Cultural Relativism and an Alternative Mode of Femininity and Feminism in Modern-Day Japan

A common reaction of Americans who have spent time in another country is that they believe the customs of the other countries are backward and need improvement. “Other” women are criticized for allowing themselves to live in such an oppressed state, and their traditional cultural resources are seldom recognized. In addition, there is a tendency to dichotomize cross-cultural information; if women are suppressed or brutalized in the other culture, then they must be liberated in this country, and when we ask American students to explore how the international economic system, which benefits many citizens in the United States, adversely affects women in many other countries, we find ourselves treading on sacred ground. (Conway-Turner, 1998, 3). As the opening passage suggests, gender issues are one of the first things noticed and judged by foreigners. Conway-Turner (1998, 3) states that ‘gender relations are a central feature in debates about cultural change as are women’s roles central to the battle of maintaining a society’s culture.” Since the family is often likened to the smallest cell of a society, the contention that most cultures have developed around gender roles in a family context is not implausible.

Given the description above of globalized modern life described by Conway-Turner, the importance of cultural relativism, that is, a recognition that one culture cannot be arbitrarily judged by standards of another and the importance of finding out the norms of another culture, would seemingly not need emphasis.

However, even in academia, where ‘studies on the "Japanese woman" have becorne more specialized and objective in reccnt years, … the stereotyped image of the docile, obedient female, lagging behind in emancipation and self-awareness, has still not disappeared (Roberts, 1994, 112). Even in these times, when there is no longer talk of ‘good wife, wise mothers,’ but increasingly of ‘good husbands, wise fathers.’ As some Japanese writers have

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