Salem Saberhagen wrote:

Does the word come with a different connotation in Japanese?

Bingo!  Feminisuto very much does not mean "feminist."  What seems to have happened is that Japanese borrowed the word "feminist" but somehow got the impression that it just meant "treating women properly."  And good behavior in Japan already involved treating women properly, in a gender-role-bound way, so that's the idea that the word got attached to.  "Chivalrous" is a very good translation for feminisuto: a chivalrous man treats women like a gallant knight or a dashing Southern gentleman would.  They're pretty little things who need protection and deserve the indulgence that we give to people who are weaker than us.

The Japanese word for a feminist is jokenronsha, made of kanji that mean "women's rights discourse person."  As far as I know, the English-derived word has not been reclaimed.

Last edited by satyreyes (08-24-2014 10:39:56 AM)

You bet!   Google Books may be ahead of Google Translate on this one.  I dug up an essay by one Keiko Tanaka in a book called "Unwrapping Japan: Society and Culture in Anthropological Perspective."  It's a 1992 anthology, so it's showing its age by now, but it contains this bit of sociology (or observational humor, depending on your perspective):

Keiko Tanaka wrote:

. . . [L]et us look at the following example of a caption used in a series of advertisements for Tokyo Gas, one of the city gas companies.  This series was so successful that it won the 1984 Asahi Advertising Prize.

Toshi gasu-tie feminisuto ne.
City   gas       feminist     tag-q
"City Gas is a feminist, isn't it?"

Why is the gas company called a feminist?  The answer may lie in the pictures shown on the advertisements.  One of them shows a large pot boiling over on a gas cooker.  Another depicts a woman wearing an apron and holding a plate, doing the washing up.  Yet another shows the same woman's reflection in a mirror, putting on lipstick.  She is not looking at herself, for her attention seems to be diverted by something else.  These advertisements are for a gas cooker with a special sensor, which automatically stops the gas supply when the fire is extinguished, a gas boiler with similar sensor equipment, and an alarm for the gas leaks.  These are all new pieces of apparatus produced by the company.  The company is described as "feminist" on the grounds that it has come up with these instruments to help women with their housework.

Link!

just to add a little more, from  jisho

    フェミニスト    1: man who indulges women (from feminist); gentleman

there are 2 definitions but this is the one you are looking for I guess