The Emperor's Sovereign Status and the Legal Construction of Gender in Early Meiji Japan

Between 1878 and 1883 the Meiji government began to consolidate basic structures of the modern Japanese state that persisted until Japan's defeat in 1945. Women were denied voting rights at the local level, excluded from newspaper operation, and exposed to discriminatory criminal laws. The early exclusion of women from the legal sphere quickly embedded gender inequality in the new structures of state. This article examines how gender discrimination was linked to reinforcement of unequal forms of citizenship, to the introduction of the notion of a male extralegal sovereign, and to the power of masculine elites in framing the relevant laws.