The Hidden Sun

Women Of Modern Japan

Dorothy Robins-mowry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367292799
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000302158
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Ever since Japan and the West discovered one another, Western observers have extolled the surface virtues of Japanese women but attended very little to what they are really like. In this new, balanced view of the role of Japanese women in their country's swiftly changing society, Dr. Robins-Mowry destroys the Western stereotype of the shy, perhaps

Part 1
Background: The Loom of History

Illustration opposite: Lady Murasaki, author of the The Tale of Genji, the world's first novel, sits at her writing table facing out onto her garden. Illustration courtesy Ise Grand Shrine.

I would like the rest of the world to study Japanese history so that they will understand the background of today's Japanese women. Unlike America, where men and women joined together in founding the country, Japan has been a country of men. The quickest way to discover this is to read Japanese history.

—Community Leader, Fukuoka, Spring 1972

Past and present mingle freely in Japanese daily life

At no time is this more apparent than during the observances for New Year, the most important holiday of the year. Tolling temple bells ring out at midnight to exorcise the one hundred and eight Buddhist evils. Family members stop routine daily chores to travel the length and breadth of Japan for traditional reunions. In the spirit of the event, modern young women shed their short skirts and workaday uniforms. They revert to the time-honored, gaily flowered kimono, enveloping shrugs, and tinsel hair decorations worn proudly as they promenade the shrine walkways or gather with companions in coffee shops and restaurants. Their change of dress to honor the season symbolizes the ease with which the habits of the past intertwine with the customs of the present. The ongoing traditions weave as naturally into modem living as the colorful skeins of silk interlace to form patterns in the brocaded obi sashes that tie the kimonos of the celebrating Japanese women.

At other times of the year, in day-to-day encounters, a graceful kimono is less likely to be on view to signal to the foreign observer the juxtaposition of old and new. Nonetheless, the lingering forces of history and culture are subtly present to guide thinking and action. Often, the individual woman may not fully realize the basis of her own actions. She knows only that this is the Japanese way.

The traditional Japanese way embraces the heritage of centuries. The modern Japanese way evolved during the last one hundred years under the impact of a series of revolutionary changes. First, Emperor Meiji and his kindred modernizers superimposed new ideas and revamped methods. Then came General Douglas Mac Arthur and the Occupation policies and programs. In the last few decades, the miracle of economic growth has added further ferment to the modernization process. The interplay of these various dimensions creates the drama of the present time.

To understand the nature and extent of these adjustments of old and new, we must turn to history. In particular, let us peer at those special threads used on the loom of history to fashion the life design of the Japanese woman: family relationships, social status, education, political prerogatives, and economic well-being.

Chapter 1
The Way of Tradition

Early Japan— Goddesses and Empresses

Our great Sovereign who rules in peace,
Offspring of the Bright One on high,
Wills, as a goddess, to rule her dominion
And to decree her towering Palace
On the plain of Fujiwara.

—Manyōshū, seventh century¹

In the down of Japanese history women held positions of prestige and authority.

As mothers, women represented fertility and life for the primitive and superstitious familial bands. As queens of Yamatai in western Japan, they brought order to the land and engaged in international diplomacy with the rulers to the west on the mainland of Asia.

Legend made the female deity, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami, the founder of the Japanese imperial family. This "Heaven-Shining-Great Deity" commissioned her grandson Ninigi-no-Mikoto to descend from Heaven upon the Japanese Isles, carrying the three sacred insignia of the mirror, sword, and jewel, to govern and bring prosperity as enduring as that of Heaven and Earth. Thus was established the divine ancestry of the imperial line, which has reigned for more than a thousand years, combining within itself religious and dynastic supremacy. Imperial princesses became the high priestesses to care for the most holy of the Shintō religious shrines at Ise, dedicated to the worship of the Sun Goddess.

Popular lore and early chronicles set forth the position and power held by women in family, religion, and government in the Japanese Isles in the period through the seventh century. One recent writer has called these early years the golden age of women in Japan. Modern women, from time to time, are strengthened by this heritage in their feminist endeavors.²

Queen Himiko

Chinese chroniclers, who gave the first sophisticated records of Japan, pointed to female dominance among the "people of Wa," as they called the Japanese in their third-century History of the Kingdom of Wei (Wei chih). They told of a Queen Himiko, a mature, unmarried ruler in western Japan whose name probably means sun daughter or princess. She is said to have practiced magic, revealing messages of the gods. Rarely seen, and living in a well-guarded palace with 1,000 women attendants, she maintained strict laws, ruling through her brother. In A.D. 238 she dispatched envoys to pay homage to the Chinese emperor and sent as tribute slaves and bolts of specially designed cloth. In return, the emperor bestowed upon her the title, "Queen of Wa Friendly to Wei."³

The Kojiki

The Japanese version of their own beginnings and early history came some four hundred years later in the writing of the Kojiki and the subsequent Nihongi, a dynastic project encouraged by various empresses of the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., including Empress Suiko and Empress Jitō. These official chronicles intertwine the mythological with the semihistorical to support the antiquity and glory of the imperial line. They relate the sagas of Amaterasu Ōmikami and the other gods and goddesses to show their relationship with the semilegendary first emperor of Japan, Jimmu, whose dynasty began, according to tradition, in 660 B.C.

A tale popular with Japanese women purports that Hiyeda-no-Are, a woman kataribe, a member of the guild of oral story-tellers to which women often belonged in early Japan, played a central role in giving life to the Kojiki.⁴ When Empress Gemmyō commanded Ōno Yasumaro in 711 to "select and record the old works/' he turned for assistance to the aged Hiyeda-no-Are, who had memorized all the old poems, myths, and stories. Word by word, as she recited the oral traditions, he wrote them down and produced the Kojiki.⁵

One of the outstanding figures emerging from this account of the misty early years is Empress Jingō (200-269 A.D.) whose posthumous name shows that she is revered as a woman second only to Amaterasu

Gods and goddesses dance and offer enticements to lure the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami from the cave in which she hid when her brother brought violence into the world. Artist: Itō Ryūgai. Photo courtesy of the Mayor of Ise.

Queen Himiko, third-century ruler of western Japan, is portrayed in regal attire, wearing a necklace with the curved jewel (magatama), one of the three sacred emblems of the imperial family. Artist: Yasuda Yukihiko. Photo couresty of Yasuda Kenichi.

Modern women dressed in holiday finery enjoy the poem card game that is traditionally played during New Year's festivities. The first of the one hundred poems of the game was composed by Empress Jitō. Photo courtesy of the Embassy of Japan.

in greatness. Her dynamism is revealed in reports about how she rode to Kyūshū with her husband at the head of elaborately clad warriors to quell a rebellion. Deciding that the uprising was fomented by Korea, she—now alone, for her husband had died—disguised herself as a man and led the Japanese forces against the Koreans. The story goes that she rode on the prow of a battleship assisted by "great fishes of the ocean" and a miraculous wave across the sea to subjugate the enemy. This conquest opened the door to cultural influences from the Korean peninsula.⁶

Epoch of the Queens

During the remarkable two hundred years spanning the Asuka (A.D. 552-710) and Nara (A.D. 710-784) periods, by which time recognizable history overtakes earlier conjecture, one-half of the Japanese rulers were women. It might well be called the Epoch of the Queens. They were women of command, merry and stout of heart. They set standards for the culture, religion, and mood of their times. They provided a matriarchal continuity for the imperial family as power struggles swirled around the throne. A few highlights can illustrate the political, intellectual, and human strengths for which these women are remembered.

Empress Suiko (592-628) is regarded as the first woman in historical times to ascend the throne of Japan. She presided during a time of intellectual ferment and change in social and governmental organization; she encouraged the channeling of Chinese civilization into many facets of Japanese life. Ruling with her nephew, the incomparable Prince Shōtoku, she helped establish Buddhism as a major religion in Japan and supported the creation of many of Buddhism's finest arts.⁷

Empress Jitō (687-697) was a strong-willed, intelligent beauty, renowned for her political astuteness. She supported the compilation of the great Japanese fundamental laws, culminating in the Taihō Code of 701. Under this revamped tax and land system, it must be noted, women received only two-thirds of the allotments in land redistribution available to men. Interestingly, Japanese women suffragists of the 1940s maintained that such inequity in the code was based on Chinese customs and that changes from the older traditional family system of giving a good deal of equality to women were only skin deep. Apart from her ruling capacities, Empress Jitō is widely remembered for the light-hearted tanka she wrote when she moved her capital to Fujiwara. Many modern Japanese can quote it as the first poem of the card game "100-persons-each-one-poem" (Hyaku-nin-isshu) traditionally played at New Year's celebrations:

Spring has passed away
And summer is come;
Look where white clothes are spread in the sun
On the heavenly hill of Kagu!⁸

It was Empress Gemmyō (707-715), a patron of classical learning, as shown in her role in the preparation of the Kojiki, who established in Nara in 710 the first permanent capital of her kingdom, making possible a less casually organized and more centralized structure of government.

Another great beauty and skilled calligrapher, Empress Kōmyō (729-749), consort of Emperor Shōmu, must be mentioned even though she was not a ruling empress because she is remembered by women as the first volunteer social worker in her country. A devout Buddhist, she zealously propagated her faith. She constructed temples for worship and commissioned sculpture to enhance them, including the huge Buddha of Tōdaiji Temple in Nara. Her deep religious sense prompted her to help the sick, orphaned, and needy, tasks that usually fell to the monks and others within religious orders. This reputation for charitable services gave rise to a now famous legend. It seems that one day a leprous beggar came to her and asked that she cleanse his sores with her mouth. Although she was repelled, her religious fervor pushed her to comply. Amazingly, the beggar turned into a Buddha before her eyes. He told her that he had appealed for this demeaning care to test her faith. As might be imagined, the Empress Kōmyō's charitable endeavors were not generally understood by the people, and she was severely criticized. Yet in due course, her good works won her the posthumous name of the "Empress who shines brightly."

Unfortunately, the daughter of Empress Kōmyō, a woman of equally great enthusiasm, managed to bring to an end this period of the queens through her propensity for love affairs. Empress Shōtoku (764-770), or Empress Kōken (749-758), for as she was empress twice she had two names, like her predecessors warmly supported Buddhism and the arts. When her military forces suppressed a civil war in 764, she gave thanks by printing 1 million religious charms. The few existing today are examples of the earliest printing in the world. More important, she served as a catalyst in the compilation of some three hundred and fifty years of native Japanese poetry, which, in straightforward, natural, and sometimes earthy style, had been composed by emperors and empresses, courtiers, soldiers of the frontier, young lovers, and common people alike. Portraying a cross-section of the emotions and longing of the people of early Japan, this collection, Manyōshū, or Collection of Myriad Leaves, is still cherished as part of the great traditional culture of the Japanese.

Despite her accomplishments, Shōtoku's amorous involvements with the Buddhist priest Dōkyo precipitated a political struggle. He aspired to become emperor with the willing help of his empress. The intrigue aroused the noble cliques at court. Civil war erupted, and the orbit of power swung in a new direction. Except for two figurehead empresses, Meishō and Gosakuramachi, during the Edo period in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Shōtoku was the last of the ruling empresses. Her debacle brought to an end the era of lively female sovereigns. Her passing foreshadowed a major change in the position of women.

Chinese Influences

In all fairness, it should be made clear that factors other than Empress Shōtoku's love life entered into her political difficulties and the subsequent general decline of women's power. Chinese ideas, absorbed for several hundred years under the eager endorsement of the imperial families and the court, were gradually modifying the religious beliefs, governmental structures, social practices, and attitudes toward relationships of the Japanese people.

Buddhism, introduced from Korea in the middle of the sixth century, was fundamental in these changes. It brought new tenets, its own pantheon, and a special kind of mysticism. In time, it became a competitor to Shintō, the animistic native religion with its own deities and semisuperstitious rituals and customs, and precipitated countervailing power struggles in ruling circles and skirmishes over royal succession.

Chinese concepts of centralized political organization helped reorder the structure of gover...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• About the Book and Author
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART 1 BACKGROUND: THE LOOM OF HISTORY
• PART 2 THE FABRIC OF CONTEMPORARY TIMES
• PART 3 DESIGNS FOR THE FUTURE
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index