senzenwomen | (Reply)

From:

During World War II she was a leading figure in various women’s patriotic organizations; for some years after the war she was forbidden to hold public office or educational positions on those grounds.
Why? Was there something controversial about those organizations she'd been involved in?
It's a good question with a very long answer. Basically having been prominently patriotic during the war was itself controversial/taboo in the postwar in many circles, because it meant being in favor of Japan's militarism, imperialism etc. etc. Honestly I don't know a whole lot about the women's organizations. I can tell you more about the left-wing types, mostly too young to have shown up here yet, many of whom "converted" to the government line in wartime (in order to avoid imprisonment and torture and other fun things, or just being put out of work) and were then subject to a huge postwar backlash for it. My guess re Yoshioka Yayoi is that she was a particularly prominent figure who also, as a very dominant woman, made a lot of people uncomfortable, and so she was made an example of in a way a lot of others were not.