Prewar Legacy. A small Japanese feminist movement dates from the late nineteenth century when activist women were inspired by the rhetoric of the popular rights movement and joined political associations. Their goals and concerns often varied from those of feminist women elsewhere in the world. Some wanted political and legal rights but most, especially middle class women, were more interested in anti-prostitution laws or in fighting spousal abuse and alcoholism. They learned, too, that former samurai were not inclined to welcome women into professions or public life and preferred codification of the good wife/wise mother ideology, in part a legacy form the prior Edo period and in part a modern invention of Japan's new ruling male elites. Civil rights for ordinary citizen/subjects were limited under the Constitution of 1889. The Civil Code of 1898, the product of ten years of revision and debate, was a serious setback for women's legal rights, especially married women. Under the ie or household system, they came under the legal control of their husband and in-laws and lost rights to property, inheritance, and, in cases of divorce, to their children. Adultery by a woman was a criminal offense but not by a man, unless committed with a married woman. Under the Peace Preservation Law of 1890 (amended 1900), women could not even attend political meetings or be members of political parties.

Gains and Setbacks. By World War I, Japanese women, largely by their own efforts and organizations, had made small gains in higher education, nursing and medicine, journalism, law, and the performing arts. More were becoming primary school teachers, though not principals. As writers and poets, they had made remarkable gains with the public but were not fully honored by the male-dominated literary world. In 1922, the Police Law was amended, largely in response to feminist demands, and, once again, women were permitted to participate in political meetings or give speeches in public but not join political parties. Suffragists began organized agitation for the vote in the 1920s in the wake of the successful Japanese universal manhood suffrage movement and legal victories by women in Britain and the United States. They almost succeeded in 1931 in gaining the vote in local elections. It is also important to note that women activists were challenged by non-suffragist women.

The 1920s was also marked by public debate about the “new women” of Japan, some of it centered on the scandalous behavior of the modern boy/modern girl (mobo/moga), who, in turn, were more often media creations than drawn from real life. Political and legal activism was not a possibility in militarist and totalitarian Japan, 1931-45, but women did show their value as members of local and regional associations and, belatedly, as conscripted wartime factory workers. All women had to enroll in the Women's Patriotic Association, created in 1942 and run by men. Housewives had more opportunities to take leading roles on the homefront in tonarigumi or small neighborhood associations. The propaganda version of the ideal Japanese woman in wartime was mother of present and future soldiers.

Occupation Initiatives. Just as political parties bounced back at war's end so did women's organizations quickly reappear and begin agitating for women's legal and political rights. A renewed campaign for the suffrage was soon underway. Reported the Nippon Times, September 26, 1945: “A demand that suffrage be given to women over the age of 20, will be submitted to the Government, the House of Peers, the House of Representatives, and all political parties, it has been decided by the political committee of the Women's Postwar Policy Association…” The meeting had taken place two days earlier; additional demands included rights to run for office at age twenty-five and over and to hold positions in the higher civil service. Among the leaders was an icon from the 1920s suffragist movement, Ichikawa Fusae, who proposed the formation of a new Women's League. Although Occupation policy planners in Washington, D.C., had made almost no provision for the liberation of Japanese (or German) women, General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers had his own ideas on the subject. However, when pressing Japan's Prime Minister in early October to carry out the emancipation of Japanese women among other major reforms, he was not speaking as a feminist but rather as a proponent of the elevation of women as basic to the achievement a peaceful and democratic Japan. The General and his aides seemed unaware of the prior achievements and hard work of the suffragists and other women activists. In December 1945, upon recommendation of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Japanese Diet passed a new electoral law extending the vote to women and lowering the voting age for men and women from age twenty-five to twenty. And so began the debate: did General MacArthur liberate Japanese women, did they liberate themselves by past efforts and wartime contributions, or was the Occupation a catalyst in a male dominated political system?

First Postwar Elections. Subsequently, Japan's new Constitution of May 1947, written in the name of the Japanese people, not only guaranteed civil rights as inalienable but gave special protection to women: freedom of choice in marriage; no discrimination based on sex. Successful efforts were made by Japanese women and by Occupation authorities in the Government Section get women to the polls in the first postwar elections of April 1946. Ichikawa Fusae and Kamichika Ichiko were especially active in giving lectures to women's groups and writing columns, urging them to take advantage of their new rights. Women (men too) not only responded in high numbers at the polls but also helped to elect thirty-nine women to the Lower House of the Diet—a high mark for years. Once in power, another icon from the women's movement, Katō Shizue, was instrumental in Diet debate to promote and gain confirmation of the Constitution. In the first election to the new elective Upper House, the House of Councilors, April 1947, eight women won national office, including another important activist from the 1920s-1930s, Oku Mumeo. Ichikawa, who was a political purgee during the Occupation, would run for the Upper House in 1953, and Kamichika for the Lower House; both won and remained successful politicians for many years. Another member of the House of Councilors, Kōra Tomi, holder of a doctoral degree from Columbia University and a former professor at Japan Woman's College, took an active role in resumption of relations with the People's Republic of China. Women legislators were not always welcome in the public sphere by male colleagues, but they had made their entry. They were less successful in becoming mayors of towns and villages or governors of prefectures.

American women in Japan were not monolithic in their attitudes or as role models. They, too, were wives and mothers and had different opinions on women's place in the public and private spheres. Grace S. Weaver (not further identified unfortunately) expressed views which probably would have made sense to Japanese housewives and ordinary women who were indifferent to suffrage or had little understanding of politics. She argued: “The viewpoint of women is quite different from that of man. We are and should be more interested in all things pertaining to the home: infant care, child welfare and the education of our children. We are interested in protecting our legal status and that of our children. We also have a vital interest in crime prevention, especially juvenile crime.” Since women were the main constituency of nursing and teaching organizations, they should run them. Above all, women should “engage in intelligent voting and holding of office.” They should see suffrage as a privilege, ”then go out and show by your vote how you want your country run” (Nippon Times Magazine, January 30, 1947).

Implementing Equal Rights. To help implement the equal rights emphasis in the 1947 Constitution, Japanese women had several champions, both male and female, in the special staff sections of Occupation headquarters. In the Government Section (GS) was Beate Sirota, a young twenty-three year old woman born in Vienna, educated as a girl in the American School in Tokyo, and graduate of a women's college in California (Mills) just as the Pacific War began. As the only woman member of a sub-committee, February 1946, charged with drafting civil rights passages for inclusion in a model revised constitution, she inserted equality of the sexes. Another sympathizer was a college graduate and Women's Army Corps (WAC) lieutenant from Ohio, Ethel B. Weed, who headed a small Women's Affairs Bureau in the Civil Information and Education Section (CI&E) and recruited Japanese women to help conduct research on civil rights and encouraged them to form political associations. I950, she led a hand-picked group of influential Japanese women on a tour of the United States. Akamatsu Tsuneko, long-time activist and future parliamentarian, was one of the leaders of the Women's Democratic Club, founded in March 1946. Soon, the Civil and Criminal Codes were thoroughly rewritten to comply with the new Constitution. By 1948, the patriarchal ie was abolished in favor of the single household of husband and wife. Women were granted inheritance rights as were second sons. Adultery was decriminalized for both men and women. Family courts were created to help mediate family complaints and lessen demands for divorce.

There were limited legal gains for working women. In September 1947, the newly created Department of Labor contained a Women's and Minors' Bureau to help improve working conditions for women and children and to carry out the new Labor Standards Law. During the first three years, the Bureau was headed by Yamakawa Kikue, a leading socialist activist and theoretician. Having urged women to make use of their newly gained freedom in January 1947, she took responsibility upon herself. Her successors were also highly qualified—Fujita Taki and Tanino Setsu. Fujita, an educator and president of Tsuda College, also a graduate of Bryn Mawr, took over in 1951 and later was appointed to Japan's delegation at the United Nations. Before heading the Bureau for ten years, 1955-65, Tanino had worked under Yamakawa as head of the Women Worker's Section and stressed equal pay for equal work. Nevertheless, there were few middle or high-ranking women bureaucrats at the national level in the early postwar period. Two women were elevated to parliamentary vice-ministers, but the first appointment of a woman Cabinet member came much later, in 1961 (Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato), and she lasted only a short time until the next reshuffle. A training center for women diplomats was set up in 1949.

Professions. Coming into the Occupation, women had made slim to modest gains as nurses, midwives, physicians, dentists, and teachers. However, apart from nurse's and teacher's education, there is little research in English about further gains in these and other professions during the Occupation years. Among women purged during the Occupation for wartime complicity in high position was Yoshioka Yayoi, founder of Japan's first women's medical school in 1900. In 1902, when the Japan Women's Medical Association was founded, there were approximately one hundred women physicians or medical personnel. Yoshioka kept her faith in a separate women's college, and in 1952, her school was reorganized as a six-year medical college (renamed much later, 1998, Tokyo Women's Medical University).

In the legal profession, Kume Ai and Watanabe Michiko, trailblazers in gaining admission to the Japanese Bar (Kume was the first), had few women counterparts. Japan's first woman judge was appointed to a Tokyo district court in 1949. In September 1950, the Women's Bar Association was formed with help from an American woman lawyer in the Legal Section of GHQ, Mary Easterling, and members were licensed to practice before Japanese courts. Kume Ai was elected president; Helen Lambert, a war crimes prosecutor, was selected as Pubic Information Officer. Japan's first policewomen, with less than two months of training, were appointed to traffic duty on busy Tokyo streets in spring 1946, and later as guards at the Imperial Palace. Policewomen were to observe and improve public morals; handle juvenile delinquency matters; and attend to the needs of venereal disease patients and victims of epidemics. “On the streets,” explained the Nippon Times, April 23, 1946, policewomen “will give advice to women, boys and those from the country who are aimlessly wandering in the city. They will investigate recreation houses and advise professional women's entertainers as well as inspect dance hall, cabarets and other amusement centers.”

These legal changes and political and professional gains during the Occupation were highly significant and brought more women into professional and public life. But, as often pointed out, social change for the majority of Japanese women was slow and gradual over the next decades. The good wife/wise mother image was under challenge but was by no means gone.