Women in Japanese Religions

Barbara R. Ambros

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781479836512
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Scholars have widely acknowledged thepersistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treatwomen. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as meremeans of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent andeven misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotionand emulation among women?

In Women in Japanese Religions, Barbara R. Ambrosexamines the roles that women have played in the religions of Japan. An importantcorrective to more common male-centered narratives of Japanese religioushistory, this text presents a synthetic long view of Japanese religions from adistinct angle that has typically been discounted in standard survey accountsof Japanese religions.

Drawing on a diverse collection ofwritings by and about women, Ambros argues that ambivalent religious discoursesin Japan have not simply subordinated women but also given them religiousresources to pursue their own interests and agendas. Comprising nine chaptersorganized chronologically, the book begins with the archeological evidence offertility cults and the early shamanic ruler Himiko in prehistoric Japan andends with an examination of the influence of feminism and demographic changeson religious practices during the “lost decades” of the post-1990 era. Byviewing Japanese religious history through the eyes of women, Women in Japanese Religions presents anew narrative that offers strikingly different vistas of Japan’s pluralistictraditions than the received accounts that foreground male religious figuresand male-dominated institutions.

Additional Resources

1

The Prehistorical Japanese Archipelago

Fertility Cults and Shaman Queens

We may ask ourselves when we should begin our narrative of women in the religious history of Japan. One recent survey of premodern Japanese religions begins in 500 CE, around the time when Buddhism was first introduced to the Japanese islands. The author argues that our knowledge of Japanese history prior to that date relies almost exclusively on elusive archeological material rather than textual sources; therefore, our knowledge of the concrete details of prehistorical people’s lives is sharply limited.1 To this we may add that we cannot really speak of Japan as a nation prior to 500 CE because such an entity did not exist yet. Instead, we must consider the Japanese archipelago as a geographic location and assess the evidence accordingly. Despite these reservations, we will include the period before 500 CE, even though a reconstruction of religion in women’s lives in the archipelago’s prehistory can only be highly speculative. In our examination of the archeological and limited textual evidence from these periods, we will address important questions and issues that are raised by the material. Here, we will single out two important facets of prehistory that speak to women and religion: female clay figures from the Jōmon period (ca. 10,000 BCE–300 BCE) and the story of Himiko, the Queen of Wa, from the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE).

Female Clay Figurines in the Jōmon Period

Our knowledge of the hunter-gatherer society of the Jōmon period derives from the remains of pit dwellings, shell mounds, and burial grounds. The most significant evidence related to women is the great number of clay vessels and figurines discovered in these settlements. Many of the clay implements have clearly female characteristics such as prominent breasts, wide hips, and protruding abdomens (see figure 1.1). Some implements are vases that may have served as lamps;2 others are figurines that seem to have been deliberately smashed into pieces and scattered about.3

What are we to make of these figurines and their broken condition? The human figurines may have been used in healing rituals, and could have been broken in order to effect healing from illness; the broken pieces may have had a talismanic function. Indeed, the use of ritual figurines for such healing purposes can be traced to later periods, such as the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE), when figurines made of wood or straw came into use, and the Heian period (794–1185), when paper effigies were used for exorcisms.4 While this interpretation suggests that (female?) shamans performed healing rituals—including perhaps rituals ensuring safe childbirth—it does not fully explain why so many of the figurines were female and appeared pregnant.

Another common interpretation favors the idea that the figurines were used in fertility rituals rather than in healing rituals. The figures may have been linked to human reproduction. Many clay figures depict the pregnant female form; some even contain a small clay ball inside the hollow female womb. Phallic stone rods from the same period were also discovered.5 Therefore, the archeologist Imamura Keiji conjectures that “ceramic figurines are probably related to reproduction and fertility cults, and the prosperity of future descendants.”6 Fecundity may also have included agricultural fertility. The figures may have been linked to the cult of Mother Earth. While few such figures can be dated to the early Jōmon period, the majority date from the middle to late Jōmon period after 5500 BCE, when a hunter-gatherer society gradually began to incorporate rudimentary slash-and-burn agriculture. The figurines may have represented a female food divinity whose body needed to be broken to harness her fertility.7

figure 1.1. Dogū (clay figurine). The enlarged breasts and wide hips suggest that this figurine was a fertility symbol. Japan, final Jōmon period (ca. 1000–300 BCE). Earthenware, H. 2 ¼ in. (5.7 cm); W. 1 ⅞ in. (4.8 cm). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Koizim, 1978 (1978.346a-c). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

This interpretation draws on myths from the ancient national chronicles of Japan, the Kojiki (712 CE) and the Nihon shoki (720 CE), which contain the earliest extant written records of Japanese mythology. According to the version in the Kojiki, Susanoo, the violent storm god and brother of the sun goddess Amaterasu, visits Ōgetsuhime and asks her to serve him food. She proceeds to take various types of nourishment out of her bodily orifices—her nose, mouth, and anus—and serves them to Susanoo. Offended by her actions and convinced that this food is polluted, Susanoo flies into a rage and kills her. Various products grow out of her dismembered body: silkworms from her head, rice from her eyes, millet from her ears, red beans from her nose, wheat from her genitalia, and soy beans from her anus. Another deity, Kamimusubi, collects these in order to have them planted.8

The Nihon shoki contains a similar myth. Here, the moon god Tsukiyomi, another brother of Amaterasu, is dispatched by the sun goddess to call on the goddess Ukemochi. Ukemochi faces the land and produces boiled rice from her mouth. She then turns to the ocean and produces fish from her mouth. Finally, she turns to the mountains and produces wild animals from her mouth. She serves Tsukiyomi a meal prepared from these items. Like Susanoo, he reacts with anger and kills her. Enraged by his offense, Amaterasu banishes him from her sight and sends another god, Amekumabito, to Ukemochi. He finds that Ukemochi’s dismembered body has produced oxen and horses from her head, two types of millet from her forehead and her eyes, silkworms from her eyebrows, rice from her belly, and wheat and beans from her genitalia. Amaterasu orders that these items be cultivated in order to feed and clothe human beings.9

These myths might explain why the clay figurines were smashed. Perhaps they were used in rituals that were meant to ensure the fertility of the land and the sea. However, there are also problems with this interpretation. During the Jōmon period, agriculture and animal husbandry were, at best, in their infancy. Yet the myths refer to the five grains, horses and oxen, and sericulture—all of which were introduced much later from the Asian continent. While Jōmon people would have hunted, fished, and cultivated tubers and nut-bearing trees,10 they would not have grown rice or raised silkworms. While they had domesticated hunting dogs and may have begun to domesticate boars,11 they certainly did not keep horses and oxen. It is of course possible that as new forms of agriculture and animal husbandry were introduced, symbols from the Asian continent were layered over an earlier myth.12 Nevertheless, the slaying of a food goddess could hardly have had the same symbolism for people living during the Jōmon period as it did during the time when the myths were recorded in writing.

There is another important issue we might want to consider here: does the archeological and mythological evidence suggest that Jōmon people—or at least the writers of the later myths—celebrated the fecundity of women, in contrast to the later focus, as we shall see, on ritual pollution associated with women, pregnancy, and menstruation? In the two myths, the female body, though suspected of pollution by the male god, yields valuable sustenance: grains, beans, game, fish, and silkworms. In later periods, the cultivation of the five grains (and the domestication of livestock) was constructed as male labor, while the raising of silkworms was considered the domain of women, as it had been in China. For instance, the Nihon shoki states that in 507 CE, the Emperor Keidai proclaimed,

We have heard that if men are of fit age and do not cultivate, the Empire may suffer famine; if women are of fit age and do not spin, the Empire may suffer cold. Therefore is it that the sovereigns cultivate with their own hands, so as to give encouragement to agriculture, while the consorts rear silkworms themselves, so as to encourage the mulberry season. How, then, shall there be prosperity if all, from the functionaries down to the ten thousand families, neglect agriculture and spinning?13

Thus, the fruits yielded by the female body of the goddess were supposed to be cultivated by both men and women.

Other rituals linked to female fertility have also been documented beginning in the Middle Jōmon period: the burial of placenta and umbilical-cord pots (umegame). This practice continued into later periods as well. In contrast to contemporaneous burial jars, which were buried with the opening facing downward in the center of abandoned pit dwellings, placenta and umbilical-cord pots were interred facing up under the threshold of dwellings. Some scholars believe that the pots may have been placed there to induce fertility in the women who crossed the threshold, but it is also possible that they had a protective function for the child. Placenta pots from the eighth century were discovered similarly buried under thresholds of houses and contained offerings for the well-being and success of the child.14 In either case, the human tissues issued during childbirth were considered talismanic rather than polluted. They were kept close to human dwellings rather than spatially shunned.

Despite the positive valuation of the female body, the dismembering of the food goddess and the smashing of the figurines can still give us pause. The breaking of the female body may have symbolized the violence inherent in cultivating the soil: the burning, clearing, and tilling of the land.15 Even if we assume that the ritual was not primarily focused on agriculture but on hunting and fishing, such practices likewise involved violence such as the killing and dismembering of prey. In the later myths, the perpetrators of such violence are male—the storm god Susanoo and the moon god Tsukiyomi, respectively. This suggests a dynamic between a female sacrificial victim and a male aggressor. From a modern perspective, this may not seem like a positive celebration of women’s reproductive faculties even if the outcome benefits humanity as a whole by providing nourishment for all. In the absence of contemporaneous textual sources, the clay figurines remain highly enigmatic and open to a wide range of interpretation.

Himiko, Queen of Wa

The figure of Himiko is equally if not more enigmatic. Scholars have been debating for several centuries whether her principality, Yamatai, was located in Kyushu or in the central Kinai region of Honshu, whether she was an imposing ruler in the imperial line or only a shaman in a minor chiefdom, whether she was a powerful leader or a recluse propped up through Chinese support, whether she illustrates matriarchal rule through female spiritual power or rule by a male-female pair that balanced the binary opposites of yin and yang.

Himiko first appears in the Wei zhi (ca. 297). According to this Chinese chronicle, the country of Yamatai was ruled by a queen called Himiko, whose investiture saved the country from constant warfare. She was eventually succeeded by a female relative named Iyo, whose reign also ensured political stability:

Before that polity had a male ruler. Seventy or eighty years ago, year after year in the Wa polity there was chaos as they fought each other. Then they made a female the ruler, named Himiko. She was skilled in the Way of Demons, keeping all under her spell. Although well along in years, she remained unmarried. A younger brother assisted her in governing the domain. Once she became the ruler there were few people who saw her. One thousand maidservants waited on her and only one man. He served her food and drink and carried her messages in and out. She lived in a palace resembling a stockade, normally protected by armed guards. . . . Himiko died and a large mound was built more than 100 paces in diameter. Over 100 male and female attendants were immolated. Then a male ruler was installed, but in the ensuing protests within the domain bloodshed and killing exterminated more than 1000 people. To replace Himiko a 13-year-old [female] relative named Iyo was made ruler of the domain. Stability prevailed.16

In addition, the text describes Himiko’s diplomatic contacts with Wei China. This tributary relationship yielded a proclamation in 238 CE declaring that “Himiko, queen of Wa, is designated a friend of Wei.” In return for presenting tribute consisting of male and female slaves and cloth, Himiko’s envoys were richly presented with luxurious textiles, gold, pearls, cinnabar, two swords, and one hundred bronze mirrors. In formal expression of their hierarchical relationship, Himiko was awarded the title “Ruler of Wa Friendly to Wei,” and was sent a gold seal with a purple ribbon as a sign that Wa was a tributary state. Over the next ten years, Himiko remained in diplomatic contact with the Wei court, sending further tribute and receiving rhetorical support during conflict with a male ruler in a neighboring domain. Her successor, Iyo, continued this tributary relationship with Wei.17

The location of Himiko’s chiefdom has been debated since the early eighteenth century. The debate came about because of the conflicting directions given in the Wei zhi. If followed literally, the text sends travelers almost due south from the Korean peninsula. The traveler would end up in the ocean. This means that the text is mistaken about either the direction of the travel or the distances traveled. If the direction of travel is shifted east rather than due south, the traveler arrives in the Kinai region. If the distances are shortened, the traveler ends up in Kyushu. Scholars have advanced archeological evidence of fortified settlements, large tombs, and discoveries of Chinese mirrors to prove the location of Yamatai, but the controversy remains unresolved to this day. Some historians have equated Himiko’s Yamatai with Yamato in the Kinai region of central western Japan, which later became the power base of the Japanese imperial line. This interpretation bolsters claims concerning the antiquity of imperial rule, but it has also raised questions about the power and independence of Japan’s imperial rulers, whose state was suddenly reduced to a tributary chiefdom subservient to Wei. Other scholars favored the view that Yamatai was located in northern Kyushu, where we also find a location named Yamato in the modern era. This allowed some scholars to dissociate Himiko from the i...