ABSTRACT
Japanese women have demonstrated their feminist engagement as individuals and in groups in diverse ways over the last century. The women’s groups and individual feminists examined in this book illustrate this diversity. In this chapter I explore how the implications of the word ‘feminism’ in the Japanese context render problematic its use by women’s groups and their members. Contextualizing women’s groups within the civil-society landscape, I examine three women’s groups as sites for potential feminist agency and address the implications of such a reading for contemporary feminist discourse in Japan.
