Domestic Violence in Japan

Abstract

It was a feminist action research effort that named the previously unnamed, unaddressed problem of domestic violence in Japan in the early 1990s. The absence of the name meant a lack of societal recognition, which in turn reflected the low value placed on women’s rights, and had left many women to suffer in silence. Collective grassroots organizing, action research, and advocacy efforts aided by the international currents, such as the United Nations Conference on Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995, promoted the government to address domestic violence. The enactment of the Spousal Violence Act in 2001 symbolizes a societal recognition of the problem, yet at the same time it represented a shift in its definition from a social structural problem to an individual-level problem and from patriarchy-rooted male violence against women to spousal violence. Undeterred, advocates continue to improve the legislative and governmental responses through grassroots organizing and policy advocacy, often setting directions, not reacting, to the revisions of the Spousal Violence Act.

Accompanied by a critical review of empirical data and statutory, administrative and, other policy-related documents, this chapter provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which domestic violence was defined first by the feminist activists and how it has been redefined in the process of legislative and governmental interventions. Based on the critical analyses of the previous and current policies in the sociohistorical-political contexts, this chapter concludes with visions for improvements.