Who are your favorite Japanese activists?
That’s a good question, here’s a few:
Kanako Otsuji
Of her many achievements, she was instrumental in pushing through legislation allowing same sex couples in Osaka to apply for public housing - a right previously only married couples enjoyed. Having come out publicly as a lesbian the day before the 2005 Tokyo Pride, she has since participated and appeared at several gay pride events in Japan and served as the director of general affairs for the 2006 Kansai Rainbow Parade. In August 2005, she published an autobiography in Japanese Coming Out: A Journey to Find My True Self (カミングアウト～自分らしさを見つける旅). Otsuji also notably attended the International Lesbian and Gay Association’s world conference in Geneva in March-April 2006.
Kaori Tahara
If elected, she will be the first female lawmaker from the Ainu community and the second Ainu Diet member after the late Shigeru Kayano, who worked for the 1997 enactment of a law aimed at preserving and promoting Ainu culture and tradition.
“That was a landmark achievement, but it stops short of improving living standards of the Ainu,” Tahara said. “The recognition of their identity and rights as indigenous people is critical.”
Janice Mirikitani
Poet, dancer, and community activist Janice Mirikitani was born in 1941 in Stockton, California, and earned a BA from UCLA. With her parents, she was interned in an Arkansas camp during World War II and through her poetry and activism is committed to addressing the horrors of war, combating institutional racism, and advocating for women and poor people.
Mitsuye Yamada
Yamada has been an activist for women’s rights, and her poetry recounts her experience of internment, racial violence and discrimination, as well as feminist issues. She is the author of the poetry collections Camp Notes and Other Poems (1976) and Desert Run: Poems and Stories (1988). She coauthored, with Nellie Wong and Merle Woo, 3 Asian American Writers Speak Out on Feminism (2003) and has brought her activism and teaching together in Teaching Human Rights Awareness Through Poetry (1999). She also coedited Sowing Ti Leaves: Writing by Multicultural Women (1991).
Satsuki Ina
Professor Emeritus, filmmaker & psychotherapist, California State University, Sacramento
Satsuki Ina was born in the Tule Lake Segregation Center and grew up in post-war San Francisco Japantown. She is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, and Director and Founder of the Family Study Center where she has a psychotherapy practice specializing in trauma. Ina is also the producer of two award-winning documentary films about the Japanese American World War II experience: Children of the Camps, and From a Silk Cocoon: A Japanese American Renunciant’s Story.
Yayori Matsui
During her junior year, she left Japan to spend a year in America as an exchange student, and then went on to Europe, where she furthered her studies at the Sorbonne. On the journey home, she was shocked at the contrast between the poverty of Asia and the prosperity she had just seen in Europe and America. This first trip abroad, which gave her a new awareness of racial, ethnic, and sexual oppression, left her determined to change the inequalities of global society and to stand always with the weakest of its members.
Mutsuko Miki
was a Japanese activist who advocated on behalf of pacifism, official compensation for comfort women, and improved Japan–North Korea relations. She was the widow of former Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Miki. Miki served as the wife of the Prime Minister of Japan, or First Lady, during her husband’s two-year tenure from 1974 until 1976.
Haruzo Urakawa
He was born in Urakawa Town, Hokkaido, and learned the Ainu culture, including hunting, from his father from his early childhood. In 1975, he joined the Urakawa Branch of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido. He moved to Tokyo at the age of 42 and in 1989 was inaugurated as the Chairman of the Kanto Utari Association, thereby interacting with the Ainu in Hokkaido and the Kanto region and indigenous peoples abroad.Ｉn 1996, he established the Tokyo Ainu Association and became Chairman of the Association. He reconstructed cise, the Ainu house, in Otsuki City, Yamanashi Prefecture, and has revived traditional rituals.He is currently building Kamuy Mintara (Playground of the Gods), a forum for Ainu cultural exchanges, in Kimitsu City, Chiba Prefecture, and contributes greatly to dissemination, transmission and preservation activities of the Ainu culture in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Also there’s a Japanese feminist site that regularly posts articles talking about different Japanese activists and protests.
