Engaging the World as Onna and Religious Minority: Second-Wave Feminism and Christian Social Activism in Japan during the 1970s

Abstract:This paper examines Japanese female Christians’ writings published during the 1970s in a Japanese ecumenical periodical, Gospel and World, to explore their relationship to second wave feminism in Japan, ūman ribu, as a religious minority’s complex way to engage politics and other Asian women. These feminist Christians are an example of women located in-between colonizers and the colonized as well as among the racial and religious majorities and minorities of the time; illuminating their activism allows us to consider effective and discursive forms of engaging women, politics, and religion. On the one hand, Japanese Christian feminists expanded their sense of agency both by relocating the oppression of women in the church within the larger issues of Japanese colonial legacy and by reimagining social justice within sacred space. On the other hand, their lack of reflection on race and their reliance on the majoritarian identity of onna (middle-class Japanese women) blurred their vision and invitation to activism around “pan-Asian solidarity.”