Organizer: Roger K. Thomas, Illinois State University
Chair: Kate Nakai, Sophia University, Toyko
Discussant: Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, York University
The sphere occupied by women in the literary culture of Tokugawa Japan is conventionally viewed as narrowly circumscribed, and has received comparatively less scholarly attention than other periods even in the current burgeoning of gender studies. It is often overlooked, however, that shifting social paradigms in the latter part of the age created temporary fissures that often amounted to new and expressive opportunities for women. This panel explores the cultural contributions of a few representative women of late Tokugawa Japan, and paves the way for further inquiry.
Anne Walthall, a noted authority on Bakumatsu history, examines the writings of one loyalist poet, Matsuo Taseko, whose verse illustrates both the spirit of the sonno-joi movement and the possibilities of women’s participation in it. Lawrence Marceau explores the contributions of two noted women bunjin—Koren and Kitsu—to literature of travel. He contextualizes their work within travel literature of the period and changes in women’s roles. Sadako Ohki’s paper treats the kanshi poetry of Ema Saiko, demonstrating how it transcends gender-specific notions of genre and theme. Through an examination of the poetry and letters of the Buddhist nun Otagaki Rengetsu, Roger Thomas questions some of the prevailing interpretations of her work, and demonstrates how her gender both facilitated and limited her contributions to the cultural life of the age.
Discussant Bob Wakabayashi is a noted authority on late Tokugawa Japan, and is eminently qualified to lead a stimulating discussion of the issues raised.
Anne Walthall, University of California, Irvine
This paper focuses on the nativist poetry written by Matsuo Taseko (1811–1894). By nativist poetry, I mean poetry written specifically about Japan’s history, emperor, and gods in a deliberately archaic mode in contrast to classical poetry that deals more with changing seasons and love. Taseko’s love of poetry and affiliation with the Hirata Atsutane school led to her involvement in the sonno-joi movement of the early 1860s and made her into a nationally recognized minor hero. I will analyze the links between her allusions to the poetry canon, in particular the Man’yoshu (c. 759), her study of specific writings by Hirata Atsutane, her understanding of the political issues facing Japan in the last years of the Tokugawa period, and her understanding of herself.
It is well known that under the influence of Kamo Mabuchi and his disciples, writing poetry in the Man’yo style enjoyed a resurgence in the latter half of the Tokugawa period. In particular the long poem provided the opportunity to produce political laments and comment on the events of the day. Unlike her male friends, Taseko never had the opportunity to write treatises on politics or the nativists’ teachings. Confined by her gender to the medium of poetry, she seized on the Man’yo style as a new and liberating mode of communication. This paper will thus examine the social and political as well as material circumstances of her literary production, address issues of how literary canons are received, and suggest how gender roles affected their deployment.
Lawrence E. Marceau, University of Delaware
Japanese women are important, even dominant, writers and poets over much of Japan’s history. We often dismiss women in the early modern period, however, as irrelevant and repressed. This perceived dearth of women writers and poets may be the result more of expectations raised by the prominence of Heian, Kamakura, and Meiji women than the actual situation in early modern literary circles. Comparative studies might indeed suggest that women in mid-eighteenth century Japan were at least as—if not more—active than their contemporaries in China, Korea, or England.
In this presentation, we explore one means by which literary women were able to share in, and contribute to, early modern literary production: travel. Studies by Constantine Vaporis on travel, and by Itasaka Yoko and Donald Keene on travel literature, have revised our thinking regarding the difficulty of travel under Tokugawa auspices and the quantity of literature travelers produced. This presentation focuses on two exemplary bunjin (bohemian) women who traveled—and wrote—together with their spouses. The nun Koren journeyed with her husband Ueda Akinari on several occasions, and wrote moving accounts of two of those trips. The former courtesan Kitsu traveled extensively with her husband Takebe Ayatari, composing poetry in a variety of forms with him on their sojourns. We find that, while journeying together, these couples grew in the depths of their marital bonds. Moreover, in both cases, we see ways in which one spouse struggles to cope with the death of the other.
Sadako Ohki, Columbia University
Ema Saiko (1787–1861), a female student of Rai San’yo, stepped into the field of male-dominated kanshi poetry which had been considered men’s territory since around the time of Murasaki Shikibu Nikki (1008–9). Saiko not only wrote kanshi poems on themes conventionally thought to be appropriate for women (such as descriptions of domestic life and seasonal plants, especially flowers)—poems strongly encouraged by San’yo—but she also wrote poems on themes considered to be appropriate only for men (such as philosophy and politics). San’yo praised some of those poems, saying they read "as if composed by a bearded man," and he further commented that the high-mindedness of her poetry would embarrass men for their lack of ambition. Yet, San’yo was ambivalent about her poetry, praising its excellence but criticizing it for being too much like the poetry of a man. Despite her teacher’s critical comments that "those do not belong to women’s quarters," Saiko kept writing poems that displayed her understanding of the world from an individualistic point of view.
What I want to argue is that hers is not the case simply of a woman passing as a man in poetic discourse, but that in her life and work we see the irrelevance of sex/gender categories in poetic genre and theme. This is apparent when we consider how she followed her teacher San’yo to express inner feelings (ura) in kanbun—which had been kept for official writing (omote)—rather than in wabun.
Roger K. Thomas, Illinois State University
The Buddhist nun Otagaki Rengetsu (1791–1875)—a diversely talented artist noted for her waka poetry, her pottery, her painting, and her calligraphy—has, like Ryokan (1758–1831) before her, been the object of much popular legendizing. At the same time, a coherent description of her career has remained elusive. She has been portrayed variously as a loyalist and jojofu, a paragon of traditional feminine virtues, and a bunjin.
Through an examination of Rengetsu’s poetry, letters, and social milieu, the first part of the present study weighs the aptness of these characterizations. It expands on aspects of her life and career that have heretofore been neglected, including her role as mentor to Tomioka Tessai (1837–1924) and Yosano Reigen (1823–1898), the seriousness with which she took her religious vocation, and her general influence on the male-dominated bundan/gadan of late Tokugawa Japan. The second part of the paper focuses on her poetic pedigree and the unique qualities of her waka style, including its indebtedness to Ozawa Roan’s (1723–1801) theory of dojo (common sentiment) and shinjo (new sentiment). In summary, it is demonstrated how her choices of discourse and lifestyle reflect both new opportunities and limitations for women in Bakumatsu Japan.