The Political Process of Establishing the Mother–Child Protection Law in Prewar Japan

Bibliographic Data

ID15101024
AuthorsNaoko TOMIE (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume8
Issue2
Pages239-251
Publication date2005-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Science Japan Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-1465 • E-ISSN: 1468-2680
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ssjj/jyi043
OpenAlexW2015314862
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited11

This article examines the development of the concept of mother–child protection in prewar Japan through an analysis of the political process leading to the establishment of the Mother–Child Protection Law in 1937. The Mother–Child Protection Law had been proposed prior to 1920 as a system of relief for impoverished mothers and children, but only after Japan had entered into total war in the late 1930s did it finally come to fruition. During the war, the women’s suffrage movement championed the legislative process by subordinating its original demands for the extension of the franchise in favor of the strategy of seeking participation in politics and administration through the exercise of existing political and civil rights. As a result, these women asserted that mother–child protection was not a form of poverty relief, but rather compensation from the state for fulfilling their public duty as mothers for raising the ‘future nation’. Through the establishment of mother–child protection, women’s advance into the public sphere through their cooperation with state policy as well as the re-definition of the role of mother as part of the public sphere formed a two-prong ideological strategy for achieving women’s citizenship.

Citizenship · Duty · Ideology · Legislature · Political science · Politics · State (computer science) · Suffrage · Japanese History and Culture · Law

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