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DOI: 10.1177/0959353511422692
2011 21: 496 Feminism & Psychology
Erica Burman and Atsuko Aono
Editorial introduction: Japanese feminist psychologies

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Feminism & Psychology
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DOI: 10.1177/0959353511422692
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eminism
&
sychology
F
P
Special Feature editorial introduction
Japanese feminist
psychologies
Erica Burman
Manchester Metropolitan University
Atsuko Aono
Fukuyama University
The key aim of this special feature is to introduce readers of Feminism &
Psychology to approaches and debates within Japanese feminist
psychology. Although feminist psychological studies have been widespread in
Japan since the 1970s, as in other industrialized countries, they were largely
informed by American psychology, and their main concerns have been with
gender stereotypes, gender roles and gender dierences. Academic feminist psy-
chologists seem to be restricted to the quantitative approach that predominates in
mainstream Japanese psychology. On the other hand, feminist counsellors and
feminist theorists have provided qualitative and critical work in their clinical or
theoretical areas, which have often connected explicitly with political campaigns.
This special feature will review the achievements and dilemmas of Japanese femi-
nist psychology in academic research, teaching and clinical practices, and highlight
areas for future challenge and development.
The Japanese context
To open this discussion of Japanese feminist psychology, we describe briey the
background for its emergence in relation to Japanese societal processes and current
conditions facing women. First, there are particular preoccupations and trajecto-
ries of feminist activism in Japan, in relation to (1) greater inuence of cultural
(rather than socialist or liberal) feminism, owing to the Debate over the Protection
of Maternity raised by Raicho Hirazuka and Akiko Yosano in the Taisho Era
(early 1910s), questioning who is responsible for reproduction and child care (Imai,
2005); 2) major contributions in relation to analysis of gender and nation (e.g.
Ueno, 1998) in connecting with other anti-colonial movements and, in particular,
Corresponding author:
Erica Burman, The Education & Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester,
M20 2RR, UK
Email: e.burman@mmu.ac.uk
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allying with the debates about comfort women and the war (and sex) crimes
associated with Japanese occupation of South Asian countries in the Second
World War. This dierent trajectory from, for example, AngloUS feminist move-
ments has had consequences in relation to struggles around reproductive rights
with the contraceptive pill not being widely available and accessible until 1999
(hence abortion remaining a major form of birth control until then).
Furthermore, Japan is known as one of the most ageing societies, with a falling
birthrate that is anticipated to decrease the population by 30 percent within 50
years. This has forced the Japanese government to adopt various countermeasures,
such as childcare leave and child-allowance, to address the falling birthrate.
However, these Beget and Multiply measures have neither succeeded in revers-
ing the falling birthrate nor accomplished the improvement of womens position in
society. In terms of comparative international measures, the Japanese gender
empowerment measure (GEM), which is based on some indices regarding social
status, remains at a very low level. While about half of Japanese women go to
university most do not continue working or reach professional or administrative
positions.
In terms of the presence and distribution of women in psychology, the ratio of
undergraduate women students who major in humanities (literature, philosophy,
education, psychology, history), is about 70 percent. In addition, the ratio of grad-
uate women students and the researchers in psychology is almost as many as men.
However, the ratio of women to men professors or board members of academic
societies is less than 10 percent (Kashiwagi, 2006). There are 4238 womens studies
or gender studies courses in Japanese universities, of which 228 are based in psy-
chology, 280 in economy and 870 in sociology departments (National Womens
Education Center, 2010). This may indicate that psychologists are less interested in
gender and feminism or the discipline of psychology itself doesnt have feminist
perspectives.
The Japanese Psychological Association (JPA) is not divided into specialized
divisions or sections such as Psychology of Women Section (POWS) of the British
Psychological Society (BPS), Division 35 of the American Psychological
Association (APA), or the Section on Women and Psychology (SWAP) of the
Canadian Psychological Association (CPA). So Japanese feminist psychologists
belong to any of over 40 specialized psychological societies that are competing
with each other, and they are not organized to collaborate with each other and
to strengthen their positions. As a result, the fruits of their research are not well
organized or presented as Japanese feminist psychological research that can be
accessible to, and easily known by, researchers outside of Japan. Although an
informal study group, the Collegium on Gender Studies, which was founded
among the members of the Japanese Psychological Association, has not been rec-
ognized very well even by feminist psychologists.
Another big problem in Japanese psychological world is the segregation between
experimental psychologists and clinical psychologists in the conicts concerning the
qualication of psychologists. Currently clinical psychologists want to vindicate
their own qualications, while experimental psychologists want to build a
Burman and Aono 497
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new qualication system encompassing all psychological practitioners. This dispute
makes the coordination between feminist psychologists more dicult.
Feminist work in Japan
Discussions about gender in psychology have developed in Japan in terms of both
quality and quantity since 1970s, moving from a period of importation from west-
ern countries, to developing its own embryonic forms, growing and maturing.
However, those studies had only explained gender dierences in terms of social
factors (such as marital relations and traditional gender roles), and had not tackled
sexism and wider political problems (Aono et al., 2008). Muramoto (2000) pointed
out that the reasons why those studies had lacked feminist standpoints included
psychologism, the segregation of practice and academia, the male-centered aca-
demic world and anti-feminism in the Japanese psychological world. Mitsui (1995)
also noted that feminist psychologists have adopted the traditional methods of the
discipline to enter into mainstream psychology.
However, feminist practice and studies have ourished largely outside the aca-
demic sphere in Japan, and we are pleased to be able to include accounts by some
of its key contributors. One of the authors in this special feature, Kiyomi Kawano,
founded a feminist therapy oce called Nakama [companion], which led to the
founding of The Society of Japanese Feminist Counseling Practices and Studies in
1994. Another author here, Kuniko Muramoto, founded the Feminine Life Cycle
Institute in 1990, which provides feminist psychological support programmes and
publishes its own journal. Almost all of the Japanese feminist researchers and
counsellors, including these, studied in the USA, with few contacts with
European feminists. This link with US psychology has key connections with the
US occupation of Japan during and after the Second World War, and its inuence
continues in complex ways until now, including in relation to the structuring of
feminist interventions with/in psychology.
This special feature
The idea for this special feature arose from the contacts between its two editors
when Erica Burman visited Japan in 2007. At that time Erica had been interested in
researching forms of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (together with Ian Parker,
see Burman, 2007; Parker, 2009). On that visit Erica was very struck by how few
feminists she encountered within the formal structures of psychotherapy and psy-
choanalytic organizations, while she became aware of many vibrant currents our-
ishing outside such organizations. This led her to want to understand more about
the forms and reasons for this conguration of feminist interventions, not only to
understand the situation of Japanese feminists better but also because she realized
how this highlighted rather uninterrogated assumptions about alignments, ten-
sions, conditions for and even forms of feminist psychology she was more familiar
with in Britain (see Burman, in press).
498 Feminism & Psychology 21(4)
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On the other hand, Atsuko had not been completely satised with Japanese
psychology because of the ways its empiricism worked to conrm the status quo
both in mainstream psychology and in gender-focused psychology. These were
strongly aected by the AngloUS psychology, from which feminism is largely
lacking. She had asked herself what and how we should study. She had recognized
that Japanese feminist psychologists should learn and collaborate with both
domestic and international feminists. Her encounter with Erica was somewhat
fateful because, as a feminist developmental psychologist, she had long known
Ericas name as an author of Deconstructing Developmental Psychology
(2008[1994]) and been interested in the person herself and her background.
She was eager to take up a role of linking Japanese feminist psychologists and
foreign psychologists through co-editing this feature with Erica.
We have communicated since meeting at the 2007 Japanese Society of
Developmental Psychology Conference (held in Tokyo) about how to increase
our interchanges and collaborative projects involving many Japanese feminist psy-
chologists, and this special feature emerged as a way to open up this discussion.
We decided to look for authors in as many elds as possible, across academic and
other forms of psychological practice. We asked the authors to address the speci-
cities of key issues facing not only contemporary Japanese society and Japanese
psychology, but also Japanese women.
Authors and arguments
This special feature consists of short pieces and two commentaries. We start with a
piece by Kiyomi Kawano, a feminist psychologist who translated Jean Baker
Millers Toward A New Psychology of Women (1976) and Phyllis Cheslers (1972)
Women and Madness into Japanese. She founded the rst private practice in fem-
inist therapy in Japan and afterwards the Japanese Association of Feminist
Counselling. In Consciousness raising activities and Japanese womens psychol-
ogy, as a pioneering feminist psychologist and practitioner, Kawano discusses how
consciousness raining (CR) groups were imported and developed in Japan. She
emphasizes the diculties posed by the project of building equal relationships in
Japanese vertical society.
The second piece is by Kuniko Muramoto, a feminist counsellor who manages
the Feminine Life Cycle Institute, which provides feminist counselling and pub-
lishes a quarterly journal. In History and current approaches to violence towards
women in Japan, Muramoto traces the history of Japanese feminist psychology,
from which institutions and practices protecting women victims began. She argues
that there is no way to eradicate violence unless we nd its linkage with both the
familial and national histories of violence.
The third piece is co-authored by Atsuko Aono (a social psychologist who
researches gender bias in education and the Japanese motherhood myth, and
co-edited Toward Feminist Psychology (Aono and Takako, 2006)) and Keiko
Kashiwagi (a developmental psychologist who began the study of gender roles in
Japan and has been a leader within Japanese psychology concerned with feminism
Burman and Aono 499
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and life span development. She co-edited Developmental Psychology and Feminism
(Kashiwagi and Takahashi, 1995) In their joint piece Myth or facts: Conceptions
and realities of Japanese women/mothers, the authors point out that delayed mar-
riage and the falling birthrate in Japan are not necessarily associated with the
improvement of womens economic and social positions. This leaves intact the
powerful motherhood myth rooted in Japanese society, which denitely continues
to pull highly educated and motivated women back to child-rearing.
Junko Akazawa is a social and clinical psychologist who has studied Japanese
couples behaviours and consciousness from the viewpoint of equity theory. She
translated one of the chapters of Ungers handbook in 2004. Her piece addresses
The current situation and future challenges for research on sexuality in Japanese
heterosexual couples in which she considers the background to the paucity of
research on sexuality, although it is of course important in representations of
romantic and partner relationships. She explains this by arguing that Japanese
modernized society values parentchild relationships more than marital relation-
ships, and so it seems does psychology.
The fth piece is by Kazuko Takemura, feminist theorist and literary critic who
translated Butlers Gender Trouble (1990), Minh-has Woman, Native, Other (1989)
and published On Love: Identity and the Politics of Desire (2003) and Feminism
(2000). She also leads Project D (Theory and Representation) of the 21st Century
Centres of Excellence (COE) programme Frontiers of Gender Studies at
Ochanomizu University. In her piece, (Counter-)transference and the politics of
feminist therapy: Toward naming a new problematics that has no name,
Takemura argues that the goal of counselling is to name the unknown as the
cooperative work between counsellor and client. She notes the conceptions of
(counter-)transference that could produce power politics on the one hand and
new self-accountability.
Finally, Yuriko Iino is a member of Research Center for Advanced Science and
Technology, The University of Tokyo. She began her career as a researcher of the
Lesbian Community in Japan and now works with researchers in the eld of
Disability Studies, promoting academic interaction between gender/sexuality
theory and disability theory. In her discussion On disabled access to the sexual
realm: How does a feminist perspective contribute?, she shows how disabled
people are kept further from sexual resources through the analysis of their narra-
tives. Although they are restricted by dominant gender roles in Japan, the eects of
gender roles appear dierently between disabled women and men.
In addition, we have invited two commentators who have a detailed knowledge
about the Japanese context to clarify the characteristics of Japanese feminist psy-
chology. Carolyn Enns a longtime commentator on the relations between
Japanese and US feminist therapy oers a viewpoint of the common and distinc-
tive features of Japanese feminist psychotherapies, while Keiko Takahashi, as a
feminist developmental psychologist studying life-span development in the social
context in particular on attachment issues comments from the perspective of the
meanings and possibilities of contemporary Japanese feminist or gender
psychology.
500 Feminism & Psychology 21(4)
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The impact of feminism on the Japanese psychological world
In presenting this special feature, we aim to support Feminism & Psychologys
project to document and examine the similarities and the dierences within and
across feminist psychologies across the world. In so doing the feature deepens
discussions of the globalization, and forms of resistance to globalization, of
Anglo-US mainstream psychology, alongside engaging with but also countering
the anti-feminist argument that feminism is western. The special feature also
indicates conditions in Japan giving rise to specic forms of feminist struggle
and campaigns that both share and depart from Euro-US trajectories. We oer
these accounts for feminists to learn from each other, acknowledging cultural con-
texts and socioeconomic conditions so that we can envisage advances in feminist
theory and practice in both areas.
Both Japanese feminist researchers and practitioners have contributed to this
special feature. We hope that this can enrich feminist psychologists perspectives,
methods and theories, although such possibilities still seem rather remote within
Japanese psychology. We are very grateful to the various feminist colleagues from
across the world who have supported the development of this special feature in
particular by reviewing the pieces included here. We hope that this collection stim-
ulates feminist psychologists in Japan and other countries, and contributes to forg-
ing further active and engaged research exchanges.
References
Aono A and Takako Y (eds) (2006) Towards a Feminist Psychology. Kyoto: Kamogawa-
Shuppan (in Japanese).
Aono A, Akazawa J and Matsunami T (eds) (2008) Handbook of the Psychology of Gender.
Kyoto: Nakanishiya Syuppan (in Japanese).
Butler J (1990) Gender Trouble. New York and London: Routledge.
Burman E (2007) Between orientalism and normalisation: Cross-cultural lessons from Japan
for a critical history of psychology. History of Psychology 10(2): 179198.
Burman E (2008[1994]) Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. London: Routledge.
Burman E (in press) Psychology, women and political practice in Britain. In: Rutherford A,
Capdevila R, Palmary I and Vindhya U (eds) Handbook of International Feminisms in
Psychology. New York: Springer.
Chesler P (1972) Women and Madness. New York: Doubleday.
Imai K (2005) The Debates on Maternal Protection as the History of Social Thought. Tokyo:
Domesu Syuppan (in Japanese).
Kashiwagi K (2006) Womens position in psychological world. In: Aono A and Yukawa T
(eds) Towards a Feminist Psychology. Kyoto: Kamogawa-Shuppan (in Japanese),
130139.
Kashiwagi K and Takahashi K (eds) (1995) Developmental Psychology and Feminism.
Kyoto: Minerva Shobo (in Japanese).
Miller JB (1976) Toward a New Psychology of Women. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Mitsui H (1995) Lecture in Social Psychology: Fundamentalism of Knowledge. Tokyo:
Kakiuchi Shuppan (in Japanese).
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Muramoto K (2000) The history and prospect of Japansese feminist psychology. Annual
Reports of Feminine Life Cycle Institute10. Available at: www.flcflc.com/study/article/
article02/10_muramoto1.html).
National Womens Education Center. (2010) Website. Available at www.nwec.jp/en/.
Parker I (2009) Japan in Analysis: Cultures of the Unconscious. London: Palgrave.
Takemura K (2000) Feminism. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Takemura K (2003) On Love: Identity and the Politics of Desire. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Ueno C (1998) Nationalism and gender. Tokyo: Seidosha (in Japanese), (Also published in
English in 2004 by Transpacific Press).
Unger R (2001) Handbook of the Psychology of Women and Gender. New York & Chichester:
Wiley.
Erica Burman is Professor of Psychology and Womens Studies in Manchester
Metropolitan University, where she co-founded and continues to co-direct the
Discourse Unit (http://www.discourseunit.com.) and the Manchester Feminist
Theory Network. As a feminist developmental psychologist and group analyst,
she has written extensively on the role of psychology in international development
policy and practice, on the politics and aects of representations of childhood
(both remembered and depicted), on relationships between women and children,
and on transnational issues such as violence and migration as they aect state
responses to women and children. Her most recent books Deconstructing
Developmental Psychology (2nd Edition, Routledge, 2008) and Developments:
child,image, nation (Routledge, 2008) and Gender and Migration (edited, Zed
press, 2010) reect these themes. She is also a group analyst and recent past
Chair of the Psychology of Women Section of the British Psychological Society.
Atsuko Aono is Professor of Department of Psychology in Fukuyama University,
where she teaches social psychology and gender psychology. As a feminist social
psychologist, she has studied nonverbal communication from the viewpoint of
Henleys submissive hypothesis. And as a femist teacher, she has examined
gender bias in Japanese psychology and education. She had been the representative
of the collegium on Gender Studies of the Japanese Psychological Association
(JPA) and co-translated Rhoda Ungers Handbook of the Psychology of Women
and Gender (John Wiley & Sons, 2001). Recently she had an oppottunity to com-
municate with Erica Burman, and she is now preparing to publish the Japanese
translation of her Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (2nd Edition,
Routledge, 2008).
502 Feminism & Psychology 21(4)
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