Ichikawa Fusae

Ichikawa Fusae

Ichikawa Fusae ( Japanese 市 川 房 枝 ; born May 15, 1893 in Meichi, (today: Ichinomiya ), Aichi Prefecture ; † February 11, 1981 ) was a Japanese feminist and politician. From 1953 to 1971 and from 1974 until her death in 1981 she was a member of the Sangiin , the upper house of the national parliament , most recently for the Dainiin Club .

Life

Ichikawa, the daughter of a farming family, attended Aichi Pedagogical College to become a primary school teacher. From her brother who had emigrated to America she heard about the rights that US women already had at that time. When she moved to Tokyo herself , she was also confronted with the Japanese women's movement. When she returned to Aichi in 1917, she became a newspaper reporter. In 1919 she was with Hiratsuka Raichō a co-founder of the "Association of the New Woman" ( 新 婦人 協会 , Shinfujin kyōkai ). It was the first women's rights organization in Japan, which also fought against the prohibition of women in political organizations. She was the first woman to enter the parliament building to promote her goals. In 1922 the Reichstag lifted the ban on political activity and Ichikawa's organization dissolved.

→ Main article : Feminism in Japan

In 1921 Ichikawa himself traveled to the United States , Chicago and New York to meet Alice Paul . In 1924 she returned to Tokyo and worked there for the International Labor Organization and finally founded the "Japanese League of Women Voters" ( 日本 婦人 有 権 者 同盟 , Nippon fujin yūkensha dōmei ), which held its first general assembly in 1930. In 1933 she also founded the women's organization for clean politics in Tokyo, with which political corruption should be combated. She was appointed one of the five female assessors in the Central Organization for Clean Elections, was secretary of the Central Society for the Mobilization of the National Fighting Spirit, and coordinated private organizations during World War II.

After the war, the League of Women Voters was re-established with her as President. A central argument of their new campaign for women's rights was that women in parliament would have prevented such a devastating war. According to her, there would be “no peace without equality and no equality without peace” ( 「平等 な く し て 平和 な し 、 平和 な く し て 平等 な し」 ). She saw the key to peace and equality in women's suffrage. Under pressure from the occupying power of the USA, the government gave in and on November 3, 1945 proclaimed full women's suffrage, which was both actively and passively enshrined in law on December 17.

However, due to its activity during the war, it was removed from politics by the occupiers for several years. She was then elected to Sangiin in 1953 as the representative of Tokyo Prefecture (then four senators per partial election) with the second highest percentage of votes. Your close colleague since the 30s, Shigeri Yamataka moved into the upper house for the national constituency in 1962. Ichikawa continued to advocate women's rights until she was not re-elected in 1971. In 1974, the 81-year-old ran again, now in the national constituency (50 seats per partial election), and received a fourth term in parliament. She was also awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Prize in 1974. In 1975 she took on a leading role when a general assembly of all Japanese women's organizations was convened on the occasion of the International Year of Women and this prompted the Japanese government to ratify the UN resolution on the abolition of all discrimination against women ( 国 連 の 女子 差別 撤 廃 条約 , English Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women , in short: CEDAW) asked. She was re-elected in 1980 but died during the term of office.

In memory of her achievements, a room was dedicated to her in the Japan Center for Women and Governance in Shibuya , Tokyo, which shows her life and work in connection with the women's rights movement.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} 「市 川 房 枝」 っ て ど ん な 人 な の? (like: Who was Ichikawa Fusae?). (No longer available online.) Japan Center for Women and Governance, 2011, archived from the original on February 5, 2015 ; Retrieved March 20, 2015 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Sangiin: List of Former Members [until January 2014] (Japanese)

literature

• Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 241

Web links

• Ichikawa Fusae. In: Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures. National Parliamentary Library , 2013, accessed on March 20, 2015 (English, with illustrations). 
• Ichikawa Fusae. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Ichikawa is the family name, Fusae the first name.