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Public and Private Concepts and the Position of Women in Japan -Focusing on the Agnes debate in the 1980s-

  • Journal of Japanese Culture
  • 2020, (84), pp.107-126
  • DOI : 10.21481/jbunka..84.202002.107
  • Publisher : The Japanese Culture Association Of Korea (Jcak)
  • Research Area : Humanities > Japanese Language and Literature
  • Received : December 30, 2019
  • Accepted : January 30, 2020
  • Published : February 29, 2020

Yongwoo Choi 1

1연세대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, varying concepts of public and private have been introduced by cultural anthropologists into the theoretical work of feminism, emphasizing the ambiguity of public and private arenas, and focusing on the differences between women.　However, the concepts of public and private are so relative that Western notions of these concepts are not readily accepted in Asia, even for cultures that share a Confucian heritage, the meanings of these terms are unique for each country. The words “public” and “private” use the same Chinese characters in Korea, China, and Japan, but are understood slightly differently. In Japan, ‘私’(private) has been subordinated to ‘公’(public), and the word ‘私’ has three multi-layered and contradictory meanings. In this article, we explain Japan’s social structure by clarifying its unique concepts of private and public, and we examine the social position and problems of Japanese women in this context. In Japan, women have engaged in six major woman’s debates since the 1950s, but the Agnes debate(1987) brought public attention to the double burden of women in public and private sectors. Therefore, in this article, we focus on the Agnes debate and examine the private aspects of Japanese women in the official arena of the workplace.

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