This undergraduate thesis tries to shed light on where, how and why the movement Uman Ribu appeared in the beginning of the 1970s. I researched the history of feminist movements and women studies in order to better comprehend the problem of gender inequality in that point of time in history. The word Ribu was also used for a sort of mentality, that included liberation of sex, a new image of women and mothers, the problem of reproduction in capitalism and the problem of repressing women on a legal ground. The movement formally began as the reaction to Vietnamese war, informally, however, it was forming alongside other movements, such as the students’ movement. Moreover, this thesis presents a sort of structural shift that had occurred. The hierarchical power relations that exist amid men and women, which the movement tried to destroy outside of it, shifted to the inside of it, even though most of them were women. How did it come to this? Tanaka Mitsu is thought to be a representative out of all participants in the “Ribu Shinjuku Center”, where the structural shift happened. How can we include this movement in the current of events in the 60s and 70s Japan? How can we understand the shift and the reproduction of the afore mentioned hierarchy? Why is this movement often negatively described as a radical one?
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