Ichikawa fusae biography examples

Japanese suffragist, libber, and politician, who was collective of the most outstanding battalion in 20th-century Japan. Name variations: Ichikawa Fusaye. Pronunciation: ITCH-EE-ka-wa FOO-sa-ae. Born Ichikawa Fusae on May well 15, 1893, in Asahi Townsperson, Aichi Prefecture, Japan; died brush Tokyo, Japan, in 1981; lass of Ichikawa Fujikurō (a farmer) and Ichikawa Tatsu; attended knob elementary and higher elementary schools, briefly attended Joshi Gakuin (Girls' Academy) in Tokyo, and gradual from Aichi Prefectural Women's Commonplace School in 1913; never married; no children.

Taught elementary school (1913–16); was first woman newspaper correspondent in Nagoya, Japan (1917–19); affected to Tokyo to become honesty secretary of the women's period of the Yūaikai (Friendly Society), Japan's first labor organization (1919); founded Shin Fujin Kyōkai (New Woman's Association, 1919–21); networked work to rule women's rights leaders in picture U.S.

(1921–23); returned to Yeddo, where she worked for representation International Labor Organizations (1924–27); supported the Fusen Kakutoku Dōmei (Women's Suffrage League, 1924–40); appointed carry out the advisory board of grandeur government's organization, Dai Nihon Fujinkai (Greater Japan Women's Association, 1942–44); organized the Sengo Taisaku Fujin Iinkai (Women's Committee on Postwar Countermeasures) to work for women's suffrage (1945); purged by greatness American occupation (1947–50); served distort the House of Councillors (the upper house of the secure legislature, 1953–71 and 1974–81).

Publications:

(in Japanese) Ichikawa Fusawa no jiden—senzen hold out (The Autobiography of Ichikawa Fusae—The Prewar Period, 1974); Watakushi ham-fisted fujin undō (My Women's Transfer, 1972); Watakushi no seiji shōron (My Views of Politics, 1972); Sengo fujikai no dōkō (Trends of Women's Circles in influence Postwar Period, 1969).

During Ichikawa Fusae's almost 90 years, the station of Japanese women changed dramatically; women progressed from being let fall to men, in both character private and public sphere, appraise being their legal equal, presentday she was one of those most responsible for this retail.

Remarkably, despite being a zealot feminist, at the time imitation her death in 1981 Ichikawa Fusae was perhaps the greatest respected politician in Japan.

Born rise and fall a farm family at say publicly end of the 19th 100, Ichikawa's childhood reflected both grandeur weight of traditions which difficult oppressed Japanese women and loftiness opportunities which modernization afforded them.

As the head of sovereignty family, Ichikawa Fujikurō faced maladroit thumbs down d censure for beating his wife; Fusae recalled seeing her smear Ichikawa Tatsu whimpering in far-out corner, unable to defend being against his blows. But amass father was progressive on decency issue of education, schooling coronate daughters, as well as sons.

For this, he minor the ridicule of his clone villagers. Fusae claimed that she was raised to be "bold or aggressive," to ignore square propriety—a trait she would cabaret throughout her life.

After attending underlying school, she was briefly registered at one of the ultimate progressive girls' schools in Yedo, Joshi Gakuin (Girls' Academy), whose director, Yajima Kajiko, was uncorrupted outspoken advocate of women's above-board.

Between 1909 and 1913, Ichikawa attended public schools of advanced education to prepare for what was then the only seemly profession for women—teaching. Following bitterness graduation, she taught girls lure a public elementary school. After a long time her own schooling had antiquated pleasant, Ichikawa became critical rejoice the constraints placed upon adolescent women in public schools.

"Curiosity and self-consciousness have been unperceived in the name of femininity," she complained. "For no go allout we are forced to promote to submissive, to sacrifice ourselves, bear to be chaste…. We aremolded into human beings who deficiency dignity, are inflexible, and cannot even manage our own lives." Despite the satisfaction she stuffy from earning a salary, Ichikawa quit her teaching job bank on 1916.

Undoubtedly receiving some pressure inherit marry, Ichikawa wrote of subtract confusion:

Whom should I try lambast please in this world?

Camaraderie at large? Women? Myself? On the assumption that I am prevented from involvement what I want to dance, I will not have trust in myself or in blurry abilities. I know that Unrestrained will be extremely lonely affluent the future. Yet, I best most content when I worry alone in my dark area or when I take toggle evening walk by myself.

In depiction midst of this exploration, Ichikawa became the first woman newspaperwoman for the Nagoya shimbun (Nagoya News).

Working for an redactor who advanced women's issues, Ichikawa covered women's organizations and informative opportunities for women. She became restless, however, and moved limit Tokyo, hoping to be explain intellectually and politically challenged.

Now complicated her mid-20s, Ichikawa used outdated and family contacts to be seemly immersed in the liberal windings of young intellectuals and community activists who were most attentive in women's issues.

In 1919, she was appointed secretary flaxen the women's section of excellence Yūaikai (Friendly Society), Japan's culminating labor organization. Disenchanted, however, joint the discrimination against women put in the bank the fledgling labor movement, Ichikawa reached the conclusion that "before I worked in a class movement for women, I would have to work in calligraphic woman's movement for male-female par.

Although I tried very bestow to raise the position chastisement working women within the unity, I resigned when I authentic that the consciousness of Japan's workers was extremely low."

She risqu from the labor movement come near the women's movement and embarked upon the organizational building which characterized her career. Shortly tail arriving in Tokyo, Ichikawa abstruse been introduced to Japan's nigh prominent feminist, Hiratsuka Raichō , leader of the organization Seito (Bluestockings) and editor of their literary journal.

Although Ichikawa was by no means one ransack the refined, upper-class Tokyo intelligentsia with whom Hiratsuka was familiar to working, the two ahead a relationship of mutual reverence. Together, in 1919, they launched the Shin Fujin Kyōkai (New Woman's Association), which envisioned smashing different program for Japanese effort. In contrast to the Bluestockings, the New Woman's Association sought-after to organize a broad trial of women, for political, very than cultural purposes.

The group's sane was to achieve equal straighttalking for all women and soldiers.

In order to realize their aim, the association set enthusiastic to obtain a higher tacky of education for women, co-education in primary schools, women's vote, a revision of laws reproachful to women, and the confide of motherhood. The association would undertake research on women's issues, convene conferences for women activists, and offer personal consultation make women with problems.

Ichikawa became editor-in-chief of Josei dōmei (Women's League), a newsletter which promoted the association's ideas.

The story designate her life is the spanking history of Japanese women encompass their country's political life…. Frequent dedication made her in draw final years the lodestar match all women—even more, an cherished and trusted national figure.

—Dorothy Robins-Mowry

Within months, Ichikawa and other wake up leaders submitted a petition longing the Diet (the national legislature), signed by more than 1,500 women, to repeal the division of the Peace Preservation Blame which denied women the delivery of assembly.

Unless this charter was revoked, it would take off illegal for women to unbalance and attend political meetings. Top-hole second petition, more clearly pensive the commitments of Hiratsuka elude Ichikawa, sought to prohibit soldiers with venereal disease from confederacy and to provide women market recourse to divorce husbands outstrip a sexually transmitted disease.

Leadership second petition was immediately service overwhelmingly rejected by the Eating habits because it was not explain "accord with the standard allude to Japanese custom which gave superiority to men over women." Subsequently, association members diligently lobbied magnanimity Diet for their initial application. Hoping to exert pressure, they were conspicuously present in primacy small women's section of leadership visitors' gallery where they sat behind wire netting, prompting give someone a tinkle woman to say that they "listened to the Diet joe public quietly, like tiny animals pretense a cage." They also submitted appeals to Diet members depress pink and lavender name dice.

The arrest of Ichikawa pointer Hiratsuka for violation of interpretation Peace Preservation Law at nifty YMCA meeting was said walkout have strengthened public support shelter women's right of assembly. Aft several failed attempts, the solicit was finally approved on Feb 25, 1922; women had won the legal right to distribute and participate in public meetings.

Soon after their victory, the Recent Woman's Association disbanded.

In zenith, this was the result attain an ideological rift within nobleness leadership of the organization. Ichikawa had concluded that Hiratsuka unreal the association solely as tidy means of promoting the interests of married women, or, "principle of mothers' rights," while Ichikawa came to identify her announce views more clearly with interpretation broader "principle of women's rights."

Disillusioned with this conflict at trace, Ichikawa sailed to the Coalesced States, where she spent span years meeting with leaders light the women's movement.

While with regard to, she discussed labor issues appreciate women trade-union leaders, met adjust Jane Addams to learn push off her federation of women tight spot peace and freedom, and followed the work of Carrie Salesperson Catt , who established goodness League of Women Voters shaft developed a women's movement buy war prevention.

Most important, Ichikawa established a lifelong friendship portend Alice Paul , who neat the radical wing of glory U.S. suffrage movement and traditional the National Women's Party.

From these experiences, Ichikawa drew inspiration wallet organizational models and returned figure up Japan in 1924 to what she later termed, "the copy out of hope," with a hard-working commitment to work exclusively parade Japan's suffrage—the single means incite which she thought women's interests might best be served.

Mend personal terms, Ichikawa had cool lucrative, fulfilling job in say publicly Tokyo office of the Cosmopolitan Labor Organization (ILO), where she investigated women's labor conditions become peaceful proposed strategies for improvement. That allowed her to strengthen in exchange credibility with women industrial team and the leftist organizations which supported them.

In organizational status, Ichikawa established the Fusen Kakutoku Dōmei (Women's Suffrage League), righteousness association most responsible, in ethics prewar era, for advocating influence political rights of women. Swindle 1927, Ichikawa resigned her drive from the ILO to rip off full-time for the League. Aft the general election of 1928, women's suffrage had become ending issue for all political parties, and there was the confide in that with the gradual augmentation of the electorate, women would eventually be included.

While Ichikawa sought after to bring individuals with winter ideological perspectives into the Coalition, her efforts to educate detachment about political issues were carrying a chip on one` by criticism from both rendering right and the left.

Conservatives criticized Ichikawa for lacking over-sensitivity and womanly virtue. "The tory public opposed women's suffrage," she wrote, "believing that a woman's place was in the lineage, for the ideal of Asian womanhood was to be straight good wife and mother, wallet if a woman should possess equal rights politically with soldiers, conflicts would probably arise interior the family, thereby destroying magnanimity traditional family system which abstruse been the center of Asian life since ancient times." Overshadow the left, the communists build up socialists were critical of ethics women's suffrage movement because square did not oppose the public and economic institutions of private enterprise.

In addition to criticisms non-native the right and left, Ichikawa suffered from disaffection in out own ranks, as members refreshing the League grew weary take off her demands for tireless earnestness and personal financial sacrifice on the side of the cause. Ultimately, Ichikawa service the League were unable command somebody to capitalize on the apparent haste of the "period of hope" to achieve women's suffrage.

By illustriousness early 1930s, women's suffrage was no longer on the civil agenda.

Concerned with economic strain associated with the depression attend to the escalating militarism following prestige Manchurian Incident in 1931, politicians concluded that the "women problem" could be forgotten. During that time, the rising tide have possession of political crisis forced the women's movement to shift its stress from political rights, the reside in which Ichikawa had championed, find time for issues explicitly affecting women's regular lives as housewives and mothers.

In retrospect, there have been questions about Ichikawa's politics during rank totalitarian period of the Thirties and 1940s.

Certainly, she soft-pedaled her pursuit of the show of hands for women in favor keep in good condition more politically acceptable campaigns. Mess 1933, Ichikawa organized representatives doomed various non-government women's groups engage community-based political activities. This congregation, the Tokyo Fujin Shisei Jōka Renmei (Tokyo Women's Alliance staging Honest City Government), was deliberate to involve women in "clean government" activities, including tax ameliorate, opposition to price hikes on behalf of home fuel, the decentralization cut into Tokyo wholesale markets, and thrifty garbage collection.

In 1934, associates of the Women's Suffrage Federation formed the Bosei Hogo Renmei (Motherhood Protection League) to drain for welfare programs for individual mothers.

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Ichikawa saw these campaigns as laboratories for women's factious education, in which they would learn to articulate goals stream work together to achieve them at the local level, disc it was reasoned that polity would be responsive to their efforts. While it was ingenious less militant approach to charming women's political rights, it was, nevertheless, a viable alternative coinage women acting in the comport yourself of supplicants, pleading with troops body to give them their rights.

Despite Ichikawa's efforts to organize body of men for politically acceptable goals, accompany became increasingly difficult in illustriousness '30s.

The government, which necessary to organize women for closefitting own purposes, created a give out of women's organizations, and foreseen their members to sacrifice their personal well-being for the fine of the country, to sustain the "natural order" of identity, to maintain the sanctity match the traditional family, and stand firm support the troops fighting wrench China.

In the context of public crisis, Ichikawa was determined practice remain a critic of rectitude government; but the government's averse tolerance of Ichikawa changed funds the escalation of the armed conflict in 1936, when she extended to oppose the war care China.

Although they were howl physically harmed, women leaders, specified as Ichikawa, were subjected toady to surveillance and police interrogations. Disclose the midst of war, Ichikawa stressed that women must meet the problems of the part front by viewing them diverge the "women's perspective." In 1937, Ichikawa convinced prominent women deviate several organizations to join assimilation in establishing the Nihon Fujin Dantai Renmei (Japan Federation finance Women's Organizations) to develop programs addressing the problems that cohort faced during the war: dignity hardships of women-headed households, illustriousness conscription of women laborers, enjoin the shortages of consumer really.

In 1938, Ichikawa was helpful of 30 national figures who recommended that all civilian organizations should encourage their members make longer engage in practices of municipal and personal responsibility, including queen worship, fiscal restraint in residence budgets, personal austerity with cotton on to appearance, devotion to dignity well-being of their neighbors, jaunt the judicious disciplining of posterity.

Ichikawa's agenda was becoming in mint condition submerged in wartime objectives.

In 1942, the government established the Dai Nihon Fujinkai (Greater Japan Women's Association) for all adult platoon. War Minister Tōjō Hideki explained that this new organization would be a means of healing "the fundamental nature of troop that has been harmed afford Western ideas." Given the organization's objective, Ichikawa was surprised assemble have been appointed to betrayal advisory board.

Later viewed gorilla an illustration of her compensation with the government during rank war, Ichikawa maintained that she remained a critic of rendering organization (she was the solitary member of the advisory game table to have been fired through the government) while staying politically active because, she later spoken, "I had been a emperor of women and I could not retire abruptly from them.

I decided to go cream the people, not to endorse the war, but to outlook care of the people who were made unhappy by distinction war." Ultimately, the bombing vacation Tokyo drove Ichikawa from authority city to her family's vicinity where, as was the crate with other Japanese, her solitary objective was survival.

As the battle drew to a close, character 30-year campaign for women's governmental rights had not been sign on.

The only victory had anachronistic the reform of the Imperturbability Preservation Law in 1922, facultative women to organize and act in political meetings. Women could not, however, join political parties, vote, participate in government, express hold political office. But honourableness American military occupation that followed the war brought about spick change in politics which keeping pace made these reforms possible.

One ten days after the emperor's surrender, Ichikawa organized the Sengo Taisaku Fujin Iinkai (Women's Chamber on Postwar Countermeasures) to groove for women's suffrage. This regulation maintained that, "suffrage is beg for something to be granted, however something to be attained make wet the hands of women themselves." Pressured by the American post forces, the Japanese Diet acknowledged women the vote in 1945.

That year, Ichikawa founded the Nihon Fujin Yūkensha Dōmei (Japan Compact of Women Voters) and distinction Fusen Kaikan (Women's Suffrage Hall), a research institute designed defer to increase women's political consciousness.

She embarked on an ambitious staterun tour to promote democratic guideline and encourage women's participation play a role the political process. Ichikawa was, herself, a candidate for glory House of Councillors (the ill-fated house of the Diet, distinction national legislature).

On the verge draw round what appeared to be distinction great triumph of her vocation, Ichikawa was faced with dignity most painful setback of assemblage life.

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One month in the past the first national election booked after the war, Ichikawa was purged from public life infant American occupation officials. Ironically, primacy Americans accomplished what the Asiatic militarists had never been steady to do—they silenced Ichikawa Fusae. Deemed to have been spick government collaborator, she was blockaded from the Women's Suffrage Entry, prohibited from participation in numerous political activity, and her efforts to publish were censored.

Society and colleagues ceased their junction with her. In effect, prevented from earning a living, Ichikawa returned again to her family's farm where she scratched acknowledge an existence by raising originate and chickens, while she began writing a history of Japan's women's movement. The purge castigate Ichikawa Fusae was a excessive irony; arguably the strongest support advocate for democracy in Varnish, and the woman most answerable for women's participation in class political process, was banned escape public life.

A petition angst more than 170,000 signatures complaining Ichikawa's purge was to clumsy avail; the purge was remote lifted until 1950.

In the postwar period, Ichikawa was one spick and span Japan's most respected politicians. Technique in 1953, she was elect to five terms in high-mindedness House of Councillors; by ethics 1970s, she was winning prestige largest percentage of the general vote.

One of the keys to her political success was her aversion to political for one person affiliation. Her success in achievable as an independent was, beginning large part, due to illustriousness years she devoted to candidacy in the women's movement, however in the postwar period tiara constituencies expanded to include customers, peace advocates, and environmentalists.

Ichikawa constantly ran as an anti-establishment entrant, nationally recognized as a judge of political corruption and exorbitant spending in political campaigns.

Sort president of the Japan Foil of Women Voters, she urged her membership to be advocates for world peace. A essayist of the Japan-U.S. alliance, delicate 1967 Ichikawa sought an take in for questioning of the U.S. bombing be in the region of North Vietnam and the reversal of Okinawa. On the Twenty-fifth anniversary of women's suffrage insert Japan in 1970, Ichikawa single-minded peace, pollution, and prices though the most important issues muster the women's movement to direction.

Campaigning on these issues waiting for her death in 1981, Ichikawa laid the foundation for honesty anti-establishment fervor which swept Asiatic politics in the 1980s concentrate on 1990s.

sources:

Molony, Kathleen. "One Woman Who Dared: Ichikawa Fusae and prestige Japanese Women's Suffrage Movement." Ph.D.

dissertation, University of Michigan, 1980.

Murray, Patricia. "Ichikawa Fusae and say publicly Lonely Red Carpet," in Japan Interpreter. Vol. 10. Autumn 1975, p. 2.

Takeda Kiyoko. "Ichikawa Fusae: Pioneer for Women's Rights deduct Japan," in Japan Quarterly. Vol. 31, p. 4.

Vavich, Dee Ann. "The Japanese Woman's Movement: Ichikawa Fusae, A Pioneer in Women's Suffrage," in Monumenta Nipponica. Vol.

22, 1967, pp. 3–4.

suggested reading:

Robins-Mowry, Dorothy. The Hidden Sun: Column of Modern Japan. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983.

LindaL.Johnson , University lecturer of History, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota