Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Over the past three decades, religious right-wing actors have driven antifeminist backlash in Japan. This paper examines how groups such as the Unification Church and Nippon Kaigi have reshaped local and national politics through anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ+ mobilization.

Paper long abstract

Since the 1990s, religious right-wing actors have played a central role in antifeminist backlash in Japan. These attacks intensified in the early 2000s after the passage of the 1999 Basic Act for a Gender-Equal Society and the subsequent spread of municipal gender-equality ordinances. Core targets of this backlash included gender-equality policies, reproductive rights, sex education, affirmative action, LGBTQ+ rights, feminist scholarship, and the very concept of “gender” itself.

Key actors in this movement include Nippon Kaigi, an umbrella organization linking conservative religious groups such as the Association of Shinto Shrines and Shinsei Bukkyō; the Japan Policy Institute, a conservative think tank with close ties to the religious right; and the Unification Church (UC), headquartered in South Korea but with a significant political presence in Japan. While opposition to gender equality, sex education, and reproductive rights persisted, the mid-2010s marked a shift. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage and the introduction of Japan’s first same-sex partnership system in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward in 2015, the UC intensified its opposition to LGBTQ+ rights — particularly same-sex marriage — in Japan.

Amid the global expansion of the anti-gender movement and the rise of transphobia, the UC subsequently emerged as a leading force opposing transgender rights, drawing heavily on U.S.-based anti-trans discourse. Other religious right groups, right-wing media outlets, and conservative factions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party soon joined these campaigns, culminating in an intense backlash against transgender rights surrounding the 2023 “LGBT understanding” legislation. Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in 2022 and the resulting exposure of the UC’s political networks with the LDP, the UC’s influence on policy declined significantly. At the same time, other right-wing actors—including both established groups and newer movements as well as populist parties such as the Japan Conservative Party and Sanseitō (Party of Do-it-Yourself) —have moved to fill this space.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and media analysis, this paper examines how religious right-wing actors in Japan have advanced antifeminist, homophobic, and transphobic agendas, and how these movements have reshaped both local and national politics in the context of transnational anti-gender mobilization.