Postwar Japanese Reception of the Life and Works of Simone de Beauvoir

In the 1950s, the rapid incursion of young Japanese women into prestigious universities, recently made coeducational by U.S. Occupation fiat, spawned an anxious series of debates over “female students ruining the nation.” Meanwhile, the increasing entry of married women into the postwar labor force prompted a series of “housewife debates” regarding women’s labor outside the home. Japanese men, concerned and appalled by women’s increasing willingness to insist on the rights newly granted to them by the 1947 constitution, fretted that this brave new world of opportunity had rendered their wives “scary.” Postwar Japanese feminists thus had to contend with a considerable chauvinist backlash, which played out particularly in the mass-circulation magazines and newspapers that formed public opinion.

In the midst of this turbulent debate over gender roles, Japanese women discovered the life and works of Simone de Beauvoir. Her mammoth feminist treatise, The Second Sex, was first translated into Japanese in 1953, just one year after the end of the U.S. Occupation. Her essay sparked a flurry of debate at a time when Japanese society was desperately attempting to come to grips with the legacy of postwar legal and societal transformations.

This paper will explore the reception of Beauvoir’s life and works by Japanese women in the two decades following World War II. I will argue that while many women were inspired by Beauvoir, their understanding of her theories was heavily inflected by the backlash against women’s new role and status in postwar Japanese society. Desire for the liberated and independent lifestyle modeled by Beauvoir had to be weighed against anticipated resistance by more conservative sectors of society, leading to a critical and selective approach to evaluation of her work. Reception of her theories must therefore be understood within the context of shifting debates regarding gender roles in postwar Japan.