Critiquing the Discourse on Women in the Edo Era: Intertextual Studies of Ariyoshi’s Hanaoka Seishū No Tsuma (original) (raw)
Related papers
Women’s Voices and Patriarchal Hegemony of the Edo Period in Shinju Tenno Amijima (1720)
IZUMI
The Edo Period (1603-1868), known as the feudal era, lasted for nearly three centuries in Japan. Confucian teachings applied in all sectors of life had a great influence on the expansion of the patriarchal system in Japanese society at this time. Under the strict control of the Tokugawa shogunate government, the implementation of social class stratification was firmly established, including in the hierarchical relationship between men and women. The period of peace that occurred throughout the Edo period had contributed to a conducive situation for the rapid development of Japanese culture. Male artists were very dominant in the development of Japanese culture, and they were centred in big cities during this period. On the other hand, this era had become a dark age for women who did not get the opportunity to speak and create as men did. The female figures of the Edo period were presented in the works of male writers. This study focuses on examining women’s voices in the works of th...
The State of Women and Women’s Education at the Beginning of Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1651)
IZUMI
This study attempted to draw a more critical analysis of women and their education at the beginning of the Tokugawa period. Tokugawa, or the Edo period in Japan, was a warrior society. It is one of the most studied fields for many scholars as it highlighted the feature of Japanese culture until today. In Japan, women’s studies began in the 1970s, which is considered late than Western. Recently, there is still limited research regarding women’s education activities being conducted under the Tokugawa shogunate. This study engaged historical methods, namely heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and historiography. At the beginning of the Tokugawa era, women’s education was varied based on social status and families’ occupation. The gap of education between men and women and noblewomen and commoners is a mystifying matter as some historical accounts address the contrary facts. Many historical writings indicate that women at the beginning of the Tokugawa period experienced great repress...
Uncharted Waters: Intellectual Life in the Edo Period
2012
As those working in the field well know, publishers today tend to refuse conference volumes and festschrifts. Such books, they argue, don't sell and don't hang together to make an argument: they are bitty and work towards no common purpose. This little jewel of a collection proves the error of such views, and Brill is to be credited for taking it on. That said, they are charging almost $150 for it, so they clearly also feel this festschrift is the nearest thing to a financial non-starter. If so, it is a pity. At least, libraries will buy it, and this book deserves to be widely read. Scholars and students of the Edo Period will be acquainted with-or at least with the name of-'Wim' Boot. He has been an inspiration over many decades, not only in his home institution of Leiden University in the Netherlands, but across Europe, Japan and North America. Though I never personally studied with Professor Boot, I read his Ph.D. when it came out in 1983 (I was still an undergraduate). It was one of the reasons for my determining to try for a Ph.D. myself. From that initial statement on Neo-Confucianism (actually, not too "initial," as he had already published several pieces), Professor Boot went on to cover a wide range of topics relating to Japanese intellectual history in the Edo period, though, as the title of this book makes clear, he and his students are interested in intellectual life: intellectual history is not, and should never be, they propose, deprived of its social meanings. Professor Boot's inspirational qualities and generosity as a teacher-and his rigor too-are evinced in the eleven papers that make up this collection, coming from the desks of experts from many national and cultural backgrounds across the world. The book begins with a slightly straw-man denial of the old notion of a static life of the mind on the Edo period. Throughout, there are a few moments when the authors do not seem quite clear about their audience. It is explained to us that Tokugawa Ieyasu was deified, and we are told who Maruyama Ōkyo was, though I doubt anyone who picks up this volume will need to be informed of such matters. Still, for the most part, readers are led by each essay directly into a pithy scholarly debate, which is articulated both for its own interest, and also as an avenue to understanding a wider issue or conundrum. The result is a set of pieces that very much hang together within their diversity. Being a collection of what Professor Boot's students happen to be working on, this is somewhat random, and of course, not all is covered. As an art historian, I regret that visual matters are all but totally ignored, as if they had no role to play in the "intellectual life" of the Edo period.
The Journal of Asian Studies, 2012
In addition, Laver's main thesis-that the Tokugawa goal in foreign relations centered on counteracting the power of daimyo in the Kyushu region-deals with a fascinating aspect of foreign relations early in the Edo period that has not been comprehensively explored in English. Nonetheless Laver tells us little about how Kyushu domains themselves actually viewed and executed the 1635 edicts to help us determine how, as he asserts, Tokugawa leaders gained the upper hand in supervising foreign relations for the Japanese state. He instead provides discussions of events in and around Nagasaki, such the Dutch move from Hirado and the Shimabara Rebellion. We therefore learn much about these important events and relations with outside parties more generally, but do not gain a firm understanding of the interplay between the bakufu and Kyushu domains. Overall this book offers an accessible overview of foreign relations in the first half of the seventeenth century and therefore would be useful in an undergraduate survey if a more reasonably priced paperback edition becomes available. But unfortunately it falls short in shedding new light on the course of foreign relations in the early Edo period.
Regendering The Literary and Buddhist Textual Tradition of Medieval Japan
2018
This article considers both the possibilities and limits of 'gender' for our analyses of medieval Japanese texts. It does so on the grounds that the conceptual category of gender and woman, body and agency, closely associated with it, were produced within the broader historical, cultural and religious context of Europe, and therefore do not travel seamlessly when brought to bear on non-Western pasts.
Edo: Arts of Japan's Last Shogun Age
Edo: Arts of Japan's Last Shogun Age, 2009
Paintings, prints, ceramics, lacquer ware, samurai paraphernalia, etc. in the collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.