EA 170 Week 7a Reading Questions

Week 7a: Men Playing Women: The Onnagata

a) "Introduction,"Recreating Japanese Women by Gail Bernstein

b) Jennifer Robertson, "Shingaku Woman: Straight from the Heart"

c) Excerpts from "The Actors Analects"

Video: Portrait of an Onnagata

a) "Introduction" by Gail Bernstein

This is an introduction to a collection of essays on women in the Tokugawa (1600-1868), Meiji (1868-1912), Taishô (1912-1926) and Shôwa (1926-1989) periods. It should help to go back to Tonomura's article and reread p. 593 where she summarizes the economic and political changes for women that occurred in the Tokugawa period. The beginning of the article reviews the differences between "gender" and "biological sex" and the rest of the article concentrates on the social construction of "gender" in the early modern and modern periods, using specific examples. Try to identify what the dominant view of women was in each period.

Study questions

1) What general factors have affected the position/roles of women in Japanese society? Is race/ethnicity an important factor?

2) What is Bernstein's definition of gender? How does it differ from biological sex?

3) What major social changes occurred in the Tokugawa period with regard to social class and family structure? What was the ie and how did it function? What was the woman's role within the ie system? I.e. what role was the woman supposed to play within the family?

4) How did Confucian philosophy reinforce women's roles? Did it hold true in reality for women other than samurai class? What was the attitude towards women as mothers in the Tokugawa period?

5) Did women have to make a choice between marriage and vocation in the Tokugawa period?

6) What were some of the social changes that occurred in the Meiji period? What legal codes were enacted that affected women?

7) How was the Meiji ideal of "Good Wife, Wise Mother" different from the Tokugawa ideal for women?

9) Who was the "modern girl"? How did she disrupt the "traditional" role of women? How did women working outside the home affect it?

10) How did the war affect the role of women as mothers?

Important overall question:

1) In each period, how was the dominant ideal for women linked to the ruling elite's desire to stabilize and reinforce their own position?

b) Jennifer Robertson, "Shingaku Woman: Straight from the Heart," from Recreating Japanese Women

Note that Shingaku (Heart Learning) was a philosophical school developed in Kyoto in the 1730s. It attempted to create a moral philosophy for merchants that would stabilize a social system which at that time was being destabilized by the rapid expansion of a market economy that resulted in the enrichment of the merchant class at the expense of the samurai who supposedly ruled over them. A good part of this philosophy was devoted to a model of "female-likeness" (onnarashisa). Premised on women's "natural" inferiority to men, it encouraged women to be submissive and obedient to men, so that they might be led to overcome their congenital weaknesses.

1) [p.90] How did Shingaku try to fuse biological sex and gender? How was this fusion different from what we've seen before in Japanese treatments of these terms?

2) [p. 90-2] Why were male intelligentsia so concerned about the "female problem"? According to Ekken, what were the inherent qualities of the female biological sex? How does the case of Take demonstrate the new attention to the importance of fixed gender roles?

3) [P.95-6] How were the ideals of Shingaku unrealistic for working class women of the Edo period?

4) [p. 97-8] How was sexuality viewed for women? What role did marriage play? How were wives supposed to regard their own (private) bodies/selves? How were they supposed to regard their husband's concubine?

5) [p. 98-99] How and why were Chinese women constructed exclusively as exemplars of "female-likeness"?

6) [99-103] How did religion offer an alternative to prescribed gender roles in the Edo period? Why might it have been an attractive choice for Kenka?

7) Why was it ironic that Kenka and the other Shingaku lecturers should have advocated the "three obediences" for women?

8) [106] What was the paragon of "female-likeness" in the Edo period? Why might this have been so?

Important overall thought question:

To what extent do onnagata appear to epitomize the Shingaku concept of "female-likeness"? Why do you suppose it was thought in the Edo period (and sometimes even today) that only a man could portray the true essence of femininity?

c) Excerpts from "The Actors Analects" by Yoshizawa Ayame

Yoshizawa Ayame (1673-1729) was one of the most famous onnagata in Kabuki history and is said to have perfected the art of female impersonation. In 1698 he was awarded the highest ranking of jô-jô-kichi (upper-upper-excellent); in 1711 he was the first actor to be awarded the even higher ranking kyoku-jô-jô-kichi (zenith-upper-upper-excellent) and then for the rest of his career the theater world continued to invent new and higher rankings for him (eg., Nihon daichi, “Japan’s number one”). The “Actor’s Analects” is a collection of thirty comments by Ayame about acting as an onnagata.

Terms:

onnagata:  the female role played by men in Kabuki

tachiyaku: the young male role in Kabuki

keisei: any high-class prostitute/courtesan

tayû: the very highest class of prostitute (they were ranked into 30 grades, the higher the grade, the more expensive)

Study questions:

1) According to these excerpts what does Yoshizawa Ayame believe is the "natural" character of men? The "natural" character of women? Is Ayame able to distinguish between biological sex and gender?

2) According to Ayame, what is the most typical "feminine" role for the onnagata? Why?

3) How are samurai women characterized with regard to femininity?

4) Does realism seem important to the onnagata's portrayal of a women? Why or why not?