Adding a new dimension to current discussions of politics in contemporary Japan, this collection of essays examines the gendered nature of the Japanese State. Incorporating new material arising from recent research on gender and power in Japan, Gender in Japan explores issues including: the role of women in the workforce, prostitution, issues of sexual harassment and gendered violence, reproduction, and homosexuality.





The contributors examine the ways in which government policies affect gender relations such as the forms of participation in state decision making by men and women and the extent to which women have been successful in pressuring the government to change discriminatory policies through lobbying. The volume places Japan's gender and power issues in a wider conceptual context, looking at the operations of the Japanese State from a locus in recent international debates on the gendered operations of State processes and the political dimensions of citizenship and political participation.