Chizuko Ueno, a sociologist who has been a leading figure in women’s and gender studies in Japan, has found a big audience among females in China.

Her books have been translated and published in Chinese. Readers say Ueno’s words resonate so much with the circumstances of their daily lives.

A video uploaded in mid-February on Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing website, shows online conversations between Ueno, 74, and three female Peking University graduates in their 30s.

“At your weddings, did you pledge to live together with your husbands ‘until death do us part?’” Ueno asked the Chinese women.

Two of them laughed and made X signs with their arms to signal “no.”

The video, containing earnest discussions on feminism and women’s lifestyles, has been viewed more than 180,000 times.

Chinese women now eagerly await what Ueno has to say about those topics.

Seven books, including “‘Onna’ no Shiso” (Thought on “women”) and “Zaitaku Hitori Shi no Susume” (Recommending dying alone at home), were added last year to the list of her publications available in Chinese.

“Genkai kara Hajimaru” (Starting from the limit), a book of correspondences between Ueno and 39-year-old writer Suzumi Suzuki, won the top place on the “Books of the Year” list in late 2022 by Douban, one of China’s biggest film and book rating websites.

More than 200,000 copies have been sold in China. 

Typical readers are well-educated female urbanites in their 20s and 30s.

“Ms. Ueno penetrated sharply into the chaos and ambiguity that were in my brain and cleared the fog there in an instant,” one reviewer said.

“I was moved to tears,” said another.

Lu Weiwei, an associate professor of Japanese folklore and gender studies at Southeast University in Nanjing, said Ueno’s name became widely known among Chinese in spring 2019.

A congratulatory address she gave during an enrollment ceremony at the University of Tokyo at that time won the support and sympathy of young Chinese, particularly on social media.

One passage in her speech, “What awaits you is a society where your hard work is not rewarded fairly,” drew particular attention, said Lu, 42.

She said another passage that won the hearts of Chinese women went, “Feminism is a school of thought for demanding that the vulnerable be respected while remaining vulnerable.”

“That way of thinking broke the stereotype belief that feminism is a school of thought for making women on a par with men,” Lu said. “That expanded the base of feminism.”

As China’s economy developed, more women pursued higher education under the nation’s one-child policy.

“Women who are obtaining the power to make life decisions on their own increasingly wish to be independent,” said Ouyang Yufang, 27, editor of the simplified Chinese edition of Ueno’s “Starting from the limit.”

“At the same time, they have also come to face the new question of their identity as individuals, which explains why they show sympathy for the questions that Suzuki posed to Ueno.”

Chinese Education Ministry figures show that women accounted for 53.25 percent of undergraduate university students in China in 2021, up 2 points from 10 years earlier. Women also made up 42.18 percent of students in doctorate programs, up 6 points.

Gender discrimination in employment is not a big problem in China, where many married couples earn dual incomes.

But many Chinese women feel they are being treated unfairly because of the deep-rooted gender division of household chores.

An increasing number of women are opting to remain single. The marriage rate in China was 5.22 per 1,000 people in 2022, the lowest level since statistics first became available in 1978.

Lu said women are shunning marriage because they believe it ties them to a “double burden” of household chores and their work.

“That is a problem shared across East Asia,” she said. “Women are often so angry at the gender bias in their daily lives. And many women are reading Ueno’s books and sharing their thoughts on them so they can reshape that anger in logical language with which to arm themselves.”

The #MeToo movement arose in China as well.

The country’s Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women was amended in 2022 to ban sexual harassment at workplaces and to obligate the protection of equal employment for women, among other things.

“I hope that digesting Ueno’s thoughts will help us generate and foster feminist thoughts of our own,” Lu said.