Backsliding to authoritarianism in Japan? State and civil responses to experiences of Japanese women repatriated from Manchuria

This chapter focuses on Japanese women’s groups’ relationships with the state. A military nation before 1947, Japan has presented itself as a democratic nation since, although its recent political direction invokes suspicions otherwise. Even civil society has been shaped by the state. The author questions Japan’s post-war democracy by examining how the state and civil society responded to sexual violence against Japanese women repatriated from Manchuria in the war’s aftermath. By analyzing the involvement of a women’s organization in the state’s project of supporting repatriates in the late 1940s, and feminists’ recent responses to issues of wartime sexual violence against Japanese women, the author argues that some aspects of Japanese society have been dubiously deemed democratic throughout the post-war period.