Author Institution: University of California, Irvin

Walthall, Anne

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MAY 2000             EARLY MODERN JAPAN                  2   From the Editors' Desk  編纂者から  Back Issues and Publication Schedule:     When Early Modern Japan resumed publica-tion last year, two issues arose that we did not fully anticipate.   The first was a large number of requests for back issues.  As editors we were very pleased with the level of interest in EMJ that these requests revealed.  At the moment, how-ever, we have very few copies of back issues left.  Other than file copies, most are completely gone. To ameliorate this situation, we plan to place ear-lier issues of Oboegaki (EMJ’s predecessor) and EMJ on our web site in the near future.  Please check:  http://emjnet.history.ohio-state.edu/.     On a different note, we found that a number of subscribers (especially libraries) were confused by our use of a new volume number.  Where, they wondered, was Volume VI, Number 2?  The answer was that VI:2 was never published.  We also made a decision that for the moment, we would publish only one issue per year, but that all subscribers would continue to get two issues for their standard subscription.  However, in addi-tion to this misunderstanding, we found that our record-keeping software was also geared to sub-scriptions based on a two-issue volume.  Con-sequently, in order to minimize our potential confusion over when subscriptions expire, we have numbered our last issue Volume VII:2 and this issue Volume VIII:1.     The editors would very much like to publish on a semi-annual basis.  That, however, depends on the volume of suitable material that is submitted to us.  EMJ provides a flexible forum in which to publish a variety of professionally oriented material that goes beyond standard scholarly arti-cles and book reviews.  Two examples appear in this issue:  The review of early modern Japanese women’s history that begins in the next column, and the commentary on the NHK historical drama of the Akō rōnin.  We encourage readers to submit manuscripts on current developments in the field in Japan, teaching and pedagogy, notices of books of interest, exhibitions and other fare that does not typically fall within the scope of other professional journals in the field.  Editors’ e-mail and postal address are noted on the inside of the front cover of the journal.   The Study of Women in Early Modern Japan:  An  Introduction with Bibliography Anne Walthall  University of California, Irvine  As a field, the English-language study of women in Japanese history is barely ten years old.  This despite early attempts to trace the history of women in Japan, one by Mary R. Beard, The Force of Women in Japanese History (Washing-ton, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1953) that includes a chapter on the Tokugawa period (pp. 94-140) and the other by Joyce Ackroyd, “Women in Feudal Japan” in Transactions of the Asiatic So-ciety of Japan 3rd series vol. 7 (1959).  Follow-ing a hiatus of over twenty years, a few books and articles began to appear, heralded by Edwin McClellan, Woman in the Crested Kimono:  The Life of Shibue Io and Her Family Drawn from Mori Ogai's 'Shibue Chusai' (Yale University Press, 1985) and two special editions of the Journal of Family History in 1983 and 1986 con-taining articles on family composition drawn largely from demographic research.  The first books on nineteenth century women such as A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugi-moto (Doubleday Doran and Company, 1934) and Facing Two Ways: The Story of My Life by Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto (Stanford University Press, 1984) dealt almost entirely with life in the Meiji period.  In these cases the focus was on individual women and the vicissitudes they had to overcome. The 1990s has seen women's history go in a number of directions.  Drawing on the work of Japanese scholars, several historians have sug-gested that relations between family members in peasant households showed a strong degree of interdependence between husband and wife and considerable flexibility in assigning gender roles. (For examples in English from the Japanese side, see Ueno Chizuko, “Genesis of the Urban Housewife,” Japan Quarterly (April-June 1987): 130-142 and Fumie Kumagai, “Modernization MAY 2000             EARLY MODERN JAPAN                  3   and the Family in Japan” Journal of Social His-tory 11.4 (1986):371-382.) One leader in the field, Laurel Cornell, published “Peasant Women and Divorce in Preindustrial Japan” in Signs:  Jour-nal of Women in Culture and Society 15.4 (1990): 710-732 that demonstrated how early modern patterns of divorce differed from their modern counterparts.  On the other hand, Kate Wildman Nakai's translation of Women of Mito reminds us that samurai household continued to practice sex segregation.  In more recent years, other schol-ars have gone beyond issues of family composi-tion to examine women writers and painters, medical practices, and sexuality.  One recent trend has been the appearance of more work by Japanese scholars translated into English.   The following list is as comprehensive as pos-sible, although I have omitted articles dealing with household size, household composition and the debate over infanticide.  If I have inadver-tently overlooked any articles, please inform me and the Early Modern Japan listserve. This is a field in which much of the most interesting recent work has been presented as conference papers rather than appearing in print. I urge my col-leagues to remedy this situation at the same time reminding readers that the backlog of unpub-lished work makes any attempt to survey the field outdated as soon as it appears.  Bibliography  Ariyoshi Sawako. 1978. The Doctor's Wife.  Trans. by Wakako Hironaka and Ann Siller Kostant.  Kodansha International. Bernstein, Gail Lee, ed. 1991. Recreating Japa-nese Women, 1600-1945. The University of California Press. Bouchy, Anne. 1999. "The Chisel of the Women Divers and the Bow of the Feudal Lords of the Sea:  The Dual Structure of Labor and Village Organization in Women's Divers' Societies--A Case Study of the Town of Ijika (City of Toba, Mie Prefecture)." Gender and Japanese His-tory. Ed. by Wakita Haruko, Anne Bouchy and Ueno Chizuko. University of Osaka Press. vol. 2. pp. 349-390. Bradstock, Timothy R. and Judith N. Rabinovitch. 1997. An Anthology of Kanshi (Chinese Verse) by Japanese Poets of the Edo Period (1603-1868). Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. Burns, Susan. 1996. "Bodies Possessed and Hearts Disordered:  Sexuality and Madness in Edo Japan."  Imagining/Reading Eros. Ed. by Sumie Jones.  Indiana University. pp. 72-75. --------. 1998. "Bodies and Borders:  Syphilis, Prostitution and the Nation in Nineteenth Cen-tury Japan."  U.S.-Japan Women's Journal no. 15 (December): 3-30. Cornell, Laurel L. 1981. “Peasant Family and Inheritance in a Japanese Community: 1671-1980.” Ph.D. diss. Johns Hopkins Uni-versity. --------. 1984. “Why are there no Spinsters in Ja-pan?” Journal of Family History. 9.4 (Winter): 326-339. --------. 1991. “The Deaths of Old Women: Folk-lore and Differential Mortality in Nineteenth Century Japan.” Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945. pp. 71-87. De Becker, J.E. 1960. Yoshiwara:  The Nightless City. New York: Frederick Publications. Ema Saiko. 1997. Breeze Through Bamboo: Kanshi of Ema Saiko.  Trans. by Hiroaki Sato.  Columbia University Press. Fister, Patricia. 1991. "Female Bunjin:  The Life of Poet-Painter Ema Saiko." Recreating Japa-nese Women: 1600-1945. pp.108-130. --------. 1998. Japanese Women Artists, 1600-1900. Lawrence, Kansas.  Spencer Mu-seum of Art. Griswold, Susan. 1995. “Sexuality, Textuality and the Definitionof the “Feminine” in Late Eight-eenth-Century Japan.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. no. 9:59-76. Hardacre, Helen. 1999. "The Shaman and her Transformation:  The Construction of Gender in Motifs of Religious Action."  Gender and Japanese History pp. 87-119. Hauser, William B. 1986. "Why So Few?  Women Household Heads in Osaka Chonin Families."  Journal of Family History 11 no. 4:343-52.   Hayami, Akira. 1985. "Rural Migration and Fer-tility in Tokugawa Japan:  The Village of Ni-shijo, 1773-1868." Family and Population in East Asian History, ed. by Susan B. Hanley and Arthur P. Wolf. Stanford University Press. pp. 110-132.. MAY 2000             EARLY MODERN JAPAN                  4   --------.1987.  "Another Fossa Magna:  Propor-tion Marrying and Age at Marriage in Late Nineteenth Century Japan." Journal of Social History 12.-13:57-72.. Ihara, Saikaku. 1963. The Life of an Amorous Woman. Trans. by Ivan Morris. Unesco. --------.1956. Five Women who Loved Love. Trans. by WM. Theodore De Bary. Charles E. Tuttle Co. Johnson, Lee. 1988. "The Life and Art of Otagaki Rengetsu." M.A. Thesis, University of Kansas. Jones, Sumie. 1996.  Imagining/Reading Eros. Indiana University. Jugaku, Akiko. 1999. "Nyobo kotoba:  A Focus Point for Women's Language and Women's History." Gender and Japanese History . vol. 2. pp. 131-161. Kaibara, Ekken. 1979. The way of contentment and Women and wisdom of Japan : Greater Learning for Women.Washington, D.C. : Uni-versity Publications of America.                Keene, Donald. 1989. "Some Diaries by Women," "The Diary of Iseki Takako." Travel-ers of a Hundred Ages:  The Japanese as Re-vealed Through 1,000 Years of Diaries. New York:  Henry Holt and Company. Lebra, Joyce. 1991. "Women in an All-Male In-dustry: The Case of Sake Brewer Tatsu'uma Kiyo."  Recreating Japanese Women: 1600-1945. pp.131-148. Marceau, Lawrence E. 1994. "Women in Sai-kaku:  Good, Bad, or Victims of Circum-stance?"  Oboegaki 4.2 (December): 2-11. Markus, Andrew. 1996. "Prostitutes and Prosper-ity in the Works of Terakado Seiken." Imagin-ing/Reading Eros. pp. 37-46. Ochiai, Emiko. 1999. "The Reproductive Revolu-tion at the End of the Tokugawa Period." Women and Class in Japanese History. pp. 187-216. Ohara, Tomie. 1986. A Woman Called En. Trans.  by Kazuko Furuhata and Janet Smith. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ooms, Herman. 1996. "Mountains of Resent-ment." Tokugawa Village Practice:  Class,Status, Power, Law.  University of California Press. 11-70. Rexroth, Kenneth and Ikuko Atsumi. 1977. “Haiku Poets of the Tokugawa Period.” Women Poets of Japan. New York: New Directions Publishing Company. pp. 49-59. Robertson, Jennifer. 1991." The Shingaku Woman: Straight from the Heart.” Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945. pp. 88-107. Rogers, Lawrence. 1994. “She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: Shinjū and Shikidō Okagami.” Monumenta Nipponica. 49.1 (Spring):31-60. Sakai, Naoki. 1999. "Feeling and Sentiment:  On Fujitani Matsue's Poetics of Choreography." Gender and Japanese History  vol. 2. pp. 163-195. Seigle, Cecilia Segawa. 1986. "The Impact of Yoshiwara Courtesans on An'ei-Tenmei Edo." Japan Foundation Newsletter 14.2 (July): 12-16. --------. 1993. Yoshiwara:  The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan.  University of Hawaii Press. --------. 1999. "Komoe Hiroko and Tokugawa Ienobu."  Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (December). --------. 1999. "Wedding Documents of Tokugawa Shoguns' Biological and Adoptive Daughters:  Shogun Tsunayoshi's Autocratic Tradition." Japan Foundation Newsletter 25.2 (Jan):8-11. Skinner, G. William.1993. "Conjugal Power in Tokugawa Japanese Families:  A Matter of Life or Death." Sex and Gender Hierarchies. ed. by Barbara Diane Miller. Cambridge University Press, 1993. Sone, Hiromi. 1999. "Conceptions of Geisha:  A Case Study of the City of Miyazu:  Focus on Bakumatsu." Gender and Japanese History.  vol. 1. pp. 213-233. --------. 1999. "Prostitution and Public Authority in Early Modern Japan" Women and Class in Japanese History. pp. 169-186. Sugano, Noriko. "The State Indoctrination of Fil-ial Piety:  Filial Sons and Daughters in the Kōgiroku of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen-tury Japan."  Gender and Text in Pre-Modern China, Korea, and Japan:  The Making and Unmaking of Confucian Worlds. ed. by Dorothy Ko.  Forthcoming. Tadano, Makuzu.  "Solitary Thoughts."  Trans. by Jan Goodwin, Elizabeth Leicester, Bettina Oka, Yuki Terasawa and Anne Walthall.  Forthcoming. Takagi Tadashi. 1993. The "Divorce Temple" Mantokuji Museum trans. by Diana Wright. MAY 2000             EARLY MODERN JAPAN                  5   Ojimamachi, Enkiridera Mantokuji Shiryōkan. Tonomura, Hiromi, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko, eds. 1999. Women and Class in Japa-nese History, University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. Ueno, Chizuko. 1996."Lusty Pregnant Women and Erotic Mothers:  Representations of Fe-male Sexuality in Erotic Art in Edo." Imagin-ing/Reading Eros. pp. 110-114. Uno, Kathleen. 1991. “Women and Changes in the Household Division of Labor.”  Recreat-ing Japanese Women. pp. 17-41. Walthall, Anne. 1990. "The Family Ideology of Rural Entrepreneurs in Early Nineteenth Cen-tury Japan." Journal of Social History 23.3 (Spring): 463-483. --------. 1991. "The Life Cycle of Farm Women in Tokugawa Japan."Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945. pp.42-70.  --------. 1994. "Devoted"Devoted Wives/Unruly Women:  Invisible Presence in the History of Japanese Social Protest"  Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20.1 (Au-tumn):106-136.  Reprinted in Barbara Laslett, Johanna Brenner and Yesim Arat eds., Rethink-ing the Political: Gender, Resistance and the State (University of Chicago Press, 1995) pp.282-312.  --------. 1997. "The Cult of Sensibility in Rural Tokugawa Japan:  Love Poetry by Matsuo Taseko" Journal of the American Oriental So-ciety 117.1 (Spring): 70-86. --------. 1998. The Weak Body of a Useless Woman:  Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Resto-ration, University of Chicago Press, 1998. --------. 1999. "De la fille de paysan à l'épouse de samourï: Les lettres de Yoshino Michi." Anna-les:  Histoire sciences sociales 54.1 (jan-vier-février): 55-86. --------. 1999. "Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration." Women and Class in Japanese History. pp.217-240.  Wigmore, John Henry. 1982. Law and Justice in Tokugawa Japan Part VIII-A:  Persons: Legal Precedents.  University of Tokyo Press. Wright, Diana.  "Mantokuji:  More than a Di-vorce Temple." Japanese Women and Bud-dhism. ed. by Barbara Ruch. Center for Japa-nese Studies, University of Michigan.  Forth-coming. --------. 1997. "Severing the Karmic 'Ties that Bind': The Divorce Temple Mantokuji" Monu-menta Nipponica 52.3 (Autumn): 357-80. Yamakawa, Kikue. 1992. Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life. trans by Kate Wildman Nakai.University of Tokyo Press, 1992; Stanford University Press, 1998. Yokota, Fuyuhiko.1999. "Imagining Working Women in Early Modern Japan." Women and Class in Japanese History. pp. 153-168.   The End of History?   Sunday Night on NHK B.M. Bodart-Bailey  Faculty of Comparative Culture, Otsuma Women’s University, Tokyo; formerly,  Faculty of Economics, Kobe University    When I was asked to write a short piece about the reaction of people within my environment here at Kobe University to the year-long rekishi taiga dorama 歴史大河ドラマ, as NHK’s Sun-day night history extravaganza is known, I met with unexpected difficulties. Very few of the people I come into contact with have actually seen it.    This took me by surprise. After all, it is Japan National Television’s (NHK) largest and most expensive production, running a full year every Sunday night at peak viewing time. The title and theme were well publicized in advance, and so were the actors selected for the various roles. The location for shooting frequently turns into a highly popular tourist site. When the subject was Nobunaga some years back, the 500,000th tourist to visit the set made the evening news. But the massive stone walls that Nobunaga erected to support the splendor of Azuchi Castle at Lake Biwa were virtually deserted when I visited them around that time. And no doubt this will remain so, unless those who want to erect a replica of the 

The Study of Women in Early Modern Japan: An Introduction with Bibliography

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