Norms and texts for women's education in Tokugawa Japan

Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 193-218

  Tocco, Martha C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949382863     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
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References (63)

1. Monjo, pp. 581-82. Later letters that remain are in English.
2. Sugano Noriko, "Shomin josei no kyoiku," in Nihon joseishi, ed. Wakita Haruko,Hayashi Reiko, and Nagahara Kazuko (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1987), pp. 150-51; and R. P. Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965),pp. 256-70.
3. Ochanomizu joshi daigaku hyakunenshi," in Ochanomizujoshi daigaku hyakunenshi, ed.Ochanomizu joshi daigaku hyakunenshi kanko iinkai (Tokyo: Ochanomizu joshi daigaku,1984), p. 14
4. Ishikawa Ken, Joshi yd oraimono bunken mokuroku (Tokyo: Dainihon yu benkai kodansha,1946), pp. 1-13. See also Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," in Kaibara Ekiken, Mum Kyuso, vol. 34 of Mhon shiso taikei, ed. Araki Kengo and Inoue Tadashi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970-85), p. 531
5. Sugano, "Shomin josei," pp. 150-55; Ishikawa Ken, Terakoya (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1960); Dore, Education, pp. 252-70; Richard Rubinger, Private Academies of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). By midcentury educational advisers in a few Tokugawa domains recommended establishing domain academies for girls (hanjogakko) to parallel those for boys, and a few domains began to establish such academies. See Naka Arata, Uchida Tadashi, and Mori Takeo, eds., "Koto jogakko," in Gakko no rekishi, vol. 3, Chu gakko, koto gakko no rekishi (Tokyo: Daiichi hoki shuppan, 1979), pp. 79-85
6. Hayashi Reiko, "Edoki no josei gunzo," in Edoki josei no ikikata, vol. 10 of Jimbutsu Nikon nojoseishi, ed. Enchi Fumiko (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1977)
7. Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570-1680 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)
8. Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," pp. 531-45
9. Kaibara Ekiken, Nyoshi o oshiyuru ho, in Tojo kun, Wazoku dojikun, ed. and rev. Ishikawa Ken (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1962), pp. 264-80.
10. Kaibara Ekiken, Yamato zokkun, trans. Mary Evelyn Tucker, in Mary Evelyn Tucker,Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism: The Life and Thought of Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), p. 134.
11. Quoted in Joyce Ackroyd, "Women in Feudal Japan," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 3d ser., 7 (November 1959): 56
12. Dore, Education, p. 333, gives the date of Naniwde as 1779. Herman Ooms, Charismatic Bureaucrat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 22-24, gives a date nearer to1775, when Matsudaira was sixteen
13. For an introduction to Japanese adaptations of Neo-Confucian thought in the Tokugawa period, see Masao Maruyama, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1974); and Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology
14. Ishikawa Ken, "Hakko no kotoba," in Ko oral, vol. i, pt. i, of Mhon kyokasho taikei oraihen, ed. Ishikawa Ken and Ishikawa Matsutaro, pp. 1-2. In the Meiji period, such texts were renamed kyokasho (textbooks) by the Ministry of Education
15. Ishikawa Ken, Joshiyo oraimono, pp. i-10. Basic instructional writings often had no gender designation and were meant to be read by everyone. Some were directed specifically at girls and women, others specifically at boys and men. According to Ishikawa Ken,neither women nor men exclusively read only gender-appropriate texts. Both read texts for women, texts for men, and general texts
16. Ishikawa Matsutaro, ed., Nihon kyokasho taikei oraihen, vol. 15, Joshi yo, p. 12. Ishikawa Ken, Joshiyo oraimono, pp. 1-2
17. Ishikawa Ken, Joshiyo oraimono, pp. 1-2. Ishikawa Matsutaro, Joshiyo, p. 12. The assessments of pre-Tokugawa women's texts by Ishikawa Ken and Ishikawa Matsutaro are sketchy and do not link women's educational practices to the history of women in earlier times. Other studies document aspects of Heian or Kamakura life in which elite women's education played an important role. Heian-period histories note the pervasive influence elite women authors exerted on the production of classical literary forms. Kamakura-period historians document the importance of elite women's participation in almost every aspect of Kamakura institutional life through their extensive involvement in land transactions, their voluminous wills, and the numerous lawsuits they brought. Although they do not discuss elite women's education directly, Jeffrey Mass, Hitomi Tonumura, and Haruko Wakita suggest either that elite medieval women's educational practices went beyond beauty, arts, and social graces or that education in those things, which were intended to "prepare older girls and teenagers for marriage," had importance for elite women as fiscal and legal actors. See Mass, Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura Soryo System (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Tonomura, "Women and Inheritance in Japan's Early Warrior Society," Comparative Studies in Society and History 32 (July 1990): 592-623; and Wakita, "Marriage and Property in Premodern Japan from the Perspective of Women's History," Journal of Japanese Studies 10, no. i (Winter 1984): 77-99
18. Ishikawa Matsutaro, Joshiyo, pp. 13-14. He cites as examples Joshi kun by Kumazawa Banzan (1619-91), Hiragana retsujo den by Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705), and Honcho retsujo den by Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848)
19. Ishikawa Ken, Joshiyo oraimono, pp. 6-13. The 1,109 editions of women's texts from the Tokugawa period that were cataloged by Ishikawa Ken in 1946 were found to be distributed across the four categories: 377 morals texts, 207 letter-writing texts, 136 almanacs, and 389 academic texts. See Ishikawa Matsutaro, Joshiyo, pp. 18-36
20. Ishikawa Matsutaro, Joshiyo, pp. 11-18, 46. Ishikawa Matsutaro connects the appearance of these new morality handbooks for women to the Tokugawa-era consolidation of the family system. He argues that this consolidation was essential to the centralization of the Tokugawa state and that a specific type of married woman was essential for the consolidation of the family. He also maintains that in this period the goal of women's education became training as household managers (shufu) rather than as elegant, beautifully groomed, dilettante brides
21. Ishikawa Matsutaro, Joshiyo, p. 46. For the Tokugawa period as a whole, however,handbooks on female morality outnumbered any other single type of women's textbook
22. Fr a late-nineteenth-century English translation of Women's High Education, see Basil Hall Chamberlain, "Educational Literature for Japanese Women," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, n.s., 10, no. 3 (1878): 325-43. Chamberlain criticizes the work ascribed to Kaibara in his article
23. Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," pp. 531-45. The full citation read, Onna dmgaku takarabako-Kaibara Atsunobu, literally, "the Onna daigaku treasure chest-Kaibara Atsunobu" (punctuation added)
24. Ekiken Kaibara sensei nobe; Kaibara sensei nojussaku Onna daigaku. See Ishikawa Matsutaro,"Onna daigaku ni tsuite," pp. 532-34.
25. Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," p. 532. For an English analysis of Kaibara Ekiken's philosophy, see Tucker, Moral and Spiritual Cultivation. A discussion of Wa- Zoku doji kun appears on pp. 114-21 and includes a brief description of Kaibara's thought about teaching women. This description conflated Onna daigaku and Nyoshi o oshiyuru ho and mistakenly suggests that Kaibara was the author of Onna daigaku
26. Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," pp. 544-45. It is now generally accepted by the Japanese academic community that Kaibara Ekiken did not write Onna daigaku. Here and elsewhere, Ishikawa argues that the ideals of women's education and the domestic role presented in Onna daigaku represent a shift in Tokugawa thought from Kaibara's humanistic approach to one that emphasized women's duties as household managers, occasioned by new political pressures on women's roles in the family
27. Onna daigaku, an example of ajokun used as a copybook, is reprinted in Kaibara Ekiken, Muro Kyuso, pp. 202-27.
28. Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," p. 532.
29. Global terms of comparison such as "lower" and "higher" refer to the status of women in history as if it were a unitary construct. They therefore artificially consolidate different women's experiences into one totalizing generalization. All women's lives do not change at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree. While some women's "positions"might have been "lower" in the Tokugawa period, others' lives remained unchanged and still others' lives improved
30. Onna daigaku takarabako, reprinted in Kyoiku, vol. 4 of Mihonfujin mondai shiryo shusei, ed. Mitsui Tametomo (Tokyo: Domesu shuppan, 1976), pp. 99-102
31. Chamberlain, "Educational Advice Literature for Women." The women's handbook Onna imagawa takes its name from the advice literature written by the fourteenth-century warrior and poet Imagawa Ryoshun
32. Basil Hall Chamberlain, "A Translation of the Dou-zhi keu: Teachings for the Young,"Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 9 (1881): 223-48. An alternative romanization for dou-zhi keu is dojikyo
33. For an example of exhortations directed at samurai males, see Yamaga Soko, The Way of the Samurai, in Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. i, ed. and trans. Ryusaku Tsunoda et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958)
34. Although they occupied the same moral world, they did not occupy the same position in that world
35. This term is taken from Chamberlain, "Educational Literature for Japanese Women.
36. Joseph Levenson, Modern China and Its Confucian Past (New York: Doubleday, 1964)
37. For a discussion of the varied styles of presentation in editions of Onna daigaku, see Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," pp. 533-41
38. Regional editions of Onna daigaku appeared in Sendai in 1807, according to Ishikawa.See his "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," pp. 534-35.
39. Sugano, "Shomin josei," pp. 150-55; Dore, Education, pp. 229, 257, 264
40. Dore, Education, p. 205 passim.
41. See, for example, Yamazaki, Tsuda Umeko, pp. 23-25.
42. Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, A Daughter of the Samurai (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1926;rpt. 1990), p. 17.
43. Yamakawa Kikue, Buke no josei, reprinted in Tamakawa Kikue shu, vol. 10 (Tokyo:Iwanami shoten, 1946-81). The pre- and postwar socialist Yamakawa Kikue (1890-1980)drew on family reminiscences and the diaries and records left by her grandfather to record the daily life of Tokugawa samurai women. For an English translation of this work, see Yamakawa Kikue, Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life, trans. Kate Wildman Nakai (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992)
44. Compilation of the multivolume historical record Dai Nihon shi was begun in 1657 by the Mito daimyo, Tokugawa Mitsukuni ([628-1700), and it was finally completed in 1906
45. Yamakawa, Buke no josei, p. 25. The details of Chise's life are drawn from Buke no josei
46. According to Ishikawa Ken's classification system, these four texts can be classified as follows: Onna Imagawa, moral guide, first published circa 1692; Onna daigaku, moral guide,first published circa 1716 [sic]; Onna teikin, calligraphy, composition, and manners, first published circa 1661; Onna kokyo, moral guide, first published circa 1656, as an abridged version of Kokyo, the Classic of Filial Piety
47. For a review of domain academy education, see Dore, Education, pp. 124-52.
48. Chise's studies of the Shin Kokinshu-one of the main texts of the national learning school, which emphasized original Japanese classics over texts based on imported Chinese philosophy-augmented the standard educational program. For texts used in kokugaku academies,see Rubinger, Private Academies, pp. 158-73.
49. Hatoyama Haruko, Jijoden, reissued as vol. 7 of Mhonjm nojiden (Tokyo: Heibonsha,1981), pp. 327-29. The details of Hatoyama's life were taken from this autobiography
50. Hatoyama, Jijoden, p. 330.
51. Sugimoto, Daughter, pp. 17,19. Sugimoto recalled that her training in Confucian classics included the Four Books of Confucius.
52. For a discussion of glossing of Tokugawa-era Chinese texts, see Dore, Education, pp.127-38; for glossing Chinese characters in girls' texts, see Ishikawa Matsutaro, "Onna daigaku ni tsuite," pp. 531-45. A reproduction of a 1733 edition of Onna daigaku with glossing appears in this same volume, pp. 206-27
53. Walthall, Anne, "The Life Cycle of Farm Women," in Re-creating Japanese Women,ed. Gail Bernstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 46-50
54. This discussion is based on the excerpts and analysis of the two diaries presented in Hayashi, "Edoki no josei gunzo" pp. 219-26. Hayashi cites volume 5 of the multivolume history of Wakayama City, Wakayama-shi shi, as her source for the texts of the two diaries
55. Mine's diary also suggests the close relationship between biological mother and wet nurse. When Mine's six-year-old son fell against the kotatsu and injured his hand, Mine went o notify his former wet nurse of his injuries before she went to the local pharmacist for medicine.Hayashi, "Edoki no josei gunzo," p. 223
56. Takai Hiroshi, "Tempoki no aru shonen to shqjo no kyoyo keisei katei no kenkyu," pt. i, Gumma daigaku kyoiku gakubu kiyo:Jimbun kagaku hen 13 (1964): 139-56. This series of articles continues through nine parts (vol. 23,1973), entitled in English by the author, "A Study of the Process of the Acquirement of Culture by Motojiro Yoshida (boy) and Ito Yoshida (girl) in the Tempo-era (1830-1844)." See also Hayashi Reiko, "Edoki no josei gunzo," pp.209-46. See also Sugano, "Shomin josei," pp. 150-54.
57. Both excerpts are quoted in Hayashi, "Edoki no josei gunzo," pp. 213-14
58. Hayashi, "Edoki no josei gunzo," p. 218. Ito and Yasubee's son took the name Tachibana Michiyasu; he became a middle-Meiji-era kokugakusha
59. Rural women's access to education depended on family economics and the location of their home village. Female literacy was lowest in the remotest villages and hamlets of Tokugawa Japan and highest in urban and suburban areas
60. Tokyo-to Setagaya-ku kyoiku iinkai, Oba Misa no nikki (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Setagaya-ku kyoiku iinkai, 1988), vol. i, pp. 285-86. Although Misa's family was a very old one, with records dating back to the mid-sixteenth century, it was a commoner family of farmers, albeit farmers of the highest class. See also Tokyo-to Setagaya-ku kyoiku iinkai, Setagayajoseishi (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Setagaya-ku kyoiku iinkai, 1980), vol. i, pp. 151-59 ff. The following discussion of Oba Misa's life is taken mainly from Oba Misa no nikki, vol. I.
61. Oba Misa no nikki, vol. i, pp. 67-68. The marriage took place in 1862.
62. In her diary Misa recorded special assistance, social calls, and gifts received. She noted gifts prepared for exchange and recorded reciprocating calls and gifts
63. Setagayajoseishi, vol. i, pp. 157-60. Misa's husband, Yoichi, died before they had a male child to assume the hereditary post of daikan. Misa recorded in her diary her efforts to ensure the continuation of an heir in this position. After Yoichi's death, Misa's brother became the last daikan of Setagaya 770.