Living Up to the Legacy of Matsui Yayori
BY TINA BURRETT
The legacy of campaigning journalist and human rights activist Matsui Yayori is an inspiration to women both within and beyond her native Japan. Throughout her three decade-long career at the Asahi Shimbun—where in 1987 she became the first woman to serve as bureau chief—Matsui used her sharp and astute writing style to give voice to issues and individuals shut out of the mainstream media.
In the early ‘60s, long before it was fashionable, Matsui became a pioneer of Japan’s environmentalist movement, bringing to light environmental and health issues affecting communities across the country. In exposing mercury poisoning as the cause of unusually high numbers of birth defects in the Kyushu town of Minamata, Matsui revealed the negative consequences of Japan’s rapid post-war re-industrialisation. Later, she wasted no time in admonishing Japan’s business and political elite for attempting to circumnavigate this problem by exporting polluting industries to other parts of Asia.
Matsui is perhaps most noted for her championing of women’s issues. In particular, the problem of violence against women during armed conflicts and through sex tourism.
Matsui became an ardent internationalist and a feminist during her student years abroad. It was as an exchange student in the US, and later at the Sorbonne in France, that she first encountered the Women’s Liberation movement. During her journey back to Japan, witnessing the shocking poverty in Asia—in contrast with the prosperity enjoyed by the West—Matsui became determined to devote her life to challenging inequality and injustice.
Alongside her journalism work, Matsui’s other accomplishments include establishing the Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Centre (AJWRC), organising the Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan (VAWW-NET Japan), and, in 2000, acting as a key organiser for the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery (representing the so-called ‘comfort women’).
Recognising Matsui’s considerable contribution to improving women’s human rights across Asia, and hoping to encourage others to follow in her footsteps, in 2005 the Women’s Fund for Peace and Human Rights established the Yayori Awards. The awards are presented in two categories: the first, the Women’s Human Rights Activities Award (known as the Yayori Award) is presented to a grassroots-level female activist, journalist, or artist working with socially marginalised peoples to tackle social problems. The second, the Yayori Journalist Award, is presented to female journalists or artists (an individual or group) promoting issues affecting women. Both awards are open to women from, or working in, any country.
Past winners have come from a variety of professional and personal backgrounds. They include women supporting victims of sexual violence committed during Guatemalan civil war, a feminist photojournalist from Nepal, and a Japanese journalist fighting against nuclear power plants.
In 2008, the Yayori award went to Miho Kim, a third generation Korean from Fukuoka. At just 13 she was denied access to education in Japan because of her nationality, and was later separated from her family after losing her legal status to remain in Japan. Now based in California, Miho works to empower Japanese-descended individuals facing discrimination. In the same year, the Yayori Journalism award went to Osaka-born Nobuko Oyabu. Based on her own experience of rape, Nobuko started the photographic project STAND: Faces of Rape and Sexual Abuse Survivors for which she spent two years interviewing and photographing nearly 70 survivors, both male and female, in the US and Canada.
Nominations for the 2010 Yayori Awards are open until the end of August. To make a nomination or to become involved with one of the many projects started or inspired by Matsui Yayori, please visit www.wfphr.org/yayori/English/top.html.