Bicycle Citizen: The Politcal World of the Japanese Housewife

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Book Description

"While the typical Japanese male politician glides through his district in air- conditioned taxis, the typical female voter trundles along the side streets on a simple bicycle. In this first ethnographic study of the politics of the average female citizen in Japan, Robin LeBlanc argues that this taxi-bicycle contrast reaches deeply into Japanese society.

To study the relationship between gender and liberal democratic citizenship, LeBlanc conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in suburban Tokyo among housewives, volunteer groups, consumer cooperative movements, and the members of a committee to reelect a female Diet member who used her own housewife status as the key to victory. LeBlanc argues that contrary to popular perception, Japanese housewives are ultimately not without a political world.

Full of new and stimulating material, engagingly written, and deft in its weaving of theoretical perspectives with field research, this study will not only open up new dialogues between gender theory and broader social science concerns but also provide a superb introduction to politics in Japan as a whole."

My review:

Robin LeBlanc criticizes both traditional liberal democratic and feminist theorists of citizenship because they do not test their theories on real people. Rather, their arguments are based on rereading and reinterpreting of theories; and when tests are done, they tend to focus on the American case study. LeBlanc believes that in order to understand the faults of liberal democratic citizenship, theorists can not limit themselves to reinterpreting theories or on the case study of America, but rather theorists should study how people who are not usually involved in politics, in other liberal democratic states, experience citizenship.

Leblanc demonstrates in this study, that Japanese housewives challenge the liberal democratic concepts of citizenship by taking a different route to politics and creating an alternative citizenship, which she calls, �bicycle citizenship�. Bicycle citizenship is the �the housewife brand of community spiritness�an attempt to lead a full public life by routes other than those the political system traditionally offers.� (LeBlanc pg. 64). She shows that housewives prove, contrary to common concepts of citizenship, that citizens are not necessarily better off when they are fully integrated into the political system. (Leblanc pg. 198.)

A very interesting an open-minded study. I enjoyed reading this book very much.