Reflections on interviewing Japanese female members of parliament

This paper reflects upon interview experiences with Japanese female members of the national parliament, the Diet. As Nirmal Puwar, who interviewed female members of the British Westminster Parliament has noted, feminist interviews with women MPs do not fit neatly into either feminist methodology or elite methodology literature.[1] The power dimensions played out between interviewer and interviewee are complex because of the elite status of the interviewer and the common gender of interviewer and interviewee. The consideration of the complexities involved in a relatively young white female researcher interviewing elite female politicians in Japan will, by suggesting the importance of country-contextual considerations for feminist reflective work, add an additional layer to the little that is known about issues that arise when feminists interview elite women politicians. Specifically, by discussing how my experiences interviewing female members of the Diet were affected by cultural and social hierarchical norms that govern Japanese social interactions, I aim to make an important addition to existing feminist methodological literature on interviewing elites. In this essay I will explore the subjectivity of my status as white, young student researching elites in Japan, the accessibility of those elites, the power balance between me and informants, particularly during the interviews, and the feminist ideal of creating rapport with research subjects.