Chanter l’écologisme dans le Japon de l’après-Fukushima : l’ambivalence de la musique écoféministe chez UA

Abstract

In Japan, eco-feminism has long been denigrated within Japanese feminist circles. Since the 1980s, many Japanese critics opposed to the theory of ecofeminism have targeted the essentialist underpinnings of the concept. Since the Fukushima disaster however, some feminists have begun to reconsider ecofeminism in relation to the ethics of care. Meanwhile, witness accounts by musicians opposed to nuclear power or Japan’s policies have led researchers to highlight the preponderant role of music in social movements in post-Fukushima Japan. This essay focuses on a Japanese musician and activist, UA (1972-), a famous electro-pop musician leading the anti-nuclear and environmentalist struggle in contemporary Japan. While UA’s image in the ecologist and pacifist movements remains strong, her stance seems ambivalent: she appears to take up the most essentialist and polemical aspects of the eco-feminist discourse. The singer believes that women’s ecological consciousness is directly linked to their bodies – to their uterus – which is itself connected to the earth, without elaborating any further. By analyzing UA’s performances through the prism of the debate around eco-feminist ideas, we will examine whether an eco-feminist aspiration emanates spontaneously from the musician or whether a certain form of negotiation with a form of skepticism towards eco-feminism is at stake in her position.

Keywords

• Fukushima
• care
• popular music
• motherhood
• Japan
• ecofeminism