Fusae Ichikawa
Fusae Ichikawa (市川 房枝 Ichikawa Fusae?, May 15, 1893 – February 11, 1981) was a Japanese feminist, politician and women's suffrage leader. Ichikawa was a key supporter of women's suffrage in Japan, and her activism was partially responsible for the extension of the franchise to women in 1945.
Born in Bisai, Aichi Prefecture in 1893, Ichikawa was raised with an emphasis on education but also as a witness to her mother's physical abuse from her father. She attended the Aichi Women's Teacher Academy with the intention of becoming a primary school teacher. Upon her relocation to Tokyo in the 1910s, however, she became exposed to the women's movement. Returning to Aichi in 1917, she became the first woman reporter with the Nagoya Newspaper. In 1920 she co-founded the New Women's Association (新婦人協会, Shin-fujin kyokai) together with pioneering Japanese feminist Hiratsuka Raicho.
The New Women's Association was the first Japanese organization formed expressly for the improvement of the status and welfare of women. The organization, under Ichikawa's leadership, campaigned for changes in Japanese laws prohibiting the participation of women in politics. As women were barred from this sort of campaign (by the same law the organization sought to overturn), the organization held events known as "lecture meetings" to further their campaign. The law was eventually overturned by the Imperial Diet in 1922, after which the association disbanded.
Two years later, Ichikawa traveled to the United States, intent on making contact with American women's suffrage leader Alice Paul. Returning to Japan in 1924 to work for the Tokyo branch office of the International Labour Organization, she founded Japan's first women's suffrage organization, the Women's Suffrage League of Japan (日本婦人有権者同盟, Nippon fujin yûkensha dômei), which in 1930 held the country's first ever national convention on the enfranchisement of women in Japan. Ichikawa worked closely with Shigeri Yamataka, who went on to be elected to the House of Councillors.
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