ABSTRACT
In 1970, a new women’s liberation movement emerged, marking a watershed in the history of feminism in modern Japan. As part of the worldwide rise of progressive and radical social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this movement was synchronous with the rise of radical feminism in the United States. Many had been involved in the student movements and other Japanese New Left groups that had emerged during the 1960s. Women in these leftist movements became critical of their male-dominated structure and the sexual discrimination they witnessed and experienced first-hand. The call for the liberation of sex was thus informed by a critique of Japanese imperialism, and not merely a call for free sex. Leading activists of the movement, like Yonezu Tomoko, rejected the advocacy of ‘free sex’, which had become the vogue through the counterculture of the student movements.
