The Logical Structure of Japanese Far-Right Female Politicians’ Writings; The Harmonized Femininity with 'masculine' Xenophobia or Militarism

After 90s’, new generation of female political leaders attract much support of Japanese people. They openly express their xenophobia, militarism, and hardline diplomatic policy stance. This study aims to analyze how they resolve a discrepancy between their presence as female politicians and their ‘masculine’ hardline policy stance.

In this study, their logical structures justifying xenophobia and militarism are extracted from the books and articles written by them from 1978 to 2017. They are divided into three groups by their logical structures; (1)xenophobic-neoliberalists, (2)moral conservatives and historical revisionists, (3) offensive realists.

(1) xenophobic-neoliberalists and (3) offensive realists describe themselves as competent experts, more daring than mediocre male politicians. They camouflage their discriminatory policy with rational technical terms of economy or of diplomacy. They successfully draw some people’s expectation that the fresh energy of female politicians might bring Japan a victory of merciless international power game.

On the other hand, (2) moral conservatives and historical revisionists prefer to call themselves the represent of ordinary housewives, who are daily facing ‘the destruction of Japanese community caused by immigrants from China and Korea’. They also blame the Chinese and the Korean for hurting the Japanese by ‘falsely accusation’ of war crimes at World War II. They assert that Japanese female, including themselves, are more suitable for opposing ‘falsely accusation’ of war crimes like the sex slavery than male who are looked like misogynist.

As the updated discussions in response to the international relations after the rise of China, those far-right female politicians’ articles are admitted by the male-dominant popular conservative magazines, like Seiron (meaning “The fair argument”) launched in 1973. Those far-right female politicians become famous and some of them are succeed to gain the positions of ministers, while many feminist politicians struggle to break through the glass ceiling of left-wing political party.