from financial shortage, and thus it is necessary to maintain an interdependent relationship between the assembly politicians and the central government. Besides, serving as prefectural assembly politicians is a career enhancement or a stepping stone national election 7 Since 1955, the LDP has stayed in office except three years from 1993.

11 candidacy, which is managed exclusively by the so-called old boys network. Prefectural assembly elections are more competitive than any other local assembly elections because of the fewer numbers of seats allocated to each constituency. It makes it difficult for women candidates to be elected. These factors discourage women from getting into prefectural politics. However, the proportion of female representation across prefectural assemblies varies slightly by the degree of urbanization as well as population size. The highest proportion is Tokyo Metropolitan assembly: there are 19 women out of 127members, or 15 %. The group which has no or few women representatives is concentrates in depopulated provinces with conservative culture 8 (Ichikawa Fusae Kinenkai 2003, p. 10). Party s attitudes toward women candidates have an impact on women s representation in local politics. Table 4 shows the proportion of elected female local assembly members to each political party as of The Japan Communist Party (JCP) and the Clean Government Party (Komeito) nominate more women candidates for local assembly elections than any other party. Although the proportion of independent women is the highest with 43.2 %, that of the JCP and the Komeito attains prominent levels as it presents 28.0% and 18.9 %, respectively. Both parties contribute to an increase in women s municipal assembly members. However, their supporters not only constitute a relative minority but are also concentrated in urban regions. Thus their women-friendly election policy is more effective in urban municipalities than in depopulated ones. In the following section, I will further discuss party attitudes toward women candidacy. Reforms from Above, or Changes from Below? There are four reasons why Northwestern European parties adopted electoral gender quotas. First, women s mass movements placed pressure on political parties to actively increase women candidates. Lovenduski notes that there is no party in which efforts to nominate more women have occurred without an intervention by women making 8 Fukui and Shimane Prefectures have no female representatives and Aomori, Yamagata, Gunma, Wakayama, Kochi, Saga, Nagasaki Kumamoto and Miyazaki Prefectures have only one.

12 claims (1993, p. 14). When Scandinavian political parties introduced gender quotas, the women had already occupied 20-30% of the seats in their parliament (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005, p. 27). The proportion of 20-30% constitutes a critical mass or a sizable number from a minority group, and enabled women politicians to institutionalize themselves into their party and to gain access to the party s decision-making body (Caul 2001, pp ). Second, most Northwestern European parties have adopted the party-list PR system, which is the most suited to gender quotas for electoral candidates among various electoral systems (ibid. p. 1216). Third, competition between parties helped diffuses this policy. For example, a new party, such as Greens, adopted quotas and then succeeded in collecting female supporters. Immediately afterwards, other parties followed suit because they were afraid to lose women supporters (ibid.). The final factor is party characteristics, such as ideology and years of the establishment. Left-wing parties or new parties are more likely to adopt such a radical measure than right-wing/conservative parties or established parties (ibid. pp ). Non-Western countries enactment of gender quota laws should be however considered in a different context from Northwestern European case. Many of them had suffered from wars or serious political struggles, after which they engaged in nation-building and established democratic political institutions. Their new election system prescribed gender quotas for candidates/parliament seats 9, together with party-list PR: For example, Argentina enacted quota law in 1991, which provides that party lists must include a minimum of 30 per cent female candidates in all electoral districts for Chamber of Deputies after the military regime had fallen (Gray 2003, p. 60); other examples are Bosnia and Herzegovina which established a legal requirement of 33% quota required in 2001, Macedonia with 30% in 2002, Serbia and Montenegro with 30% in 2002, Afghanistan with 25% in 2004 and Rwanda with 24 reserved seats by Constitution in 2002 (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005, p. 33). It would be important 9 Rwanda and Pakistan introduce a reserved seat method which allocates women to some numbers of parliament seats.

13 for post-conflict counties to demonstrate their efforts for promoting women s rights to international community because they had severely oppressed women. United Nations constituted another source of pressure on non-western governments to be implemented in women-friendly policies. The Women s Conferences in Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995) had required member nations to intensify efforts to ensure women s equal participation in all legislative bodies, aiming to increase women in positions at decision-making positions to at least 30%. The UN active efforts moved non-western governments whose proportion of female politicians had been extremely low, toward establishing quota laws. Competition between neighboring countries fostered the establishment of similar legislation from one country to others. International pressures have influenced Japan in a similar way as other non-western countries. As Gelb argues, international pressure (gaiatsu) is an important factor in the Japanese government s establishment of international standards of gender equality (2003). The Basic Law for Gender Equality in Society (BLGES) in 1999 and the Protection against Domestic Violence Law in 2001 were enacted under the pressure of UN as well as that of Japanese women s groups, which pushed the government to implement the Beijing Platform (ibid.). The BLGES aims to realize a society of gender equality. Article Five prescribes that the formation of a gender-equal society shall be promoted based on securing opportunities for women and men to participate jointly as equal partners in the society in planning and deciding policies of the State or local government, or policies of private bodies, and the law provides that the national and local governments should make up a basic plan and local plans respectively to implement policies to form a gender equal society 10. The Basic Plan for Gender Equality in Society, however, merely stipulates an outline that women s participation in policy-making process should be enhanced. On the other hand, the Headquarters for Promoting Gender Equality, a women s policy machinery, formulates an action program that the government aims to increase the proportion of women members in national advisory councils to 30% by earlier than March According to the White 10 This clause is cited from the gender information site,

14 Paper, the number of female advisory council members has been steadily increasing, reaching 28.2% in September 2004 (Danjo Kyodo Sankaku Kyoku, 2005). Japan s response to the UN requirements targets exclusively at advisory councils and never refers to legislative bodies. The advisory council is an influential body in Japanese policy-making. It deliberates the draft of a bill to balance the differing objectives of the diverse interest groups as well as to endorse the bureaucratically-initiated draft, and as a result, the draft is often revised and reflected the outcomes of compromises among opposing interests. The council members can exert some influence on policy-making, and increasing women council members should be meaningful in the Japanese political context. However, the council members have neither legal legitimacy nor real power in politics. Gender equality in politics can be only achieved by increasing women legislators. Mariko Mitsui, who had served as a Tokyo Metropolitan assembly member from 1987 to 1993, was the first feminist who introduced the idea of Norwegian party-based gender quotas to Japan 11. In the early 1990s, she was involved in two feminist action groups. One was called the Alliance of Feminist Representatives (AFER, zenkoku feminisuto giin renmei), which was organized in 1992 for the purpose of increasing the number of female politicians nationwide (AFER 2002).The other was a group called the Women s Association for Action (WAA, kodosuru onnatati no kai), founded in 1975, which played an especially important role in developing the campaign styles of second-wave feminist movement (Eto 2005, 319). Although the WAA was dissolved in 1996 because of financial difficulty, its ideas and activities were kept alive by a group named the Women s Solidarity Foundation (WSF, josei rentai kikin) set up in Through utilizing these groups, Mitsui undertook actions to spread the idea of gender quotas in the society. The AFER concentrated its campaigns on urging the Japanese government and political parties to introduce gender quotas. The WSF focused on encouraging women to get involved in policymaking. The WSF collaborated with the Women Environment Development Organizations in the United Nations on an 11 Personal interview with Mariko Mitsui on June 28, 2005.

15 international campaign of Fifty-Fifty whose aim was to increase women s political representation to 50% by The group advocated realizing gender quotas. Mitsui, furthermore, energetically published books and articles to assert the effectiveness of gender quotas to improve women s representation. Their efforts notwithstanding, due to the limited influence of the movement, the idea of gender quotas neither attracted the attention of the wider society nor inspired political parties. The AFER and the WSF were both small-scale organizations with members each, and many overlapping members. There was no member who was in the office of party executives 13. Their connection with parties was so thin that they could not exert direct influence on the parties decision-making. Japanese left-wing parties, unlike their European counterparts, were indifferent to gender quotas for election candidates. In the late 1980s, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), the largest opposition party at that time, became interested in female candidacy as an electoral strategy. The JSP elected Takako Doi as its first chairperson, immediately after the party had severely lost the seats both of the Upper and Lower Houses in the same day election of Doi s power base within the party was weak, but she was very popular among the general public (Shinkawa 2000, 164). The JSP had been regarded as a union-centered party and had been unpopular among women. By contrast, Doi, a prominent woman with an academic career, appeared to be a new type of Socialist leader. At the same time, a new trend that voters preferred unconventional fresh politicians to the established ones was becoming prevalent in Japan, especially in the urban regions. In the late 1980s, a women s group involved in a consumer movement, called the Life Club Cooperative Society (hereafter, Life Club), whose detailed activities will be discussed in the following section, significantly increased the number of their local representatives in Tokyo and Kanagawa. The alternative political style that they themselves called amateurism attracted many urban voters who were disappointed by traditional interest-oriented politics. Soon before the Upper House election of 1989 was announced, the LDP was 12 Sources from the WFS s website, 13 Personal interview with Satomi Nakajima, former core member of the WAA and vice-chairperson of the WSF, on July 1, 2004.

16 confronted with two disadvantageous conditions for the election campaigns, which caused women s hostility toward the party: first, the consumption tax enacted the previous year just took effect; and the second was a sexual scandal of Prime Minister Sosuke Uno. Female candidates became certainly more attractive to voters. Doi s weak power base, where she was free from rigid party hierarchy, enabled her to recruit fresh female candidates outside of conventional party networks. In the Upper House election of July 1989, surprisingly, the JSP with forty-six seats defeated the LDP with thirty-six seats 14. The forty-six elected seats included twenty-two taken by newly elected female candidates. These women contributed not only to their party s victory but also to a rise in the number of female Diet members. The Japanese mass media called this rapid increase in female parliamentarians Madonna Boom. In the following Upper House election of 1992, however, the JSP/SDPJ 15 was defeated by the LDP, and their elected seats dropped to twenty-two: only four women were reelected. Since then, the JSP/SDPJ has declined as it lost their raison d être (Shinkawa 2000, pp ). The party had never attempted to adopt gender quotas. The Japan New Party (JNP), established by Morihiro Hosokawa, the former governor of Kumamoto Prefecture, in May 1992, was the only Japanese party that adopted the idea of gender quota. But this was not the party s response to the feminists requirement. Rather, Hosokawa and his colleagues were concerned that old fashioned political styles of Japanese established parties could not cope with the new international waves in the trend of globalization, and they had realized the necessity of a new party totally different from any established Japanese parties in ideology, organization and public participation. Therefore, the JNP sought to adopt unique courses to manage the party (Nakai 1997, 35-37). Its freshest measures that no other party had previously adopted were gender quota policy and public requirement of candidates. Gender quota was applied not to electoral candidates but only to the machinery of the party: the platform stipulated that more than 20% of the members of party executive positions and committees should be occupied by women and that this proportion would be raised to 14 The contested seats in this election were 126, and the LDP had still secured 109 seats. Thus the LDP stayed as the largest party (Shinkawa 2000, p.164). 15 The JSP changed the name the Social Democrat Party of Japan in 1990.

17 % by 2000 (Nakai 1997, p. 59). The Upper House election of 1992 was the first election that the JNP took part in, and the four candidates won the seats. In the Lower House election of 1993, thirty-six of its candidates were elected. Among these successful candidates were one woman in the Upper House and two in the Lower House. Despite the party s women-friendly course, only a woman was appointed as a member of the executive committee. It was a reflection of women s political powerlessness caused by their limited political experience relative to that of men. As part of the efforts to support women s political empowerment, the party held a school to teach women political affairs (ibid.). However, the JNP dissolved in December , and its new idea of gender quotas in party machinery did not inspire other parties. The AFER still continues to assert the effectiveness of gender quotas for a rapid increase in female representatives. Additionally, a new advocate group for gender quotas emerged in The Association for Realizing Gender Quotas (ARGQ) was set up by a woman in Hiroshima Prefecture, Reiko Kaminaga, who was inspired by Mitsui s books, with 100 supporters 17. The group aims to improve imbalances between both sexes in policy-making process through establishing gender quotas. The cause of gender quotas, however, hardly expanded many more feminists outside of their circle. In liberal democracies, gender quotas invite much controversy. Even feminists are polarized on this issue. Squires defines quotas as a notion of group representation that marginalized groups should be given a certain number of seats in legislative bodies to represent their different culture and identity from the mainstream groups. She criticizes the notion for three reasons. First, it is likely to lead to factionalism; second, the assumed sameness and cohesion within the groups merely replicates the assumption of sameness within society that group representation advocates want to criticise ; finally, mechanisms of accountability are hard to realise when one s constitutes are self-defined identity groups with no formal membership mechanisms (1996, pp ). Liberal feminists are concerned that elected female candidates who were recruited by quotas would be 16 The immediate reason for the dissolution was that Hosokawa was suspected of involvement in injustice concerning his political funds (see Nakai 1997, 45-49). 17 Sources from personal interview with Kaminaga on January, as well as the group s leaflet.

18 stigmatized and that their acceptance of differentiated treatment means admitting essentialism (Squires 1996, p. 85; Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005, p. 31). Unconcluded feminist debates might have discouraged Japanese women from demanding quotas. Rather than demanding quotas, more importantly, Japanese women became interested in sending more women representatives to local assemblies by themselves. Women s Involvement in Local Politics Japanese women s activism to increase women representatives can be found at the national level. A nation-wide group, called Women in New World, International Network (WINWIN, uinuin), was founded by six leading women, who were inspired by EMILY S LIST 18 in Washington, D.C., in WINWIN supports first-time female candidates who advocate women s rights and position regardless of their political persuasions in standing for Diet and gubernatorial elections. In these election campaigns, the larger amount of money the candidates have the more effective campaign they can carry out, and it is also necessary to have support groups and powerful allies. Women can rarely raise enough money to run successful election campaigns. To overcome this obstacle, WINWIN concentrates on providing part of the campaign funds for female candidates (Eto 2005, p. 326). At the local level, actually, women s activities of this kind started earlier and are more vibrant than those at the national level, where WINWIN is the only active group. Local women s engagement in politics presents a diverse spectrum of female empowerment. Based on their gender consciousness, their collective activities can be categorized into two groups, i.e. non-feminist and feminist 19. The former is represented by a consumer movement group called the Life Club that I mentioned in the previous section. Activists of this group do not see themselves as feminists, and they have even been sometimes guided by male leadership. Their motive for collective activities is neither to challenge male domination nor to enhance women s rights. The majority of 18 EMILY S LIST, whose name originates from Early Money Is like Yeast, provides election campaign money for female Democrat candidates. 19 I define female activists as feminists so long as they see that women deserve equality to men and struggle to improve women s socio-economic and political status, even if they do not attempt any radical change of the male-dominated society.

19 these women are non-employed married women, the so-called housewives. Therefore, Gelb calls them housewife activists (2003, pp ) and LeBlanc characterizes their collective activities as housewifely movements (1999). Their non-feminist style notwithstanding, the Life Club was the first non-partisan female group to challenge the conventional style of local elections. Their success in urban local elections promoted feminists to start a movement to send more women to local assemblies. Local politics is not only more accessible for women but it is also more crucial to realize their everyday demands than national politics. Since the 1990s, local feminists groups which support female candidates or women who want to stand for local elections have been set up in many regions. These groups are often called back-up schools. They believe that women's demands and expectation would not be reflected in local politics unless the number of women representatives increases. 1. The Life Club Women in Local Politics The Life Club is a prefecture-based networking group. Its organizations are already established in fifteen prefectures, numbering approximately 250,000 members in total. Each Life Club organization acts independently, yet they share the same ambitions and often discuss matters together. Initially, they were engaged exclusively in the cooperative purchasing enterprise. However, after the purchasing activities had got well under way, their interests in social problems developed. They then began to campaigns for a variety of causes, such as protecting rivers against pollution by foul water, reducing rubbish by recycling and caring for the disabled elderly. Finally, nine Life Club organizations sent their own representatives to local assemblies. Their local representatives now number more than one hundred (Eto 2005, pp. 316). In 1968, a mothers group at Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, set up the first organization with the support of some male activists, who had been in the vanguard of the left-wing social movements of the mid-1950s. In the 1960s when Japan enjoyed high economic growth and people attended less to big political issues, the more ideologically-based social movements had lost their impetus. At the same time, the negative effects of high economic growth began to emerge. In the mid-1960s, food containing artificial additives

20 was beginning to be the norm. The mothers in Setagaya were so anxious about food containing chemicals that they started figuring a way to purchase safe food daily. The left-wing activists who were seeking a new field of activity came into contact with the mothers group. The male activists were skilled and created the idea of cooperative purchasing enterprise that could solve the mothers concern, and then they helped to found the first cooperative society in Tokyo, i.e. the Tokyo Life Club (Ito 1995, pp ). They aimed at purchasing food with low levels of additives at reasonable prices in cooperation with neighbors. The Tokyo Life Club introduced an original purchasing system that allows consumers to trade directly with the producers of processed foods with low levels of chemicals. The mothers in Kanagawa Prefecture, neighboring Tokyo, soon followed Tokyo s example, and in 1971, the Kanagawa Club was set up also with the assistance of male left-wing activists. This kind of organization spread further to other regions. Although it was the women who sustained the movement by their voluntary activities without any compensation, the real power over the organizations fell into the hands of the male activists (Sato 1995, pp. 166). These women lacked the necessary experience of organizing, and had no way of maintaining a cooperative without relying on the expertise of male activists. For years, the Life Club movement was effectively run by a handful of male activists. However, the women gradually became more experienced, and began to acquire a higher level of expertise about how to run the projects and to organize campaigns. Additionally, the women s commitment to local politics encouraged them toward their independence. Nearly two decades after the movement started, the women came to take responsibility for all the activities of their organizations (Ito 1995, pp ). What first spurred the Life Club to fight a local election campaign was a proposition that the first chairman of the Tokyo Life Club, Kunio Iwane, a male activist, put forward in the March 1977 issue of the Club s newsletter. At that time, ten Diet members, who were discontented with the domination of Japanese politics by a small number of professional politicians who ignored the demands of the public, founded two new parties under the slogan of taking politics back to the people from the professional

21 politicians. Iwane was sympathetic with the new parties manifestos. Being inspired by them, he proposed that the Life Club should send its own representatives to local assemblies. He saw this as a way of strengthening the foundations of democratic politics which he believed was not solely the task of the established political elite but in which ordinary citizens should take an active part (Eto 2005, p. 324). Local politics had been subject to the national political order that the LDP dominated the majority seats of Diet and that JSP maintained only half of LDP s seats since The Japanese local political scene until the 1970s was generally defined by conservative politicians who had strong ties with the ruling party constituting the majority of local assemblies, and the oppositions maintaining a small number of seats. In the simultaneous local election of 1963, left-wing mayors supported by the JSP and the JCP were elected in twenty urban municipalities. These mayors were called reformist heads (kakushin-shucho) because they challenged the central government s domination over local governments, attempting to introduce new policies that the LDP had ignored, such as anti-pollution measures, social welfare services for deprived people and civic participation programs in local decision-making (Yokoyama 1990, pp ; Sato 1997, p. 229). The reformist heads had rapidly increased not only in urban cities but also in several prefectures. As of 1975, there were 122 reformist mayors and governors in total (Yokoyama 1990, p. 14). In 1976, however, the number of reformist heads suddenly declined and the boom ended at the end of the 1970s. One of the reasons for this was that it was very hard for the reformist heads to realize their pledges since the majority of their assemblies were occupied by conservative members who always opposed the reformists proposals. Their unrealizable policies disappointed their voters. Rival candidates from the conservative camp also began to raise pledges similar to the reformist camp, so that local voters became less attracted by the reformists new policies any longer. More importantly, the reformist heads looked as if they had been an agent of left-wing parties and labor unions which predominantly formed their election campaign bases (ibid. p. 21). The urban voters supporting the reformist heads had previously been dissatisfied with local conservative politicians who always looked toward the LDP Diet members and whose politics was far

22 detached from citizens everyday needs. Despite their expectations, it seemed to them that the reformist heads political style was not so much different from that of the conservative camp. They thought that this problem was derived from the electoral alliance of local politicians with the established political parties and powerful interest groups. Many urban citizens became eager for independent representatives free from any party affiliation who would pledge to work exclusively for ordinary citizens (ibid. p. 22). Iwane s proposal precisely reflected this climate in urban regions and soon came to be widely discussed by the members. Those who had been involved in the campaign for social reform ten years before were expected by Iwane to be ready to participate actively in politics, but few members sympathized with his proposal. Nevertheless, in July 1977, the leader of Nerima Branch, Masae Tsuchiya, ran for election to the Tokyo metropolitan assembly. Due to the lack of enthusiasm for her campaign among the members many thought that politics was not their business, the first candidate failed to be elected. Not surprisingly, however, when the members became aware that their livelihood would not improve unless they themselves stood up for their demands, they began to make more committed efforts in elections, and soon became successful. What made them politically conscious? The primary cause was their realization that their social reform activities were severely limited by their lack of contact with local lawmakers (Eto 2005, pp ). The Life Club members often presented proposals for safer and more environmentally friendly forms of public policies to relevant municipal assemblies, submitting petitions with tens of thousands of signatures. But their proposals were entirely rejected by all the assemblies. Those members who listened to the debates of the assemblies were disappointed that most of the assembly members did not appear to understand their proposals at all. Their consciousness was raised by their sense of outrage that the assembly members whose job was to represent citizens had completely ignored the demands of so many citizens. They strongly believed that the assemblies needed to have representatives who would work not for the interests of small lobbies in successive bids for re-election, but to serve the needs of the wider majority (ibid.). The women concluded that they would be suitable representatives of these