Gerteis, Christopher

Christopher Gerteis

Crossref

Gendering Modern Japanese History. Edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. x, 632 pp. $60.00 (cloth); $25.00 (paper).

SOAS Research Online

Western studies on medieval Japanese religion in five clearly demarcated chaptersdealing with the Kumano pilgrimage as geographic space, as a variety of TendaiBuddhism, as a promise for rebirth after death, as a locus of imperial empower-ment, and as a way for women to be part of the Buddhist universe.The only objections to the book that can be raised concern matters that lieoutside the scope of this exemplary monograph. While Moerman, for example,refers to the fact that Kumano Buddhism represents a layer of religious activitythat covers a previous layer of imperial appropriation of the Kumano region asdescribed in the chronicles of the early Nara court, he never explains what itwas in Kumano that needed to be covered up so badly, first with a layer of imper-ial ideology, and then, if that were still not enough, with a layer of honji suijakuBuddhism on top. It is not very difficult, however, to imagine what this was, andMoerman himself spends quite a few pages of his chapter “Mortuary Practices”describing the local custom of voluntary suicide, known as Fudaraku tokai, or“Crossing the Sea to Mount Potala.” We have records dating back to theeighth century about sacrificial volunteers who were sent out from the beachat Nachi into the Kuroshio current to drift away to a certain death at sea and asupposed rebirth in paradise. How such voluntary suicides may have been inKumano’s pre- or protohistoric eras is suggested by a tale from the Uji shūi mono-gatari about a Fudaraku pilgrim who, at the last moment, had a change of heart.The crowds that had gathered to worship him, writes Moerman, “expedited hisrebirth by pelting him with stones, till in the end. … his head was split open”(p. 117). In other words, what we are really talking about is human sacrifice.It is surprising that, as a historian of religion, Moerman never makes the con-nection of the Kumano cult with clear traces of human sacrifice, sword worship(Takakuraji), and other early metallurgical traditions. At the other end of Moer-man’s chosen time frame, there is another curious lacuna in his presentation.After giving much attention to the painting that forms the point of departureand much of the gist of his book, Moerman never explains to us exactly whothe people were for whom these paintings were made—that is, the Kumano Bud-dhist nuns (bikuni) of early modern Japan. That, of course, would have involvedexpanding the temporal boundaries of his argument somewhat, but it would haveprovided his reader with a much better understanding of the social function ofthe painting, for which he has spent so much effort in providing an exegesis.REINIER H. HESSELINKUniversity of Northern IowaGendering Modern Japanese History. Edited by BARBARA MOLONY andKATHLEEN UNO. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. x,632 pp. $60.00 (cloth); $25.00 (paper).doi: 10.1017/S0021911808000466It has been a little over fifteen years since Gail Bernstein’s edited volumeRecreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University326 The Journal of Asian Studiesof California Press, 1991) launched several waves of English-language scholar-ship on the history of Japanese women. Yet, as Barbara Molony and KathleenUno acknowledge in their introduction to Gendering Modern JapaneseHistory, there is much more work to be done. This long-anticipated volume pro-vides an excellent survey of recent scholarship on the history of gender in modernJapan, and it begins the process of reshaping a scholarly discourse that has toooften made the term “woman” interchangeable with “gender.” Particularly note-worthy in this volume are the essays that examine gender through the analyticallenses of class, ethnicity, and culture.In sixteen essays divided into five sections, Gendering Modern JapaneseHistory surveys the influence of sex and gender on the history of Japan sincethe nineteenth century. The first three essays, grouped in a section titled“Gender, Selfhood, and Culture,” include Martha Tocco’s essay, which arguesthat educational practices during the Tokugawa era established important pre-cedents for women’s education, such as the pedagogical focus on domesticroles and the establishment of private academies for women, which are generallythought to be inventions of the Meiji era. Donald Roden’s essay examines howmanifestations of heroic manliness in Meiji, exemplified by both the long-deadshishi (men of high purpose) and the person of Saigō Takamori, contestedattempts to popularize notions of civil deportment by men of “culture andenlightenment,” such as Fukuzawa Yukichi. Finally, Barbara Sato’s essay exploresthe role of women’s publications in popularizing notions of self-improvementamong middle-class women seeking to become the “ideal woman” during the1920s.Mark Driscoll’s essay, in the second section, “Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality,”insightfully analyzes the role of sexologists in the construction of male sexualityduring the interwar era. The essays of Gregory M. Pflugfelder and SumikoOtsubo, which round out this section, stand among the best in the volume. Pflug-felder, whose early work recovered the history of male–male sexuality in modernJapan, focuses this essay on the role of women’s educational institutions in thedevelopment of “schoolgirl intimacy” during the early twentieth century. Pflug-felder’s incisive analysis of this provocative topic suggests interesting directionsfor further work. Otsubo’s essay makes a unique addition to the discourse onwomen’s reproductive rights by examining how an organization of elite andmiddle-class women sought to use the new science of eugenics as a means ofestablishing a legal context for women to regulate men’s sexual role in marriage.While Otsubo’s essay does not fully examine the significance of the negativeimpact of women’s participation in the interwar-era eugenics campaigns, heressay is invaluable for its recognition that women were both victims and perpe-trators of the eugenics laws of the prewar era.Barbara J. Brooks’s well-crafted essay in the third section, “Gender, Empire,and War,” explores the important subject of the extent to which representationsof sex and sexuality played a role in the construction of distinct identities for Japa-nese women living in the colonies of Korea and Manchuria. Brooks suggests thatmagazines published in and about Japanese women living in the colonies helpedin the construction of gender roles in Japan’s imperial outposts. I was particularlyBook Reviews—Japan 327intrigued by the essays of Theodore F. Cook, Jr., and Haruko Taya Cook.Drawing on both new and previously published materials, Theodore Cook con-structs a fresh examination of the role of soldiering in state-sponsored masculineprojects intended to bolster war efforts from the nineteenth to the twentiethcentury. Haruko Cook’s essay, on the other hand, examines how the wartimestate manipulated the mass death (gyokusai) of women at Saipan in propagandaat the end of the war. Her examination of the state’s representations of the masssuicide/murder of civilian women at Saipan as a means to provoke similarresponses in Okinawa is simply bone chilling and should become requiredreading for every student of modern Japan.Essays on the postwar corporate New Life movement by Andrew Gordonand the prewar textile labor market by Janet Hunter, in the fourth section,“Gender, Work, and Economy,” enhance the value of this volume by focusingon the crucial issue of gender and employment. W. Donald Smith’s essay onKorean women employed by the coal mining industry in Japan makes a particu-larly important contribution to both this collection and the fields of Japan laborand women’s studies. Despite occasionally awkward prose, Smith is to be com-mended for an essay that underscores the crucial role of Korean labor in thebuilding of modern Japan.The collection concludes with the fifth section, “Theorizing Gender,” whichincludes an essay by Molony on the role of the women’s rights movement indefining modernity during the late nineteenth century, and an essay by Unothat examines how the rhetoric of “good wife/wise mother” became an essentialtool for colonial expansion. Ayako Kano’s essay surveys the intellectual debatesabout feminism during the 1980s, and Setsu Shigematsu explores the work ofpop artist Uchida Shungiku in the context of three decades of feminist debatesabout the intercomplicity of art, capital, and sexuality in Japan. The last fouressays are all essential reading, and I was particularly impressed with Shigemat-su’s deft navigation of the complexity of meanings conveyed by and aboutUchida’s highly controversial 1993 novel Fazā fakkā (Father Fucker), amongother works that transgress many perceived norms of sexual and social propriety.In sum, this is an excellent collection of essays, but it is not without somelimitations. Only a minority of essays engage topics pertaining to men and mas-culinity, which is less a criticism and than an indication of how the field of Japa-nese gender studies can expand. Equally important, it lacks a substantialconcluding essay that might have situated the volume in a theoretical framework,informed by contemporary gender studies outside the Japan, as a means ofsuggesting new directions. That said, this is a well-crafted volume and one Ilook forward to assigning in my courses on the history of gender in modern Japan.CHRISTOPHER GERTEISCreighton University328 The Journal of Asian Studies

Review of 'Gendering Modern Japanese History' edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno

https://soas-repository.worktribe.com/file/339224/1/REVIEW_of__Molony_and_Uno%2C_Gendering_Modern_Japanese_History%2C_JAS%2C_65-1%2C_326-28.pdf

Review of 'Gendering Modern Japanese History' edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Crossref

SOAS Research Online