Yonezu Tomoko and the ūman ribu movement: the intersection of radical feminism and the disability movement in Japan from the 1970s until 1996

Abstract

This thesis investigates the life and work of Yonezu Tomoko, a prominent female disabled activist in Japan whose work spanned both the radical women’s liberation (ūman ribu) and disability movements from the 1970s to 1996. So far ribu has been examined by scholars as primarily a women’s movement, and historiography has focused on the key figure of Tanaka Mitsu and the short-lived (1971-1977) activities connected to the Ribu Shinjuku Centre. While this work has been important in documenting ribu’s activities, it does not account for how ribu theory and practice influenced other fields of social activism. To address this gap in extant scholarship, I reassess ribu’s theoretical position as fundamentally intersectional, arguing that it embraced a politics of difference and resistance to state interventions into bodily autonomy that transcended gender alone. With this framework established, I then trace how Yonezu Tomoko, took ribu’s ideas into the field of disability activism and reproductive justice through organisations such as SOSHIREN and the DPI Josei shōgaisha Network. Following Yonezu’s life and work, I show how ribu thought provided a platform for new forms of intersectional activist groups to challenge productivity as the predominant measure of human value in Japan into the 1990s. In doing so the thesis provides an analysis of post-war Japanese reproduction discourse and addresses how the presence, participation, and contributions of disabled activists pushed the debate beyond bodily autonomy based on gender and sexuality.