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What Women Should Know: Transmission and Teaching in Thirteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Japan
Organizer: Christina Laffin, University of British Columbia, Canada
Chair and Discussant: Marcia Yonemoto, University of Colorado at Boulder
This panel brings together scholars from the fields of literature, history, and art history, for a transdisciplinary approach to women’s education in the medieval and early modern periods. Through an examination of female and male-authored sources, the panelists will show how a spectrum of texts and images were employed as tools for the education and social conditioning of women.
What skills were seen as necessary for survival at court and how did women learn them? Was there a tradition of female transmission in the teaching of court conduct? How did women’s education change over time? How were classical poetry, tales, and images treated as moral sources in didactic works for women?
Miki Wheeler will consider the prescriptive nature of the kana diary Tamakiwaru and show how the skills of court service were transmitted among women. Christina Laffin will take up the earliest example of a female-authored educational manual for court women, Menoto no fumi. Tomoko Sakomura will show how illustrated narratives were employed in the teaching of poetry composition and court etiquette. Jamie Newhard will look at the role of classical tales in eighteenth-century “books for women” (josho). Our discussant, Marcia Yonemoto, will draw from her recent research on Tokugawa-period women authors in her response to the four panelists.
Description as Prescription: Looking at Tamakiwaru, an Early Kamakura Woman’s Court Diary, as a Source of Instruction
C. Miki Wheeler, University of California, Berkeley
In 1219, Kengozen (1157-ca. 1226) finished compiling her court diary, Tamakiwaru, which can be interpreted as an instructional reference for future ladies-in-waiting. Kengozen emphasized the observation of protocol in both dress and behavior in the context of the social organization and material layout of her service environments. Even though the diary is specific to the courts of two patrons, its detailed documentation of the practical concerns of service suggests the possibility of its use as a reference manual.
In addition, certain passages in Tamakiwaru suggest instances of matrilineal succession in terms of service opportunities and expectations, as well as of transmission of service customs. Significantly, the suggestion of such a pattern also exists in the Mikohidari lineage, that of Kengozen’s birth. I argue that as a member of a house actively involved in female court service, and as a lady-in-waiting to the most lavish court since the Fujiwara regency, Kengozen was a product of what she considered the two most important sources of instruction: family members at home and ladies at court, all of whom had service experience.
What makes this relevant for the concept of jokun, or women’s education, is that Kengozen made a strong connection between the observation of social hierarchy and the preservation of service customs. In her experience, instruction took place in the structured environment of family and a strictly-ordered court. A parallel can thus be drawn between Tamakiwaru and prescriptive jokun literature of the Tokugawa period, which encouraged moral social behavior as a means of preserving social order.
Parting the Reeds of Naniwa: Courtly Advice to Women in The Nursemaid’s Letter
Christina Laffin, University of British Columbia, Canada
In 1264 Nun Abutsu (1222-1283) produced The Nursemaid’s Letter (Menoto no fumi), a work that became the most widely circulated didactic text among women of the medieval period. It was originally designed as a lengthy response to a letter from Abutsu’s thirteen-year-old daughter Ki no Naishi (ca. 1251-?), who had entered the court service of the Retired Emperor GoFukakusa (1243-1304; r.1246-59). Concerned about her daughter’s future at court, Abutsu drew from her own experience serving Princess Ankamon’in (1209-1283) and produced a letter outlining advice for success as an attendant. The Nursemaid’s Letter describes the necessary skills, practices, and comportment for woman at court, including how to interact well with all levels of courtiers, appropriate musical and literary arts to learn, and the merits of Buddhist practice.
Abutsu’s advice must have proved useful as it was later abridged and circulated as a didactic manual for women titled The Garden of Teachings (Niwa no oshie), a forerunner to the women’s educational texts that burgeoned during the early modern period. Handbooks for women that followed drew heavily from The Nursemaid’s Letter and even Lady Nijô, author of The Unrequested Tale (Towazugatari, ca. 1310), appears to have heeded Abutsu’s advice.
This presentation will examine the scope and content of Abutsu’s advice and the factors determining success for women at court during the Kamakura-period (1185-1333). I will also consider how Menoto no fumi was received by later generations as a didactic text that continued to be copied and distributed to women from the thirteenth century through the 1930s.
Representing Learnedness in The Forty-Two Debates
Tomoko Sakomura, Swarthmore College
Framed as an elegant poetic debate at the emperor’s residence in a Heian-inspired past, The Forty-Two Debates (Shijû-ni no monoarasoi), a Muromachi-period otogi-zôshi, or late medieval short narrative, ingeniously imparts to its reader the fundamentals of waka poetry and the importance of waka as a critical asset for a cultivated individual. In illustrated examples of the tale, poetic authority is underscored by the appropriation of the venerated iconography of poetic sages, or kasen, to represent a host of characters. As with many otogi-zôshi tales, The Forty-Two Debates thus possesses an educational element, which is further enforced by instructions on female etiquette that is integrated into the tale.
In this paper, I will address how two areas of knowledge, that of poetry and social etiquette, come together in The Forty-Two Debates, and consider the relationship between the tale and contemporary didactic texts such as Teachings of a Wet Nurse (Menoto no sôshi). The question of readership and social context will also be examined through an illustrated version of the tale in the collection of the Eisei Bunko Library, Tokyo, which includes unique textual and pictorial modifications to the tale that posit a young woman as its intended reader. With this paper, I hope to demonstrate the ways in which the notion of learnedness is constructed through the subtle interplay of word and image and shed light on the role of illustrated narrative in women’s education.
Mixing Messages: Classical Literature in Eighteenth-Century Women's Education Books
Jamie L. Newhard, Arizona State University
Despite frequent claims made in the early Edo period by Confucian scholars regarding the potentially pernicious effect of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari on the morals of women, by the eighteenth century content lifted from these works, along with works in the classical poetic tradition, came to occupy a prominent place in the flourishing segment of the contemporary book market known as josho, or books for women. In some cases classical literary content is presented together with practical knowledge and moral teachings for women at the upper margin of the page as an appendage to “women's education” texts like Onna daigaku and Onna shôgaku, while in others Ise, Genji, and the Hyakunin isshu themselves serve as the base texts anchoring other edifying content. Examining the selection of content, the deployment of that content on the printed page, and the framing of several popular books for women in prefaces and colophons, this paper considers what josho reveal about the place of classical literature both in the education of women and in the eighteenth-century book market as a whole.