Feminist Defense Initiative


English / Japanese


Manifesto

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Dear Friends,


I am very pleased to tell you that I, Mari Kotani, perfectly   won  the
civil suit #1182,  contested at Tokyo District Court, what is nicknamed the
case of "sexual/textual harassment."

On November 16th ,1997, the publisher Media Works edited and the selling
agency Shufu-no-tomo-sha (literally meaning "The Friends of Housewives")
　distributed a reference book Alternative Culture, which insulted the
internationally known SF and Fantasy critic Mari Kotani's book Evangelion as
the Immaculate Virgin (Tokyo: Magazine House, 1997)  , by printing on
purpose a false report on "her name as a pseudonym of her husband  Takayuki
Tatsumi," professor of English of Keio University. The writer of the entry,
Hiroo Yamagata, goes so far as to redefine Ms. Mari Kotani as "a man."

Confused by this description,  through her editor of Magazine House, I
immediately lodged strong protests against Media Works in vain. They seemed
to consider the insult as an example of free speech. Receiving no serious
response from the publisher and the distributor of Alt-Culture , I ended up
sueing Hiroo Yamagata, Media Works, and Shufu-no-Tomo-sha.

It took four years for us to get the outcome.
But finally,  on December 25th, 2001, the new century's first Christmas day,
the presiding Judge ordered three defendants, that is, the writer in
question  Hiroo Yamagata & the publisher Media Works  & the selling agency
Shufu-no-tomo-sha (literally meaning "The Friends of Housewives")　, to pay
Mari Kotani  3,300,000yen(=$27,500), and to publish an apology on the top
page of  their respective website.

Since this is the first textual harassment case in Japan, many Japanese
women writers has insistently and ambitiously supported this movement of the
women's writers' rights. The Japan Pen Club established the Women Writer's
Committee, with the feminist writer-critic Kazuko Saegusa as chair, Mari
Kotani as sub-chair. What is more, with the help of Maki Honda, Kotani
translated Joanna Russ's provocative book How To Suppress Women's Writing,
which was favorably accepted and reviewed by a number of major feminist
critics in Japan including Chizuko Ueno, Fukuko Kobayashi, Yuko Matsumoto,
and Kazuko Takemura.

The latest good news is that on  December 28th, 2001,  the defendants decided
to give up an  appeal.

So, the name" Mari Kotani" has safely come back to  the writer herself,  and
her trouble has just been resolved. Just now Mari Kotani hopes to start over
her  life as a visible writer and  to keep conducting research  on the lives
of other invisible feminists.

Many thanks for your great support and warm generosity. Best wishes,

Mari Kotani

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mail to: fdioffice@inherzone.org