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Representations of the mother as origin and force of life in Japanese literature and history
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REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MOTHER
AS ORIGIN AND FORCE OF LIFE
IN JAPANESE LITERATURE AND HISTORY
by
Masako Dcenushi
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(East Asian Languages and Cultures)
May 1999
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UMI Number: 1395135
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U N IV E R SIT Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L IF O R N IA
T H E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y P A R K
LO S A N G E L E S . C A L IF O R N IA 8 0 0 0 7
This thesis, written by
MASAKO IKENUSHI________________________
under the direction of hex. Thesis Committee,
and approved by all its members, has been pre
sented to and accepted by the Dean of The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
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1
TABLES OF CONTENTS
Introduction 2
Women’s Power in the Ancient World 5
Buddhism and Sexual Discrimination 15
Confucian Teaching for Women 22
Ideology of Motherhood 29
Meiji Mother 37
Search for Mother in Classical Literature 42
Tanizaki’s Mother Obsession 46
Ky oka’s W ater Imagery 51
Kawabata’s Womb-World 54
Conclusion 60
Bibliography 62
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2
Representations of the Mother
As Origin and Force of Life
in Japanese Literature and History
Introduction
Images of women in Japanese cultural history have changed over the
centuries from the ancient period when they reflected power, self-sacrifice
and respect for the wisdom of motherhood to the Medieval and modem
period when the dominant images denied women’s sexuality and feminine
power. Yet while these images of women in Japan have changed over time,
they share a number of common elements which have been carried from one
age to the next. These shared elements, which are expressed in literature and
religious thought, reflect images of the spiritual strength of Japanese mothers
that derive not only from the history of their position as mothers, but also
from the fact that women were considered deities in Japanese history and
religious thinking, representing the origin of life and a source of power.
Historically, the image of the female creator, the sun goddess
Amaterasu, has had a paradoxical status in Japanese culture, given the deep
entrenchment of Buddhist and Confucian doctrine, which insist upon
women’s fundamental inferiority. It is astonishing that cultural images of
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feminine power have remained so prominent in Japanese literature. Despite
the fact that early Japan was governed by queens like the historical Himiko,
the nation eventually became an avidly patriarchal society. Women’s status
from ancient times declined as women’s sexuality was seen to represent a
threat to male hegemony. In the medieval period, Buddhism and Confucian
doctrines evolved an identity of women’s status as the respected mother,
self-sacrificing and dedicated to her family. This cultural attitude
culminated in the Meiji government policy, which enforced the ideology of
motherhood. Women were reared to follow obediently men’s lead in all
matters of importance. Thus the Heian period initiated a long decline in
women’s power and influence that had prevailed in ancient times - to the
point where only procreative sex and the birth of children could strengthen a
woman’s identity. Yet, despite the fact that Japanese society is by no means
feminist, a respect for women remains deep within the recesses of the
Japanese psyche.
This study begins with an examination into the perception of women as
goddesses in the ancient Shinto tradition. During the medieval period under
Buddhist influence, a crucial reversal of women’s value came about whereby
women were seen as sinners, polluted and full of bad karma leading them on
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4
a path to hell. Another reversal of value occurred when at the end of the
Tokugawa period when woman’s inferiority was gradually replaced by the
establishment of an ideology of motherhood in Meiji policy and culture.
Throughout all of these changes, women have retained strength and have
been seen as a creative, life-giving force in Japan.
Longing for Mother can be seen as a yearning for a personification of
devotion and self-sacrifice. I will argue that, from the view of history and
literature, images expressing a longing for Mother function as a
personification of devotion and self-sacrifice and manifest a search for a
powerful, unifying life force in Japanese thought. The search for Mother or
the motherland as origin and life-force is a theme that has been expressed in
classical and modem literatures. After first examining the historical
background to representations of Japanese women, the second part will take
up this theme of a search for origins by analyzing the narrative strategizing
in three Japanese novelists, Tanizaki Junichiro’s The Bridge of Dreams,
Izumi Kyoka’s Kdya-hijiri, and Kawabata Yasunari’s House of the Sleeping
Beauties.
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Women’s Power in the Ancient World
The sun rising over the sea is one of the prototypical images of Shinto.
Traditionally this image has been worshipped as the goddess Amaterasu.
Some call Shinto a native religious tradition of Japan, while some argue
against this classification because of the multiracial ancestry of the Japanese
people. The fact remains, however, that Shinto is a term given to designate
the native cult of deities (kami), which stood in clear contrast with
Buddhism when the latter was introduced to Japan from Korea in the sixth
century.1 Shinto is centered on the worship of ancestors and kami deities,
emphasizing ritual purity, both physical and mental, of the worshippers.
Reischauer points out that Shintoism has “reverted to a more peripheral role
in Japanese life.”2 Shrines of all types are scattered everywhere, often in
places of great beauty and charm, but usually show signs of quiet decay.
Reischauer notes that, “in a manner reminiscent of pre-war days, even top
government leaders will on occasion visit some great shrines, such as the
1 Yusa Michiko. “Women in Shinto.” Religion and Women (New York: State
University of New York Press, 1995), 94.
"Edwin Reischauer. The Japanese Today (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of
Hawaii University, 1995), 219.
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3 • 4 •
one at Ise.” Ise shrine is the most venerated shrine in Japan and dedicated
to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu.
According to the Kojiki? the oldest written records in Japan,
Amaterasu was the daughter of the gods Izanagi and Izanami. The names of
six divine couples who existed before Izanagi and Izanami are mentioned in
the Kojiki and Nihon-shoki,6 but Izanagi and Izanami are the first divine
couple about whom mythic tales unfold. According to Kojiki, Izanagi and
Izanami created the eight islands of Japan and all sorts of natural features on
them. Izanami was then badly burned by the birth of the Fire God and died.
Mourning for her and wishing to persuade her to come back and continue the
unfinished work of creation, Izanagi followed her, but when he met her he
violated her order not to look at her and saw her in the corruption of her
body. Because of this, Izanagi was unable to bring her back to earth. Upon
his return from the underworld, he went to a river to perform purification
because he had come in contact with the world of the dead. Amaterasu was
bom when he washed his left eye. Susa-no-oh, the wind god, was bom as he
3 Ibid.
4 Shinto shrine in Ise. Consisting of the three great temples of Ise: the Naiku, the
Geku and the Izatsu-gu.
5 The record of ancient matters, complied by Oo-no-Yasumaro, in 711 from the
collections of Hieda-no-Are, who had preserved in memory all the old legends.
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7
washed his nostril. Amaterasu was endowed with brightness, limpidity, and
purity. Izanagi entrusted his daughter with the domain of “high heavens,”
and Susa-no-oh the domain of the ocean. John Pelzel describes the quality of
the Sun Goddess Amaterasu:
Not morally upright in any self conscious sense, rather, she shows
understanding of how to mold herself with the people around her
in a harmony that still does not deny the individuality of each. It
seems no accident that she is typically termed ‘bright’, a sign
perhaps more of her humane than her astral attributes.7
Amaterasu was put in charge of the affairs of heaven and presided over
myriads of deities. She eventually descended onto Ise to be worshiped there,
first as the imperial patron deity, and later as the patron deity of the
country of Japan. Susa-no-oh, on the other hand, represented earthly
character, and eventually descended to the land of Izumo to rule the world
below heaven.
Amaterasu was originally the ancestral deity of the imperial family and
the supreme deity or kami of the Shinto pantheon. Paul Varley describes the
relationship of the reigning sun goddess to the imperial family. “The ruling
6A 1 so Nihongi. A collection o f ancient chronicles of Japan, written with Chinese
ideographs by Oo-no-Yasumaro.
7 John C. Pelzel. “Human Nature in the Japanese Myths.” Japanese Culture and
Behavior. T.S. & W. Lebra. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, (1974) : 28.
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8
dynasty of Japan is descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu, and the
duly selected sovereign from this dynasty is qualified to perform the rites of
communion with her that are essential to governing the country.”8 Primitive
and ancient people believed God dominated nature and humans by
supernatural means. Women were regarded as holding the power of
deification.9 But men were not endowed to communicate with the divine.1 0
Women were considered from ancient times to have a special supernatural
power.
Amaterasu was the unifying symbolic power of Japan. Takamure
Itsue’s argument praising ancient women’s power is remarkable. The
modem scholar Takamure symbolizes Amaterasu as “the ‘mother’ who
sacrificed her own life to establish the nation.”1 1 Takamure argues that the
nation of Japan could not have been established without the power of
mothers’ self-sacrifice. Another scholar, Kano Masanao, praises Amaterasu
for being the mother of Japan. This heritage is “a great honor for Japanese
8 Paul H. Varley. Japanese Culture (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1984), 5.
9 Suzuki Tadako. The Status o f Samurai Women in the Tokugawa Era and its
Reflection on the Meiji Constitution, Thesis, Eastern Michigan University, 1992), 7.
1 0 Iwao Sumiko. The Japanese Women: Traditional Image and Changing Realty
(New York: The Free Press, 1993), 5.
1 1 Yamashita, Etsuko. Takamure Itsue Ron (Tokyo: Kodeshobo, 1988), 168.
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women,”1 2 and he believes that the modem idea of men’s dominance over
*
women has no precedent in Japanese ancient history. Citing Takamure’s
views of Shinto belief, he asserts that the kami deity is the most longed for
ancestor of Japanese.1 4 Takamure believes that the idea of Heaven as
mother and Earth as father is the origin of Japanese thought.1 5 Takamure
goes so far as to praise Amaterasu as the mother for all Japanese people, and
urges Japanese people to worship Amaterasu, Mother of peace, and to build
Shinto shrines and torii (shrine gates) in every country in the world.1 6 It was
her belief that contemporary patriarchal society should return to matriarchy
for the sake of peace and harmony.
Women held significant power as deities and rulers in Japanese
history, especially in the Shinto tradition. Women of antiquity also held
political leadership and power, ruling the country. Poul Varley states that,
“In the third century, the country of Wa (Japan) achieved political
consolidation and the establishment of a territorial hegemony under a queen
1 2 Kano Masanao et al. Takamure Itsue (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1977), 232.
1 3 Ibid, 235.
1 4 Ibid.
1 5 Ibid, 234.
1 6 Ibid, 245.
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10
named Himiko.”1 8 The History o f the Kingdom o f Wei (Wei zhi. C. 297
C.E. by Chen Shou) describes Himiko:1 9
She occupied herself with magic and sorcery (i.e., shamanic
practices), bewitching the people. Though mature in age, she
remained unmarried. She had a younger brother who assisted
her in ruling the country. After she became the ruler, there were
a few who saw her. She had one thousand women as attendants,
but only one man. He served her food an drink and acted as
a medium of communication. She resided in a palace surrounded
by towers and stockades, with armed guards in a state of constant
vigilance. . . . When Himiko passed away, a great mound was
raised, more than a hundred paces in diameter. Over a hundred
male and female attendants followed her to the grave. Then a king
was placed on the throne, but the people would not obey him.
Assassination and murder followed, more than one thousand
were thus slain. A relative of Himiko named Iyo, a girl
of thirteen, was then made queen and order was restored.20
Himiko’s authority was apparently based on her religious or magical powers,
“derived from the shamanism of northwestern Asia that is known to have
been widely disseminated in early Japan.”2 1 The description of Himiko
found in the History o f the Latter Han Dynasty (c.445 C.E.) is quite similar.
“Remaining unmarried, she occupied herself with magic and sorcery and
bewitched the populace. Thereupon they placed her on the throne. She kept
1 8 Varley. 5.
1 9 Also known as Pimiko. Female ruler of the early Japanese political federation
known as “Yamatai,” as described in the Wei zhi.
‘ Tsunoda Ryusaku et al. Sources o f Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1958), 8-9.
2 Varley, 5.
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11
one thousand female attendants, but few people saw her.”2 2 The Kojiki, the
Nihon-Shoki, local records called Fudoki,2 3 and the Man’ ydshu2 4 an
anthology of ancient poems, contain Shinto myths and legends and are
considered sacred books by Shintoists. However, as Yusa notes, there is no
reference to Himiko Japanese sources of early history. The absence of a
reference to Himiko raises speculations as to how Himiko may have been
treated in these classics. It is Yusa’s view that the sun goddess Amaterasu or
other shamanic female leaders are reflections of powerful female rulers like
Himiko.2 5 *
According to the historian Harada Tomohiko, women are portrayed as
powerful maternal figures in M an’ ydshu. Many poems in M an’ ydshu focus
on maternal-power over decisions concerning their children’s marriages. In
Kojiki, Niho-Shoki, and Fudoki, the word “parent” does not refer to the
father: “‘Parent’ always indicates mother, and thus maternity played a key
“ Tsunoda et al, 9.
■^Collections of eighth century reports of the natural resources, geophysical
conditions, and oral traditions of each of the approximately sixty Japanese provinces.
24 Collection o f Ten Thousand Leaves is the oldest and greatest of the Japanese
anthologies of poetry. It was compiled in the middle o f the eighth century, by Ootomo no
Yakamochi. There are about 4500 poems in the Man ’ yoshu.
25Yusa, 98.
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role in societal relationships.”2 6 He adds that the Jdmon era2 7 earthem
figures of women provide more evidence that “Japan was a matriarchal
society.”2 8 By the Heian period (794-1185), marriage decisions tended to be
made by the father, and children also began to take their father’s family
name. Aristocratic women were still assured financial stability by means of
prevailing inheritance practices. Ivan Morris describes women’s rights to
inherit and keep property:
Daughters of the provincial governor class appear to have been
particularly well provided for, usually receiving a share of the
inheritance in the form of real property or rights in manorial
estates, and being entitled by law to keep their own houses.2 9
By the middle of the Heian period, women’s status at court was
beginning to decline. Their duties consisted of taking care of the daily
life of the emperor. By the tenth century, women’s roles at court had been
narrowed to the extent that they were excluded from all roles but that of
imperial consort, concubines, and the ladies-in-waiting who looked after
them. Women at imperial court had to be highly educated, and ladies-in-
waiting were expected to be sophisticated and cultivated.
~ Harada Tomohiko. Nihon Joseishi (Japanese Women’ s History) (Tokyo:
Shimonkaku Shuppan, 1981), 17.
2 7 A Mesolithic culture in Japan from 7500 BC to c. 250 BC.
2 8 Harada, 18.
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1 3
The court lady Sei Shonagon was remarkably free-spirited and
sensitive. In her Pillow Book (Makura-no-sdshi)3 0 Heian women appear as
heroines in the area of cultural achievement of music, poetry, letters, and
calligraphy. Shonagon writes:
women at court do not spend their time hiding modestly behind
fans and screens, but walk about, looking openly at people they
chance to meet. Yes, they see everyone face to face, not only
ladies-in-waiting like themselves, but even Their Imperial
Majesties, high Court Nobles, senior courtiers, and other
gentlemen of high rank. In the presence of such exalted
personages the women in the Palace are all equally brazen.3 1
To sum up, the Heian women enjoyed a relatively high status . Although
there was some diminishment in their political power, women could raise
their children at their own house and according to their own will, inherit
property from their parents, receive a high education, and also serve at court
in a professional capacity.
The status of women gradually changed toward the end of the Heian
period and through the Kamakura period (1185-1333) when the warrior
aristocracy emerged, bringing about a more patriarchal family structure.
2 9 Ivan Morris. The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan
(New York: Kodansha International, 1964), 205.
30A classical work written in the tenth century by Sei Shonagon, a court lady.
31
Sei Shonagon. The Pillow Book. Trans. Ivan Morris (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1967), 39.
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1 4
Women could no longer hold the position of head of the household.
“Women’s rights of inheritance diminished, and the father’s name appeared
on documents concerning the inheritance from mother to children.’ In
general, women’s status declined with the strengthening of the patriarchal
feudal system, and their major role became that of a “‘borrowed womb’ for
producing heirs.”3 3 “Children were seen as necessary to sustain the
patrilineage and did not completely belong to their mothers”3 4 as they had
previously.
As we have seen, women were portrayed as goddesses and rulers in the
beginning of Japanese history. Shinto myths and legends show the female
goddess Amaterasu and images of ancient powerful shamaness-like women.
However, women’s position in society declined with the separation of the
political and religious domains. Women were gradually shut out from the
political sphere. Even the status of the sun goddess Amaterasu began to
decline. Although the Sun Goddess remained “the progenitrix of the imperial
-3Q
family,” Yusa notes that some scholars of the Tokugawa period firmly
" Erika Ohara Bainbridge. “The Madness of Mothers in Japanese Noh Drama,”
U.SJapan Women’ s Journal No3 (1988) : 84.
3 3 Harada, 30.
34Bainbridge, 91.
3 9 Hitomi Tonomura. “Black Hair and Red Trousers: Gendering the Flesh in
Medieval Japan.” The American Historical Review, vol. 99:1 (Feb. 1995): 132.
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1 5
believed in the inferiority of women so much that they flatly rejected that
Amaterasu was a goddess.4 0 Hitomi Tonomura also writes that “there was a
scholarly attempt in the eighteenth century to change her gender.”4 1 How
could a member of the inferior female sex be the supreme deity of the Shinto
pantheon? Yusa concludes that Amaterasu was regarded by scholars in the
eighteenth century as neither male nor female but as a gender neutral
6 _ 4. 5 >42
parent.
Buddhism and Sexual Discrimination
Buddhism changed the way Japanese society viewed women. The
rejection of the female became a traditional view within Buddhism.
Women’s menstruation has been viewed ambivalently in many cultures, as a
source of life and power, which has been both worshiped and feared. As
Okano Haruko notes, “the idea of blood impurity is not found in Kojiki or in
Nihon Shoki, ” 4 3 and childbirth and menstruation are never mentioned as
pollution in the earliest history of Japan. Moreover, as Yusa writes,
40Yusa, 96.
4lTonomura, 132.
42Yusa, 97.
43Okano Haruko. “Women’s Image and Place in Japanese Buddhism,” Japanese
women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future (New York: The
Feminist Press, 1995), 38.
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1 6
“menstruation was earlier regarded as something sacred because of its
association with the life force.”4 4 However, from about the mid-Heian
period, women’s bleeding came to be regarded as a source of defilement
with the spread of Buddhism, and since that time “women have been
prohibited from taking part in Shinto ceremonies while menstruating.4 5 The
image of women as ‘defiled’ and ‘sinful’ grew out of the concept of impurity
by blood. Michele Marra also notes the pollution associated with abortion:
“abortion was a most defiling act because of the presence of blood and
death: seven days was the penalty for the woman acting in the first three
months of her pregnancy, and thirty for those who underwent abortion
later.4 6 If women were seen as defiled, then how could they hope to attain
salvation? To attain salvation for women meant to be reborn as a male.
Rayjyashree Pandey reveals how women could achieve “a rebirth only after
first being reborn as men in their next lives.”4 7 Moreover, the Lotus Sutra
(Hokke-kyd) encumbered the female body with the Five Obstructions
(Gosho). This refers to the exclusion of women from five forms of rebirth -
44 Yusa, 116.
45Okano, 19.
46Michelle Marra, “The Buddhist Mythmaking of Defilement: Sacred
Courtesans in Medieval Japan,” The Journal of Asian Studies 52:1 (Feb. 1992): 49.
47Rajyashree Pandey, “Women, Sexuality and Enlightenment,” Monumenta
Nipponica 50:3 (Autumn 1995): 325-331.
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1 7
one of which is that the female body cannot become a Buddha. Early
modem Buddhism promulgated the tenet that women are sinful. Women
were taught that to have been bom a woman was retribution for bad karma
created in a past life, and that they should place all their hopes in the next
life. People have been deeply affected by Buddhist ideas. We now overlook
the ways in which this fact encouraged discrimination against women.
Buddhist tradition considered women a threat to morality. The
Buddha’s teaching claimed that women, gambling, and sleeping were the
. three kinds of transgression of commandment and led to human
deterioration.4 8 Another text claimed that woman was a creature with the
look of an angel on her countenance, but with a diabolical spirit in her
inmost heart. Woman is full of sin; nothing is to be dreaded so much as a
woman.4 9 A woman’s body was also seen as pollution. Marra comments that
with an increase in the amount of pollution, the nature of the feminine came
to be considered no less defiling than the disposal of animals or the
consumption of meat. The sale of this physiology of defilement exposed the
buyer to the potential threat of blood - menstrual and natal.5 0 In the Lotus
48Harada, 6.
49Suzuki, 33.
50Marra, 51-52.
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18
Sutra worldly pleasures included the sale of the female body. Pandey also
cites Mujo Ichien5 1 to elaborate on the seven grave vices of women:
First and foremost women have no compunction about arousing
sexual desire in men. They are particularly given to jealousy.
They are deceitful. They focus purely on themselves and expend
their energies in self- adornment in order to seduce men. They are
trapped in the sin of attachment. Uncontrolled desire leads them to
shamelessness and delusion. Finally, their bodies are forever
unclean, with frequent menstrual discharge . . . pregnancy and
child-birth are both foul.5 2
One Buddhist sutra, the Blood Bowl Sutra, describes women as
polluted, unclean and sinful, whereby all women who have given birth to a
child will go to the hell of blood. The 420-character Blood Bowl Sutra is a
sutra preached specifically for women. In The Blood Bowl Sutra, the
Buddha’s disciple Mokuren discovered his mother suffering in the “Blood
Pond Hell.” He describes it as follows:
All women fall into this hell because of their karma . . . the red
blood flows seven days every month, this is eighty-four days
in twelve months. This is why it is called “moon water.” This
“moon water” is extremely evil and unclean. However, this evil
blood spills upon the ground sullying the heads of the Earth
Gods, thus invoking the wrath of those 98,072 gods. If poured
into water, it pollutes the Water Gods; if disposed of in the
mountain forests, it defiles the Mountain Gods. When women
5i(1226-13 12). Buddhist monk who composed a collection of didactic tales
Shasekishu between 1279-1283, a minor but unique literary and religious classic. As a
record of the practical and sometime earthy aspects of ordinary life in the Kamakura
period (1185-1133), it complements the better known classics of court and military
society.
5 2 Pandey, 67-68.
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1 9
wash their soiled clothing in the rivers, the good folk living
downstream, ignorant of their act, draw this water and with it
prepare tea and rice to offer to Gods and Buddhas. Then the
deities cannot accept their offering. Since women, by nature,
soil the Gods and Buddhas, they will all fall into the Blood Pond
Hell after they die.5 3
It was believed that the blood shed in the process of childbirth polluted the
earth and the rivers. In the Tokugawa era (seventeenth to nineteenth
centuries) the idea of blood pollution was expanded.
As menstrual bleeding came to be polluted, people believed that all
women would go to the hell of blood after death. This idea became
widespread in Japan and functioned to promote negative attitudes toward
women. Thus, under the spell of the Blood Bowl Sutra, a negative view of
women’s sexuality became widespread. As Minamoto Junko notes, “women
led a life of constant self-effacement. As a result, women’s procreative sex
and the birth of children alone could strengthen their identity as women.”5 4
A mother who bore a son that became a high priest was certainly saved and
respected. According to Oogoshi Aiko, it was believed that “in order to bear
a son to be a high priest, a woman had to be strong emotionally and
5 3 Minamoto Juuko. “Buddhism and the Historical Construction of Sexuality in
Japan,” U.S. Japan Women’ s Journal, English Supplement no.5 (1993): 96.
5 4 Ibid„
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psychologically, and the life of self-sacrifice was forced.”5 5 This suggests
that women’s strength grew under sexual discrimination. To gain respect, a
woman had to bear and raise a child, and a mother’s self-sacrifice for her
child became an ideal. Thus, Oogoshi determines that a woman’s salvation
existed only by denying her own sexuality and becoming a mother. Her own
sexuality was limited to sex for procreation and life as a mother. There is no
doubt that phallocentric sexuality used religious authority as a vehicle for
restricting women. The world of the Blood Bowl Sutra does not have the
variety of female sexual expression and recognizes women as the sex that
gives birth. Many women went through life informed by their Buddhist faith.
They viewed themselves as marked with sin. Women came to be defined as
possessions, their sexuality limited.
Some scholars, however, argue that Buddhism is a religion of equality
between men and women. Tagami Taishu, for example, writes:
All living things on earth live with cause and effect, and will
become extinct, therefore, every human being, no matter where
they are from and what kind of life they lead, man or woman, in
the end there is no difference. By following the teaching of
Buddha, you will get enlightenment and become like a Buddha.5 6
55Oogoshi Aiko. Nihonteki Sexuality (Japanese Sexuality) (Tokyo: Hozdkan,
1991), 89.
5 6 Tagami Taishu. Bukkyd to Seisabetsu (Buddhism and Sexual Discrimination)
(Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 1992), 146.
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2 1
He implies that the true teaching of the Buddha does not include
discrimination on the basis of sex, and reminds us that the “sutras emphasize
that everyone can achieve salvation.” However, we must face the fact of
the Buddhist rejection of women, which clearly has become a traditional
view within religion in Japan.
One of first Japanese writers to openly express negative views of
women was Yoshida Kenko,5 8 in his Essays o f Idleness:
One might wonder, then, what exalted creatures women must be
to inspire such fear in men. In fact, women are all perverse by
nature. They are deeply self-centered, grasping in the extreme,
devoid of all susceptibility to reason, quick to indulge in
superstitious practices.. . . Women are devious but stupid. How
disagreeable it is to be forced to cater to their wishes in order to
please them. What woman is worthy of such deference?5 9
Morosawa Yoko notes that “Kenko wrote this essay at a time of transition in
women’s social position from one of power to that of sexual denial; this is
why no such bitter words about women were written in any essay before
57Ibid, 70.
C Q
(1283-1350). Author of Essays o f Idleness (Tsurezuregusa). Litterateur. Poet.
Son of Kaneaki Urabe, chief priest of Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto. He took the name of
Yoshida after the shrine where he lived. Appointed as guard at the Imperial Palace. Well
versed in ancient customs and practices.
59Yoshida Kenko. Essays o f Idleness. Trans. Donald Keene (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1967), 17.
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22
Kenko.”6 0 Morosawa further notes that: “Heian literature shows us a
manner for men towards women that was ‘lady-first’, and thus men cared
and treated women well in many ways.”6 1 However, in medieval society, she
continues, “worshipping and respecting women, as had been done from
ancient times, was rejected, and thus, following Kenko’s severe views on the
situation of women, there appeared many episodes in Taiheiki, composed in
the Muromachi period, describing women as silly and as the roots of evil.”6 2
Female sexuality became permeated with startlingly negative connotations.
Where once women were goddesses they were now viewed as being less
than men.
Confucian Teaching for Women
Japan has witnessed major temporal swings in three enduring traditions
- Shinto, Buddhist, and Confucian. Of these three, Confucian philosophy is
the most vociferously hierarchical, with men at the top and women far below
in a subordinate and inherently inferior position. This is exemplified in The
^Morosawa Yoko. Onna no Rekishi (Women’ s History) (Tokyo: Bungei ShunjO,
1984), 49.
6‘ibid, 181.
^Ibid-
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Greater Learning for Women (Onna Daigaku, 1790), a Confucian-
inspired handbook for instructing women in correct behavior, which expands
the Three Subjugations: “ When in your father’s house, obey your father;
when you move to your husband’s house, obey your husband, after your
husband dies, obey your son.”6 3 The doctrine of the Three Subjugations had
been taught in Japan from the eighth century, and in the medieval period the
idea became widespread among the people. The teachings were not
constituted as ideals for women, but Buddhist proselytization spread the
teaching of the Three Subjugations.6 * Many Confucians were raised in
priestly Buddhist families who accepted the Three Subjugations. In the
Tokugawa era, Buddhism continued to play a role in the shogunate
administration, but Confucianism became the most important influence in
shaping social and political ideology. The feudal system of the Tokugawa
shogunate continued to be ruled by Confucianism for 260 years. The ethics
of the shogunate were heavily influenced by ideas of Hayashi Razan,6 5 who
established a hierarchical system with submission to that hierarchy. The
Minamoto, 62, citing Kaibara Ekken 17.
6 4 Ibid, 101.
6 5(1583-1657). Early Edo scholar as Chinese poetry. Although not one of the
great thinkers, is a popularizer of the orthodox Neo-Confucianism (Shushi-gaku). Was
appointed to head the governmental school to propound the philosophy as official
doctrine.
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2 4
fundamental difference between Confucianism and Buddhism was that
Confucians did not preach salvation. Confucian ethics prescribed rules for
moral conduct and influenced the Japanese people deeply. The Tokugawa
era was a time when a male-controlled “discourse of the feminine most
pervasively preoccupied Japanese society.”6 6 Although women were denied
participation in the creation of the discourse of the feminine, they were
expected to conform to its rules.
In the Greater Learning for Women, the Confucian scholar Kaibara
Ekken prescribed a misogynous code of conduct to be embraced by all
women. Susan Griswold, citing Robertson’s translation of Ekken’s Greater
Learning fo r Women, reveals that it was women’s genitalia that were
responsible for their ‘dull-wittedness, laziness, lasciviousness, hot temper
and the tremendous capacity to bear grudges.6 9 Ekken preached that the great
lifelong duty of a woman (was) obedience and avoidance of the five
infirmities of indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy and silliness.7 0
6 6 Susan Griswold. “Sexuality, Textuality, and the Definition of the Feminine in
Late Eighteenth-Century Japan,” U.S. Japan Women’ s Journal No.9, (1995) : 60.
(1650-1714). A Confucian scholar. Humble, learned but not pedantic. He
became a very popular figure and was highly respected as a great Confucian. A great
traveler, he wrote minutely about his journeys, which proved very useful to other people
following his route. Was also a distinguished biologist.
6 9 Griswold, 60 cited Robertson 92.
7 0 Ibid, 61.
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2 5
Margaret Lock also notes Ekken’s expression about women in the Greater
Learning fo r Women :
Woman has the quality of yin (passiveness). Yin is of the nature of
the night and is dark. Hence, because compared to man she is
foolish, she does not understand her obvious duties She is
disobedient, inclined to anger, slanderous, envious, stupid. Of every
ten women, seven or eight have these failings .... In everything she
must submit to her husband.7 1
After Confucian ethics took precedence, the Japanese woman was
characterized as “a slave in everything but name.”7 2 A wife’s relationship to
her husband was similar to the lord and servant relationship. Takie Lebra
states that “A woman must look to her husband as her lord, and must serve
him with all worship and reverence, not despising or thinking lightly of
him.” The Greater Learning for Women taught women to get “wisdom”
and to obey and be modest to men, and “women brought this book in their
treasure box when they married into their husband’s house.”7 4 Women’s
moral teaching consisted “ in the highest sense of self-denial, and self
7 1 Margaret Lock. The Selfish Housewife and Menopausal Syndrome in Japan
(McGill University, 1987), 4.
72Allen K. Faust. The New Japanese Womanhood (New York: George H. Doran
Company, 1926), 23.
7 3 Takie Sugiyama Lebra. Japanese Women: Constraint and fulfillment
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 11.
7 4 Suzuki, 109.
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2 6
obligation, and denial of selfishness.”7 5 The Greater Learning fo r Women
taught women chastity, modesty, obedience to their husbands, and filial piety
to their husbands’ parents.
The Confucian-based emphasis on educating women to be Ryosai-
Kenbo (Good Wives and Wise Mothers) gradually became the dominant
feminine ideal of the Japanese middle-class. Sharon Nolte cites Sievers as
saying that “reformers and many historians have assumed this ideal to be a
survival of women’s subordinate position in premodem Japan.”7 6 Moreover,
the Greater learning for Women shows earlier standards of feminine
behavior that demanded obedience to the husband but had placed the duty of
the parents-in-law even higher and had not discussed the processes of
childbearing, according to the hierarchical norm for household structure.
Minamoto further argues that Confucianism politicized the negative
Buddhist paradigm of sexuality. She writes that “Confucianism formed the
nucleus of the shogunate’s ideology.”7 7 The Greater Learning for Women
was the Confucian type of education for women and became widespread
during the Tokugawa and Meiji periods. The chapter in Lessons fo r Children
7 ; > Sharon Nolte. Women, the State, and Repression in Imperial Japan, Working
Paper #33 (Michigan: Michigan State University, 1983), 1.
7 6 Nolte, 1.
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2 7
contains the following instructions:
Parents must keep their daughters separate from boys from an
early age and must firmly inculcate in them proper
comportment. . . A woman must keep her heart pure and
constant and, whatever happens, even if she is threatened
by death, steadfastly maintain her chastity. This is of the utmost
importance for this world and the next. Thus, when it comes to
preserving her honor, it is necessary that a woman live her
life with a circumspection that goes beyond what may seem
sufficient. . . it is the way of the ancients to strictly separate
men and women and draw a distinction between them in
all matters, internal and external.7 8
The ideology in the Greater Learning for Women insisted that women must
be aware of the importance of the separation between men and women.
Women were reared to follow obediently men’s lead in all matters. The
female chastity of the ultimate virtue of womanhood is seen in this ideology,
which was clearly influenced by negative Buddhist ideas of sexuality.
In the Meiji period (1868-1912), there appeared a new perspective on
women’s education, Fukuzawa Yukichi’s New Greater Learning for Women
7 0
(Shin-Onna Daigaku). Kiyooka Eiichi translates Fukuzawa’s New Greater
Learning for Women on relationships between men and women:
7 7Minamoto, 99.
7 S Ibid, 100, cited Ishikawa 1981, 17.
79(1835-1901). Prominent educator, writer and propagator of Western knowledge
during the Meiji period (1868-1912), founder of Keio Gijuku (now Keio University), of
the newspaper Jiji Shimpo and of the art of public speaking in Japan.
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2 8
when a husband and a wife live together, it is needless to say that
the wife should give her faith and love to her husband. The two
should be one in body and soul, sharing with each other both
hardships and pleasures, which was their promise at their marriage,
and they should keep this promise at the risk of their lives. In the
relative importance between the two, there should be no difference,
save the difference in their work, one inside and the other outside
the house. They should be equal in all ways and one party should
never bend or try to bend the other in any matter. This is because
of the rights each holds from the promise made upon marriage.8 0
Fukuzawa values gentleness in women, which is very different from
character qualities valued in men. He heartily advocates and encourages
gentleness of devotion as “the basis of women’s virtues and one true nature
O 1
of women.” His teachings are quite contrary to the already established
teaching. Fukuzawa previously attacked the teachings of the Greater
Learning for Women severely, advancing his own New Greater Learning for
Women. The old teaching endeavors to place the relations of the two sexes
under formal rules, while Fukuzawa advocates the achievement of their
spiritual intercourse according to the nature of human beings. He criticizes
Confucianism and claims that “The old never realized the necessity of self-
improvement.”8 2 In Fukuzawa’s critique of the Greater Learning for Women
Kiyooka Eiichi. Trans. Fukuzawa Yukichi on Japanese Women (Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press, 1988), 238.
Ibid, 241.
8 2Ibid.
8 3 Fukuzawa, 141.
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29
and his approach to women in the New Greater Learning fo r Women, he
intends every word to help free the women of Japan from centuries of
submission and gloom. Thus “they can stand on their own, with self-respect
and self-confidence, on the basis of equality in a new society.” Fukuzawa
believes that this change will benefit not only women, but at the same time
men and all the family descendants. Fukuzawa’s approach helped to improve
women’s status, and he became the most prominent educator, writer and
propagator during the Meiji period.
Ideology of Motherhood
A woman, in her moral inferiority, could be respected if she bore an
heir. In the late Heian period, the negative Buddhist view of sex and women
led to the definition of women’s sexuality in terms of motherhood.
“Buddhism negated women, approving them only as mothers.”8 4 In this way,
the dominant culture has consistently relegated female sexuality to sex for
procreation, and women came to be seen as the ‘weak sex’, and a ‘feminine’
Nishiguchi Junko. Onna no Chikara: Kodai no Josei to Bukkyo (Women’ s
Power: Ancient Women and Buddhism) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1987), 63.
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30
or
and ‘passive’ woman became the ideal. As noted earlier, “women’s role
was only as ‘a child bearing tool’ or a ‘borrowed womb’, women were
valued in their capacity for bearing male heirs, and women accepted this
ideology and identity of childbearing, “within a tradition that has made
n r
maternal love an absolute demand of patriarchy.’ Since then women in
Japan have lived under the myth of the Respect for Motherhood (Bosei
Soncho).
The ideology of motherhood had political implications as well. If a
woman did not give birth, did she lose her identity as a woman? Although
Wakita Haruko emphasizes that “a woman and a mother are not
R 7
synonymous,” their value as persons declines. In Ito’s critique of this
ideology, she claims that this principle produced severe discrimination
toward childless women, causing them to be regarded as cold women or
women lacking in humanity. As a result, abusive names such as “umazume”,
8 5 Minamoto, 112.
8 6 Victoria Vemon. “The Mold of Force: Maternal Transformation of Submission
into Aggression in Modem Japanese Women’s Literature,” Comparative Literature East
and West: Traditions and Trends, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press (1989): 168.
o * 7
Wakita Haruko. Nihon Josei Seikatsushi (History of Japanese Women’s Life)
(Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1992), 56.
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3 1
written in kanji with the meaning of “rock-woman,”8 8 have been created
for childless women, who were viewed as valueless in society.
By writing negatively about children, one could open oneself up to the
charge of lacking a mother’s compassion. In the Pillow Book, Sei Shonagon
writes:
A child of about four, whose parents live near by, comes to one’s
house and behaves mischievously. He picks up one’s things,
scatters them about the place, and damages them. Oh, how
hateful! Instead of snatching the thing from him and hiding it,
the mother simply says, ‘You naughty child!’ Then she adds
with a smile, ‘You mustn’t do that. You’ll damage it, you know.’
The mother is hateful too.8 9
The views expressed by Sei Shonagon in this passage led her to be seen as
“a woman with no motherly compassion.”9 0 Indeed, there are more passages
written in the Pillow Book criticizing children or showing dislike of a crying
child. But it is natural for a woman to feel annoyed by a crying child, and
Shonagon has merely expressed her honest feeling, which should not be
criticized. Yet Tanabe comments that Shonagon’s writing shows “none of
that vague clinging attitude toward children that mothers usually feel due to
8 8 Ito Masako. Onna no Genzai (Women Today) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1978), 141.
8 9 Sei Shonagon. The Pillow Book. Trans. Ivan Morris. 157-8.
^ ukuto Sanae. Heian-Chdno Haha to Ko (Mother and Children in the Heian
ra) (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1991), 132.
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32
their deep involvement with a child, and thus concludes that she was a
childless woman.”9 1 Sei Shonagon was seen as “a complicated, intelligent,
well-informed woman who was quick, impatient, keenly observant of detail,
high-spirited, witty, emulative, sensitive to the charms and beauties of the
World and to the pathos of things.”9 2 However, after the ideology of
motherhood was established, women who expressed negative views of
children came to be viewed as lacking motherly compassion, and as
heartless and human failures.
Meiji policy in the modem period also greatly influenced the
development of motherhood ideology. The Meiji period (1868-1912) was
the beginning of rapid economic development in Japan, a period of
modernization that witnessed the emergence of new elites based on expertise
and technical knowledge. Beginning in the Meiji period, schools for women
were established, and women also gained the legal right to head the
household and to initiate divorce actions, but society’s general view of
women remained bound to home and family. Mothers became subjects of
focus for Japan’s government policies. Ohinata Masami discusses the
9hto, 56.
^Morris, 5.
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33
influence of the Confucian idea of Fukoku Kydhei9 3 that shifted emphasis
from state to family and then from family to the woman, leading to woman’s
worth being defined in direct relationship to her ability to provide future
soldiers.9 4 It was the government’s goal that the family function as a prime
supporter of the nation-state. Motherhood was thus “emphasized within the
context of a social hierarchy structured to support the state, and the family
became the servant of the state.”9 5
The emphasis of the discourse around women shifted from inferiority to
the idea of the sanctity of motherly love. Motherly love became the key
phrase in all elements of good child-rearing and proper education of one’s
children. It was officially acknowledged that “women could be regarded as
more than simply a ‘borrowed womb,’ and they were encouraged within the
confines of the domestic sphere to become the guardians and educators of
their children.”9 6 From the Meiji period until the World War II, children
93Literally, Enrich the Country and Strengthen the Military. A slogan o f ancient
Chinese origin used by the Japanese government in the Meiji period (1868-1912) to
promote strategic industries and strengthen Japan.
94
Ohinata Masami. “The Mythic of Motherhood.” Japanese Women: Mew
Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, Fujimura-Fanselow et al. (New
York: The Feminist Press, 1995), 203.
95 Ibid, 204.
9 6 Lock, 4.
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3 4
were thought of as “the nation’s treasure.”9 7 New magazines were
published on childcare, all stressing the importance of the mother and her
guidance in rearing children who would succeed and be good citizens.
Buddhist teaching rejected women’s sexuality but established the
ideology that being a mother, as long as women’s sexuality was denied, is
the way to a woman’s salvation. From images of women’s threatening
sexuality represented in the medieval period, the popular perception of
women’s status evolved into one of the respected mother, culminating in the
Meiji government policy enforcing the ideology of motherhood. Since then,
women have been raised with the expectation that they will marry and bear
children.
However, women who do not have their own children are still not
considered to be fully women, and are regarded as lesser persons than
women with children.9 8 Women who are not mothers are viewed as valueless
under the male hegemony. Those women who married and had their own
children often behaved “condescendingly toward women who were
97Miyaji N. & et al. “Monitoring Motherhood: Sociological and Historical
Aspects of Maternal and child Health in Japan,” Daedalus. (1992): 99.
98Rebecca L. Copeland. “Motherhood as Institution,” Japan Quarterly. (Jan-
March 1991): 101.
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childless.”1 0 0 Interesting data has been gathered in twentieth century Japan
by Ueno Chizuko. She interviewed a large number of Japanese women in
her 1986 survey, and the result indicates that they felt overwhelmingly that a
woman’s goal in life was to be a mother and bear children. Copeland cites
Ueno’s claim that: “In this country, being a woman is virtually synonymous
with being a mother. And there is a tendency to regard women who are not
mothers are not being women, either.”1 0 1 Ueno’s survey tells us that an
obsession with motherhood still exists in Japan today. Women’s basic
attitudes have not changed. Women’s self-worth and value to society have
been associated with her motherhood. Discussing contemporary Japanese
mothers, Brenda Bankert notes that the mother’s first priority goes to a
relationship with her child, and within that context she develops self-
confidence as a competent mother and her validation within the domestic
sphere.1 0 2 Even if she does engage in nondomestic activity, that activity is
usually secondary to or compatible with motherhood. Tanaka also comments
that, “when a Japanese woman gives birth, suddenly she is instantaneously
transformed into motherhood incarnate, and her whole identity is defined by
l00Ito, 60.
I0 1 Copeland, 101.
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3 6
her maternal role.”1 0 3 Mothers in Japan are expected to bear almost the full
burden of childrearing and to let nothing interfere with those duties.
Women’s attitudes toward their status still rely on society’s long-held
atriarchal rights. Under the influence of a patriarchal society, Japanese
women believe that being a mother provides the most secure social status.
The majority of women choose the life of a mother and a full-time
housewife rather than seeking a more independent status. This situation has
been perpetuated as a result of the ideology of motherhood, which
established a significant basis for the mother’s self-sacrifice and devotion,
and still prevails today in Japanese women’s belief system.
The devotion and self-sacrifice of mothers are therefore stressed in
popular expressions and venues. Ohinata offers some examples: When
“Brenda Bankert. “Japanese Perceptions of Motherhood,” Psychology of
Women Quarterly (1989) : 60-63.
1 0 3 Tanaka Kimiko. “Dr. Spock, Stay Home,” Yomiuri Shinbun/World Press
Review (9/1992): 33.
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3 7
someone is punished for some socially deviant behavior, the tears and
sorrow of Mother are referred to. When the top members of various
professions talk about their lives, they always attribute their success to the
love and devotion of their mothers. A businessman reminiscing about his
youth says that the driving force that keeps him going is mother, who raised
his family even though there had hardly been any food to eat. A man falsely
charged with a crime and later found not guilty may say that though
everyone abandoned him, his mother’s fervent belief in his innocence had
given him the will to live. The newspapers run headlines proclaiming, I owe
everything to my mother. Even though a man’s father believed with his
mother in their son’s innocence, the father was nowhere to be seen.1 0 4
This is how a society devoted to the ideology of motherhood performs.
Society holds up mothers as symbols of love and devotion and suggests that
this stereotype should apply to all mothers in Japan. The establishment of
motherhood ideology upheld a definition of motherhood as women’s self-
sacrifice and devotion to children.
1 0 4 Ohinata, 46.
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3 8
The Meiji Mother
The phrase “Meiji Mama” evokes a powerful nostalgia in Japan.
Muriel Jolivet cites the case of Oshin. Oshin is a heroine in a television
drama shown every day for a year. She was bom in 1901 and represents the
mother’s strength in the Meiji period. This program broke all previous
viewing records. Oshin is not only the embodiment of a good wife and a
wise mother, but courageous, hard working, and persevering. Women at that
time were seen as not possessing the status of human beings at all; they were
seen more as sexual objects or convenient tools. But at the same time,
women were strong and worked hard. Oshin was sent away at the age of
seven to be a nursemaid. The little girls were sent to work as nursemaids
from the Meiji to the end of the war. They sang lullabies and nursery rhymes
to cheer themselves up, wishing their charges off and extending their distress
and despair:
One, we are all bullied / Two, we are all hated / Three, we are all
forced to talk/ Four, we are all scolded / Five, we are all forced to
carry babies who cry a lot / Six, we are all fed with terrible food /
Seven, we are all forced to wash diapers in the cold water of the
river / Eight, we are all impregnated and shed our tears/ Nine, we
are all persuaded to leave, and finally / Then, we all must leave.1 0 6
1 0 6 Muriel Jolivet. Japan: the Childless Society? The Crisis of Motherhood. (State
Albany: University of New York, 1986), 125.
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39
Although Oshin’s life was tragic, she managed to overcome every
difficulty. Jolivet continues: “Oshin then slaves away without respite until
the day she marries a farmer. And then she is persecuted by her
cantankerous mother-in-law, while slaving away at her side, with a baby
strapped to her back.”1 0 7 Even as a child, Oshin is no stranger to tragedy.
She watches her mother plunge into the icy waters of a river to abort her
unwanted fetus. Oshin’s second baby is stillborn, her eldest son is killed in
the war, and her husband commits suicide. Despite all the tragic events in
Oshin’s life, she stayed strong and always competent. Oshin is the
embodiment of an ideal mother, the nostalgic image of comfort and strength
as the essence of the “Meiji Mama”.
Until the end of the Second World War, Japanese society was feudal
and relied absolutely on patriarchy and the superiority of men over women.
The father’s authority reigned supreme in the whole household. To oppose
this authority would have been considered ingratitude, endorsed by the
removal of the rebel. This was the era of arranged marriages, and love did
not exist or was supposed to come after marriage. Ishimoto Shizue
comments about her mother: “Mother had never understood the moral
I0 7 Ibid, 126.
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40
beauty of romantic love between man and woman. She regards it as
indicative of wild feelings which can be allowed to exist only among vulgar
people.”1 0 8 If a woman could not give a man children, he could take a
mistress, or even several, and often this choice was a sign of his wealth.
What was remarkable was that from this system, there emerged the
idealization of what mothers used to be like: this beast of burden, this belly
to be inseminated, already a mother before she was twenty, became the very
symbol of self-denial, sacrifice and selflessness.
i no
Meiji-bom Ishimoto Shizue, a well-known feminist, writes of her
mother’s hidden strength and endurance in her Facing Two Ways:
Strict with herself, and formal, she plays the part of a samurai’s
wife, majestically, as if in a dramatic performance. She rises
earlier and retires later than anybody else in the family. Nobody
ever saw her sit in a relaxed manner: she is always erect,
wearing her kimono tighdy with her heavy sash folded on her
back. . . ‘Endurance’ and ‘repression’ are her greatest ideals.
She says to me, “Endurance a woman should cultivate more than
anything else. If you endure well in any circumstances, you will
achieve happiness . . .unselfishness, sacrifice and endurance for
woman. That is all-sufficient” my honorable mother maintains.1 1 0
f f \Q
Ishimoto Shizue. Facing Two Ways: The Story of My Life (New York: Farrar &
Rinehart Inc., 1935), 12.
1 0 9 (1897 -). Current name is Kato Shizue. Politician and social worker. Since
1931 a strong advocate of birth control and has done much to propagate the movement in
the country. Entered politics as a member of Diet and has been a notable figure in the
Socialist Party since 1946.
1 I0 Ishimoto, 9,11.
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4 1
The traditional mother’s training of her daughter is articulated here clearly.
Mothers “bear out the extreme social pressures for conformity exerted upon
Japanese daughters.”lL 1 Ishimoto shows respect for her mother’s fidelity to
the feudal code and subsequendy tried to follow the model. Her mother
fulfills the role of mothers who trained their daughters to become dutiful and
obedient wives. But Ishimoto was to become a founder of the Japanese birth
control movement, a political activist and an advocate of women’s rights.
Victoria Vernon writes that, “Ishimoto acknowledges openly that society is
the primary source of the controls and brings less than sole responsibility to
bear upon the maternal figure.”1 1 2 Ishimoto writes a detailed picture of a
perfect mother who meets the expectations of her culture in serving her
family and raising children. Vernon points out that “The image of Japanese
women endorsed by hundreds of years of tradition and endorsed by the legal
codes of the nation - an image of submission so complete that it went
I T -5
beyond every waking moment.” Ishimoto recalls her mother’s hidden
strength, concealed as it was beneath so much gentleness. Her mother had
1 1 Vernon, 163.
1 1 2 Ibid, 164.
1 I3 Ibid.
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performed as a dutiful and obedient wife, with strength and self-sacrifice,
as a perfect Meiji mother.
The Search for Mother in Classical Literature
Women have played a preeminent role in the creation of Japan’s
literature, and many of these women attained supreme heights in world
literature besides. The best example is Murasaki Shikibu. Almost a
thousand years ago, she wrote the world’s first true novel, The Tale of Genji,
which is known as roughly equivalent in to status Shakespeare’s plays in
English literature.
The mother’s image can also be seen in this work of classical literature.
Bettina Knapp discusses Genji’s unconscious search for Mother. “Prince
Genji’s love experience revolves to a great extent around his search for a
mother figure.”1 1 4 His real mother, Lady Kiritsubo, died when he was three.
Fujitsubo, his stepmother, only five years his senior, had a strong
resemblance to his real mother. Instantaneously, he conceived a passion for
her. Despite her firm attitude to deny him, Lady Fujitsubo spent the night
ll4Bettina L. Knapp. “Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji: Search for
The Mother.” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modem Literatures (Spring 1992) :
163.
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with him. Genji’s sexual relationship with Fujitsubo was not considered
incestuous, but it did represent a sinful act. Genji’s obsessive passion for
Fujitsubo is characterized by Jacob:
A double psychological need: for a childhood he had lost or
perhaps never really known, and for a relationship with a
feminine principle (unconscious image of woman) given to a
child by the mother. When a young boy experiences his own
mother as a nourishing force in his life, he learns how to deal
with her and the problems emerging from their relationship in the
world of reality.... Genji had been divested of that positive and
loving force; thus he floundered, never learning to face his
115
many obligations in the world.
After Fujitsubo died, Genji met Lady Murasaki, who was, according to
Knapp, “psychologically mother oriented.” Genji’s search for the mother’s
image does not stop as he falls in love with many women. His longing for
his delightful mother’s image is transferred to Murasaki.
In Murasaki, Genji unconsciously felt the presence of that
beloved resurrected mother for whom he always longed. When
Genji saw how astonishingly the one resembled the other, he
fancied that all the while Murasaki had but served as a substitute
or eidolon of the lady who denied him her love ... (and) he
wondered whether, if they were side by side, he should be able
to tell them apart.1 1 7
Murasaki is a loving and nourishing mother type and the figure of the
womb-world which Genji searched for. “Through the innocence, purity, and
1 1 5 Ibid, 26.
II7Ibid, 78.
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cleanliness of the little girl, those pristine qualities inhere in an infant
breeding out of the womb where Genji would be reborn.”1 1 8 Thus Knapp
determines that Genji’s life is obsessed with searching for an ideal mother
figure. Murasaki fulfills Genji’s image of his ideal mother with her warmth,
integrity, intelligence, and beauty.
While Genji’s search for a mother figure is understood from a
psychological view, Kojiki, Japan’s oldest written record, describes the first
instance of actual “mother obsession” in Japanese literature.
While the other deities ruled their realms in obedience to the
commands entrusted to them, Susa-no-oh did not rule the land
entrusted to him, instead, he wept and howled even until his beard,
eight hands long extended down over his chest. His weeping was
such that it caused the verdant mountains to wither and all the rivers
and seas to dry up. At this, the cries of malevolent deities were
everywhere abundant like summer flies; and all sorts of calamities
arose in all things. The Izanagi-no-oh-mi-kami said to Susa-no-oh:
“Why is it you do not rule the land entrusted to you, but weep and
howl?” Then Susa-no-oh replied: “I wish to go to the land of my
mother, oh: “Why is it you do not rule the land entrusted to you,
but weep and Ne-no-kata-su-kuni. That is why I weep.1 1 9
This theme from Kojiki continues in the works of many modem authors.
Copeland uses it “to refer to any work in Japanese literature which depicts a
U 8Ibid, 44.
I1 9 Donald Philippi. Trans. Kojiki, Chapter 13,1968, 7 2 -7 3 .
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search for mother, or more specifically for the mother world (womb).”
In Kojiki, Susa-no-oh is the son of the gods Izanami and Izanagi. Izanami
was burned when she gave birth to the Fire God and died. Susa-no-oh, the
tempestuous god, weeps and wails because he longs for his mother Izanami.
Susa-no-oh’s longing for mother is actually a longing for the land of his
mother Izanami’s death cave - Ne-no-kata-su-kuni. “The region implied by
this word is generally identified with Yomi, the Yellow Spring (the River
Styx), the barrier between life and death.” The kanji for Ne-no-kata-su-
kuni means the root or the source. Susa-no-oh is wailing for mother, but not
simply a return to the womb-death world, but a return to the motherland, the
world the mother represents. Many modem Japanese writers, artists and
film directors have tended to turn back to and become obsessed with origins,
ancient times, native roots, traditions, and the motherland for their material.
In the concluding sections of this paper, I will examine these modem
narratives in relation to the mother quest theme.
1 2 0 Rebecca Copeland. “Mother Obsession and Womb Imagery in Japanese
Literature,” The Transactions o f the Asiatic Society of Japan (1988): 131.
1 2 1 Ibid, 146.
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Tanizaki’s Mother Obsession in The Bridge o f Dreams
The Bridge of Dreams is an intentional imitation of The Tale ofGenji,
particularly where reference is made to the narrator’s memory of the beauty
of the young mother. Tanizaki Junichiro translated The Tale ofGenji, the
major Heian work of fiction, from archaic to modem Japanese first in the
1930s and for a second time in 1954.1 2 2 The Bridge o f Dreams concerns
Tadasu’s clinging to the childhood memory of his mother. As ltd notes,
‘Tanizaki wrote repeatedly about man’s longing for the bygone days of
childhood, the embrace of the maternal.”1 2 3 Tadasu, like Genji, has a
beautiful mother who died when he was a child, so that he cannot remember
her very clearly. He recalls the whiteness of her skin more than any other
characteristics:
When I was lying in bed in my nurse’s arms, I felt an indescribable
longing for my dead mother. That sweet, dimly white dream world
there in her warm bosom among the mingled scents of her hair and
her milk - why had it disappeared?1 2 4
His mother dies after she becomes pregnant and incurs an infection
p° Anthony Hood Chambers. “The Secret Window: Ideal Worlds in Tanizaki’s
Fiction.” Council on East Asian Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University press, (1994):
107.
17 ^
Ken Kenneth Ito. Visions of Desire: Tanizaki’ s Fictional Worlds. Stanford:
Stanford University, (1991): 181.
l24Tanizaki, The Bridge of Dreams, 109.
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of the womb. Gwenn Peterson points out that in this dream world in Genji,
“a dream linking dream to dream does indeed refer to the insubstantial
beauty of life, but in Tanizaki’s story the dream is focused in a woman’s
milky breast.”1 2 5 The father has little presence, and his image is not clear.
The father marries again, and Tadasu is encouraged to see the new wife as
his real mother. The parallels between The Tale ofGenji and The Bridge o f
Dreams are seen in particular in the incestuous relationship between the hero
and an older woman. Copeland discusses Tanizaki’s dimly white dream
world:
The two women become one. He transfers his desire for his mother
to her surrogate ... Tanizaki blends childish desire with
overwhelming erotica. The mother has been lost, but now she has
been replaced by a surrogate ... who is able to satisfy the boy in
the man, while at the same time tantalize the man in the boy.1 2 6
A certain image of the mother is seen as an echo of the search for the womb.
Tadasu grows up in the privileged and comfortable family estate. The garden
is a place where Tadasu plays freely, especially his favorite spot, a tea
cottage. Tadasu recalls eating catered meals of “all the ingredients and
I2 5 Gwenn B. Petersen. The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizaki,
Kawabata, and Mishima (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1979), 72.
l26Copeland, 133.
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cooking them in our huge kitchen.”1 2 8 Chambers describes this paradise-
garden as
A microcosm where father, mother, and child eat peacefully
together among water, rocks, and flowers that represent the
harmony of nature. A safe, isolated world, the garden is a
place in which Tadasu can play freely, indulge his fantasies, even
make love to his stepmother.1 2 9
Tadasu never strays very far from the womb, the tea cottage, located inside
the larger paradise of the garden. As a boy, Tadasu plays with the tea things
and watches centipedes at play. Tadasu’s tea cottage “represents the teeming
of natural life, green, damp, warm, and growing.”1 3 1 Tadasu is protected by
the womb of the estate, which describes his mother’s death from infection of
the womb during pregnancy. Later, his stepmother Tsuneko dies in the
womb of the estate from the sting that is also an infection of the womb.
Tadasu’s earlier and later experiences of maternal death shows the limit of
the protective and life-giving power of the womb.
Tanizaki’s mother obsession is more pronounced in the Bridge o f
Dreams than in any of his other works. The extraordinary infantile
attachment of young Tadasu to his mother is one reason. Tadasu seeks to
l2 S Tanizaki, 104.
L 2 9 Chambers, 109.
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reclaim his lost mother. According to Ito, ‘Tanizaki’s own memoir of his
mother consistently portrays her in a way that delineates a beauty distilled
and essential. . . . This tendency to portray his mother as a concept other
than a person frequently colors Tanizaki’s depictions of her.”1 3 3 Tadasu
recalls the mother as a beautiful and dreamlike perfection, and tries to
reclaim that perfection of mother to make the vital reconnection.
Copeland’s view is that “mother obsessed” literature does not
emphasize “a desire for the mother herself, but for the world she represents,
the womb.”1 3 5 She says that it is the representation of perfection for which
Tadasu longs. In The Bridge of Dreams, Tanizaki shows Tadasu’s world
with the imagery of the womb, as the estate in large, the teahouse or the six-
mat bedroom. The mother obsession undoubtedly dominates Tadasu’s
consciousness, and he links it to his psychic life, and the bond with his
mother remains intact.
Copeland also makes a connection between the imagery and attributes
of the womb and the use of water imagery, noting that water is “universally
1 3 ‘ibid, 110.
1 3 3 Ito, 17.
I3 5 Copeland, 136.
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50
recognized as a symbol for mother and for life.”1 3 6
I would think of her wistfully as I leaned on the balustrade and
watched the carp swimming in the pond, yearn for her as I
listened to the clack of the bamboo mortar.1 3 7
At the pond into which Tadasu’s real mother dips her toes, Tadasu listens to
the sound of water running through the bamboo mortar, and his thoughts
turn to memory of his mother. Tanizaki’s “sweet, dimly, white dream world”
also is found in the swirling mists of the bath, a maternal symbol. Water
awakens Tadasu’s memories of mother, and he floats in the womb of the
bath. Richard Bowring notes that ‘Tanizaki’s fantasizing frequently led the
mother’s boy into hot water with the authorities in austere times.”1 3 8
Tanizaki’s depiction of water certainly means both water and womb as life-
giving. Water imagery as the dominant symbol of life and of the search for
life-giving provenance is more developed in Izumi Kyoka’s Kdya-hijiri (The
Holy Man o f Mount Kdya).
l36Ibid, 139.
1 3 7 Tanizaki, The Bridge of Dreams, 109.
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Kyoka’s Water Imagery in Kdya-hijiri
Izumi Kyoka (1873-1939) has been described by scholars as “a stylist
and as an author of ‘perverse difficulty.’”1 3 9 Donald Keene also notes that
Kyoka’s work partakes of a mystery that transcends any particular place and
time.1 4 0 His astute rhythms and brilliant imagery are enjoyable, but not
always easily understood. Water imagery is a central theme to Kyoka’s
works. Kdya-hijiri (The Holy Man o f Mount Kdya, 1900) seems to be based
on the myths and Buddhist morality tales of Mt. Koya. The protagonist,
Shucho, is an itinerant monk who penetrates deeply into the mysterious
high-country of Hida-Takayama and meets a dangerous and alluring woman.
Water is the dominant image throughout this narrative. Water with its power
is associated with and relates to a woman as an erotic presence in man’s life.
The woman in Kdya-hijiri is a motif of the quest for the origin and
explanation of life force. Thus water in nature stands for both threat and life
force.
Water imagery, says Inouye, “is central to Kyoka’s artistic vision,
l38Richard Bowring. “Mother’s Boy,” Far Eastern Economic Review, (5/90) :40.
I3 9 Charles Inouye. “Water Imagery in the Works of Izumi Kyoka,” Monumenta
Nipponica 46:1, (Spring 1991): 43.
1 4 0 Keene, 202.
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occurring with such regularity that it is hard to imagine any of his stories
without it.”1 4 2 Cody Poulton also cites Kyoka’s “ambivalent iconography of
women— one which subordinated the male to the female, but also embraced
women in all her aspects, both good and evil, saintly and fallen.” 1 4 7 Both
water and a woman dominate man in Kdya-hijiri. The connection between
water and a woman suggests that water and women both give life and take it
away. Water is a route to get from one place to the next or a barrier
preventing passage. The woman is one of the survivors of the flood in the
mountains, and she is both temptress and the destination of Shucho’s
journey. Inouye says: “She is capable of mothering, yet also of delivering a
caress of death or mutation.”1 4 8 ShOcho learns something about his own
deeper nature and about the relationship between men and women, and
between men and the image of mother.
Nina Comyetz sheds additional light on Kyoka’s quest for maternal
origins. Citing the views of Fujimoto, she notes that the motifs of “‘women’,
‘water’ and ‘mountains’ are tied to Kyoka’s search for rebirth and
l42Inouye, 44.
1 4 7 Cody Poulton. “Onna Keizu/Oni Keizu: Izumi Kyoka’s Icology of Women.”
Inter Asian Comparative Literature, Tokyo (1995) : 425.
1 4 8 Inouye, 60.
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transformation.”I5lThis combination of mountain, water and woman is
symbolic of the womb and “comprises a traditional and conventional setting
1
for a type of enlightenment.” The association of women with mothers in
Kyoka’s works is complicated with the connection of women to death. The
world of the dead is intimately connected with the ocean that Shucho moves
back towards at the end of the world in order to be reborn in water. The
origin simultaneously means arriving at the end. Kdya-hijiri is “a tale of a
return to water and the purification-rebirth that this return engenders.”1 5 3
Water flows throughout Kdya-hijiri as a border and source of dissolution.
Shucho loses consciousness in the stream with the woman. The warm pool
of water in Kdya-hijiri is associated with womb-like images of caves and
rebirth. Women in Kyoka’s work, therefore, are presented in association
with the womb, as origin and life-force, and function as incarnations of
rebirth and as symbols of transformation and death.
I5INina Comyetz. Izumi Kydka’s Speculum: Rejlections o f the Medusa,
Thanatos and Eros. Diss. Columbia University, 1991, 75, Fujimoto 1980, 170.
l52Ibid.
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Kawabata’s Womb-World in House o f the Sleeping Beauties
Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) has been greatly influenced by Heian
literature. He combines poetic and transcendental romanticism in his works.
Kawabata personally witnessed death very prematurely, as he was orphaned
after facing a series of deaths in his family. Later, death and its
transcendence became central themes in his literature. ltd Sei notes
Kawabata’s loneliness: “The orphan’s longing for family darkened his entire
life.”1 5 4 Kawabata has written and spoken of his early orphan’s sorrow,
which lasted until he was about twenty-four years old, and he has described
his period of “emotional sickness.”1 3 5 ltd adds that there is a pervasive sense
in Kawabata’s literature of “a search for warmth and beauty that comes from
his orphan feelings.”1 3 6 In Kawabata’s thinking, life is defined as loneliness,
sadness, alienation, loss, frustration and desperation, all qualities which arise
from his orphan disposition.
Mono-no-aware, that consciousness of the sad transience of all earthly
things, is a basic theme of The Tale ofGenji. Genji discovers the transience
of earthly matters as he finds himself losing people whom he loves. A
1 5 3 Ibid, 177.
1 5 4 Kawabata Yasunari. House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories. Trans.
Edward G. Seidensticker (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969), Intro. Ito Sei, 406.
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tension between aesthetic attachments to beautiful things and a religious
sensitivity to the passing of things is described in The Tale ofGenji. The
beauty and the fragility of life are affirmed. In a similar vein, the aesthetic of
transient nature becomes Kawabata’s literary expression as he sees himself
losing family in his life. Donald Keene includes Kawabata’s recollection in
his Dawn to the West. Kawabata wrote that, during times of intense wartime
bombing, he developed a habit of reading the Kogetsu-shoofThe Tale o f
Genji. He recalls
What profound feelings the wandering exiles of the Yoshino Court
and the people who lived during the Muromachi period
had read The Tale ofGenji... drifted through my mind, and
recollections of the people of long ago who had read it in
adversity shot through me: I thought that I must go on living,
along with these traditions that flowed within me.1 5 7
Kawabata thought of himself through the flow of the Japanese culture that
would be transmitted into the postwar period.
In House o f the Sleeping Beauties, Kawabata invents a secret house
where elderly men who have lost their sexual ability visit and dream beside
sleeping beauties. The young girls, light skinned and dark skinned, are alive,
yet drugged into death-like sleep. The seasonal setting of the narrative is
1 5 5 Peterson, 156.
1 5 6 Ito, in Kawabata, Nemureru Bijo (House o f the Sleeping Beauties), 407.
I 5 7 Keene, 824.
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important as autumn and then winter are the seasons of death. Death
always has richly poetic implications in Kawabata’s work. The strange
house of prostitution is located at the edge of a cliff against which the waves
of the sea beat. The sound of the waves course throughout the narrative and
spill over into the old man’s dreams. Old Eguchi, lying beside sleeping
virgin girls, listens to the waves of the sea. The room where the sleeping
beauties wait is warm and dark and lined with crimson velvet curtains. He
dreams of the various women in his life, - his wife, daughter, lovers, and
mother.
He had forgotten the nightmare, and as affection for the girl
poured through him, there came over him too a childlike feeling
that he was loved by the girl. He felt for a breast, and held it softly
in his hand. There was in the touch a strange flicker of something,
as if this were the breast of Eguchi’s own mother before she had
him inside her. He withdrew his hand, but the sensation went
158
from his chest to his shoulders.
Eguchi thinks of his mother as “the first woman in his life.”1 5 9 His thoughts
move back to memories of his mother’s death and forward to contemplation
of his own. He recalls the grief and terror of her death: “His mother called
out his name in little gasps . . . vomited a large quantity of blood and stopped
1 5 8 Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories, 36.
l59Ibid, 94.
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breathing.”1 6 0 The curtains in the secret room, is the color of blood. He
closed his eyes tight, but that red would not disappear. Eguchi, as an old man
standing on the brink of senility and death, yearns to return to the source
from which he first gained life, that is the womb. As Arthur Kimbal notes,
Eguchi “lies symbolically cradled within the protective covering of the two
girls, and, cuddling their breaths, journeys in thought to a time of security
and warmth.”1 6 2 In the blood-red room, the dark and light girls are like the
in(dark) and yo(light) of totality in Kawabata’s literature. Eguchi longs for
this comforting oneness of in’yo. His memory of mother is a memory of her
suffering and death. There is even blood on the breast of one of his sleeping
girls. His experiences in the present are linked through “sights, scents, and
sounds with memories of the past.” The sight of the blood reminds him of
his mother, the woman who gave him life. Thoughts of her always bring
thoughts of death. Birth and death are one in the house of the sleeping
beauties.
On his first visit, Eguchi realizes the smell of eros by smelling milk in
the light nipples of the light-skinned girl. The baby’s milk-smell reminds
l60Ibid, 95.
“Authur Kimbal. Crisis in Identity and Contemporary Japanese Novels
(Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1973), 105.
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him of the innocence of life and his mother. Hirai reveals that the smell of
milk and blood and death are linked, because “the mother’s life-giving force
and life-nourishing milk are ultimately converted into the blood of death.”1 6 4
The light-skinned girl arises from a desire for life while the dark-skinned girl
arises from a desire for death. Eguchi’s lyrical rendering of the sleeping girl
differs from seeking the stepmother’s milky breast in Tanizaki’s Bridge of
Dreams. The milky scent brings to Eguchi other memories that lead him to
move back from the sounds and scents of this moment to the place of his
origin.
Eguchi is told to listen to the sounds of waves and wind. The sound of
the waves spills over into the old man’s dreams throughout the narrative.
Gwenn Peterson argues that “Kawabata’s technique of composite images
and linked memories is beautifully demonstrated as the roar of waves sounds
against the cliff.”1 6 5 The girl’s body is moved by the ocean echoes which are
the rhythm of life. Eguchi closes his eyelids and sees “two girls — one dark
and cold, and the other of shining beauty, with hints of in’yo contrasts of
l63Peterson, 162.
1 6 4 Hirai Ritsuko. A Search for the Lost Woman: A Study of Women Characters in
the Works o f Kawabata Yasunari. Thesis, (Los Angeles: University of Southern
California, 1979), 50.
1 6 5 Peterson, 163.
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dark and light.”1 6 6 Hirai interprets Eguchi’s realization by smelling milk in
the nipples of the girls that embody maternity as well, and says that “the
light-skinned girl, the innocence of life, yet simultaneously his aspiration for
his mother, and the dark-skinned girl arouses a desire for death and desire
for life.”1 6 7 The story opens in the warmth of an Indian summer evening and
the smell of milk of an infant-like girl, and ends in winter with a dark-
skinned girl who dies in her sleep. The light-skinned and the dark-skinned,
birth and death are one in the house of the sleeping beauties, and become the
memory of his mother. Eguchi goes into the world of dreams, with memory
buried deeply in his subconscious. The crimson-curtained room is
symbolically a womb, a place in which he “experiences directly the essence
of life itself, the essence of eros, while hearing the sound of the primordial
sea, the source of life-giving force and of death, which seems to be calling
him into its maternal bosom.” Eguchi’s mother and other women appear
through his dreams and reveries. This is a womb-world, where the crimson
166
167
168
Ibid, 161.
Hirai, 48.
Ibid.
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room lures Eguchi ever deeper in thought and father back in time,
inevitably, to the origin of his life.
Conclusion
This examination into the image of the mother in Japanese history and
literature has shown how it has developed over time. Japanese mythology
depicts women as goddesses and deities, and early historical narratives show
them in positions of power. Over time, however, women came to be viewed
as inferior, polluted, and less than men. The only way that women were
valued was by being mothers. Women’s self-sacrifice, devotion and
endurance were respected, and the warmth and strength beneath their
gentleness functioned as a creative, life-giving force for which one yearned
and to which one could return. Women’s strength originated from their
ancient spiritual power, and strengthened during the centuries of their sexual
discrimination. Women’s power and strength are described in Japanese
literature as the origin and force of life. The longing for mother is in part a
longing for death and for the mysterious life-force. Women represent the
cycle of birth and death in Japanese literature. The search for mother or
motherland is actually a search for the origin of identity and selfhood. As
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6 1
Izanami was longed for in Kojiki, the theme of longing for mother is
widespread in Japanese literature. This is exemplified in the work of many
modem writers, who express their nostalgic feelings for mothers as a
longing for the warmness and sacred life of the womb. Such ambiguous
juxtapositions of life, death, birth and being are inherent in the way the
mother is envisioned in Japanese literature, history, and society.
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6 2
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Noh Drama.” U.S. Japan Women’ s Journal. No.3, 1992.
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Bankert, Brenda. “Japanese Perceptions of Motherhood.” Psychology o f
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Representations of the mother as origin and force of life in Japanese literature and history
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