Womens suffrage (女性参政権)
Women's suffrage, also known as woman suffrage, refers to the right of women to participate in national and local politics directly or indirectly.
Overview
The women's suffrage movement (also called the women's movement) in Japan identified the following three objectives, referring to them as the 'Three plans for women's suffrage' or the 'Three rights of women's suffrage':
1) The right to participate in the national government, the right to vote in House of Representatives elections and eligibility to run in said elections.
2) The right to participate in local politics, the right to vote in local assembly elections and eligibility to run in said elections (civil rights).
3) The right to join political parties and associations (association rights).
Although the election held during the French Revolution in the late 18th century is considered the world's first universal suffrage election, suffrage was granted only to men. Western societies, like many societies elsewhere, were characterized by a strong belief that participation in the public arena was for men, and that women should be content to support men. It was in the nineteenth through to the end of the twentieth century that most countries in the West enfranchised women. In world history, the first political entity to enfranchise women was the U.S. state of Wyoming.
History of women's suffrage in Japan until the point women won the right to vote
Japan implemented universal suffrage in 1925. Yet much like countries in the West around the time of the French Revolution, Japan enfranchised only men.
Beginning in the last year of the Meiji period, momentum toward women's suffrage had gradually increased through the Taisho democracy period. The group called 'Heiminsha' (Commoners' Society), which was headed by Toshihiko SAKAI and Shusui KOTOKU, began agitating for the revision of the Security Police Law. Taking this agitation as their cue, and following the founding of Seitosha (the Bluestockings) by Raicho HIRATSUKA, the New Woman Association (founded in 1919), which was headed by Hiratsuka, Fusae ICHIKAWA and Mumeo OKU, and the Japan Women's Suffrage Association (founded in 1921, later renamed the Japan Woman's Christian Suffrage Association) headed by Tsuneko GAUNTLETT and Ochimi KUBUSHIRO began actively campaigning for women's suffrage (also known as the women's movement). Subsequently, the major suffrage groups united to form the Women's Suffrage League (founded 1923) and the Association for the Winning of Women's Suffrage (founded 1924, later renamed the League for the Winning of Women's Suffrage) and began implementing further campaigns.
Yet in prewar Japan, these campaigns were unable to reach their primary goal of acquiring women's suffrage. Nevertheless, the campaigns did achieve some important results in acquiring political and social rights for women, for example the New Women's Association's successful campaign for the revision of Article five of the Security Police Law (1922), which banned women from joining political assemblies, and the amendment of the Lawyers Act (1933), whose revision enabled women to become lawyers.
The House of Representatives provisionally passed a bill to enfranchise women in 1931, but it was defeated due to fierce opposition in the House of Peers (of Japan).
On October 10, 1945, after World War II ended, the Shidehara Cabinet decided to grant women's suffrage.
The following day, October 11, MacArthur's Five Great Reform directives were issued to the Shidehara Cabinet, one of which called for the 'emancipation of Japanese women by enfranchisement.'
On August 25, 1945, ten days after the war ended, Fusae ICHIKAWA and her allies organized the 'Women's Committee on Postwar Policy' and submitted a resolution to the government and the major political parties which consisted of five demands, including the revision of the electoral law for House of Representatives members and the abolition of the Security Police Law. On November 3 of that year, the 'New Japan Women's League' (with Fusae ICHIKAWA as chairwoman; it was later renamed the Women's Suffrage League of Japan), dedicated to winning women's suffrage, was founded to revive the women's suffrage movement.
The first victory came on November 21, 1945, when an imperial edict abolished the Security Police Law and recognized women's right to join associations. Next came the revised electoral law of the House of Representatives members, promulgated on December 17 of that year, which permitted women to participate in the national government.
(The revised system of local government implemented local women's suffrage on September 27, 1946.)
On April 10, 1946, during the first postwar election for the House of Representatives, thirty-nine women were elected to become the first female members of the National Diet of Japan. After deliberations during the 90th special assembly on May 16 of that year, a constitutional amendment was passed on October 7 (the Constitution of Japan was proclaimed on November 3 and came into force beginning on May 3, 1947).
In fact, Japan's women's movement had been interrupted by the intensification of the war. Nonetheless, the long struggle by women's movements since the last year of the Meiji period had led to a desire for political rights among Japanese women. It is reasonable to say that it was thanks to the legacy of those women's movements that women's associations were re-formed as early as a few days after the war ended, demands for women's suffrage began anew, and several female members were elected to the Diet during the general election held in the following year.
The first appearance of women's suffrage in Japan
At the ward assembly election in 1878, a woman called Kita KUSUSE made the following protest against Kochi Prefecture:
It is unreasonable that even those women who pay taxes as heads of household do not have the right to vote.'
But the prefecture did not accept her protest, so Kita appealed to the Home Ministry. On September 20, 1880, after a three-month campaign by the Kamimachi town assembly, the prefectural governor gave in and permitted women's suffrage (of heads of household only), the first such breakthrough in Japan's history. Thereafter, the same clause was implemented in neighboring Kotakasa Village.
Because in those days women's suffrage had been granted only in a few places worldwide, for example in Wyoming Territory in the U.S., British South Australia and the Pitcairn Islands, this movement was among only a handful of cases in the world where women's suffrage was won. Yet four year later, in 1884, the Japanese government revised the 'Local Government Assembly Law' and stripped away the right to establish regulations from the local government, whereupon women were again barred from participating in local government assembly elections.
International timeline of passage of women's suffrage vis-a-vis national elections
1893: New Zealand
1902: Australia
1906: Finland
1915: Denmark, Iceland
1917: Soviet Union
1918: Canada, Germany
1919: Austria, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden
1920: United States
1928: United Kingdom
1931: Portugal, Spain
1932: Thailand
1934: Brazil, Turkey
1945: France, Hungary, Italy, Japan
1947: Taiwan (ROC)
1948: Belgium, Israel, South Korea
1949: China (PRC), Chile
1950: India
1952: Greece
1953: Mexico
1956: Egypt, Pakistan
1957: Malaysia
1959: Singapore
1963: Iran
1984: Liechtenstein
1993: Switzerland
2002: Bahrain, Oman
2003: Qatar
2005: Iraq, Kuwait (dating from the election in 2007)