Fusae ichikawa biography
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Bluestocking Oxford
by Jasmin Kellmann
In the Global Gender Gap Report 2023, a report published every year by the World Economic Forum, Japan ranks at 125 from 146 countries considered. This is the lowest rank Japan has been awarded in the last ten years of the report. The main cause of the low rank fryst vatten the lack of gender parity in Japan’s political sphere. For instance, women make up only 10% of Japanese parliament.
Active and passive suffrage for women in Japan was granted in 1946, after Japan surrendered in World War II and the US occupation took over affairs. 53 years earlier, Ichikawa Fusae was born in Aichi prefecture. She graduated from the Aichi Joshi Shihan school in 1913 and later became a journalist for a newspaper in Nagoya. When Ichikawa moved to Tokyo, she began working for the women’s division of the Yūaikai trade union. At that time, men and women in Japan were perceived as fundamentally different in the respective social roles ascribe
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ICHIKAWA Fusae was instrumental in establishing the New Women's Association (1919) and the Women's Suffrage League of Japan (1924), and established herself as one of the leaders of women suffrage movement. Within the movement, people felt the need to build a "women's center" but it had to wait until 1946 to make that dream come true. Japanese women gained political franchise (the right to vote in public, political elections and the right to stand for election) in 1945 after the Second World War. To commemorate this historic achievement, the first wooden building was built for the purpose of becoming the "women's center" on the land where Fusen Kaikan building now stands (photo), to which ICHIKAWA Fusae contributed in many, many ways.
Since then, this women's center, which eventually became ICHIKAWA Fusae Center for Women and Governance (the Center), has been the locus for Japanese women to exercise their political rights through engaging in various activities and movements. It has
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Ichikawa Fusae (1893–1981)
Japanese suffragist, feminist, and politician, who was one of the most outstanding women in 20th-century Japan. Name variations: Ichikawa Fusaye. Pronunciation: ITCH-EE-ka-wa FOO-sa-ae. Born Ichikawa Fusae on May 15, 1893, in Asahi by, Aichi Prefecture, Japan; died in Tokyo, Japan, in 1981; daughter of Ichikawa Fujikurō (a farmer) and Ichikawa Tatsu; attended public elementary and higher elementary schools, briefly attended Joshi Gakuin (Girls' Academy) in Tokyo, and graduated from Aichi Prefectural Women's Normal School in 1913; never married; no children.
Taught elementary school (1913–16); was first woman newspaper reporter in Nagoya, Japan (1917–19); moved to Tokyo to become the secretary of the women's section of the Yūaikai (Friendly Society), Japan's first labor organization (1919); founded Shin Fujin Kyōkai (New Woman's Association, 1919–21); networked with women's rights leaders in the U.S. (1921–23); returned to Tokyo, where she work