Blood Ties: Intimate Violence in Shinzô Abe’s Japan

Chelsea Szendi Schieder, a political scientist at Tokyo’s Meiji University, describes how, in the wake of Japan’s triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown), the country has moved to fortify national harmony and women’s place in the traditional family unit. But Schieder writes that, for women struggling to extricate themselves from violent households, these “bonds that link families become bondage.” She discusses how policies under Shinzô Abe, including a proposed constitutional revision, seek to strengthen the neoliberal order at the expense of women.