The Female as Subject: Reading and Writing in Early Modern Japan ed. by P. F. Kornicki, Mara Patessio, G. G. Rowley (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Female as Subject: Reading and Writing in Early Modern Japan ed. by P. F. Kornicki, Mara Patessio, G. G. Rowley Lawrence Marceau (bio) The Female as Subject: Reading and Writing in Early Modern Japan. Edited by P. F. Kornicki, Mara Patessio, and G. G. Rowley. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2010. ix, 279 pages. $70.00, cloth; $26.00, paper. This collection of essays, which resulted from a workshop on “Women and Writing in Japan,” held at the University of Cambridge in September 2006, opens up many new avenues of exploration. Inspired in part by Tiziana Plebani’s 2001 Il “genere” dei libri (The “gender” of books), which argues persuasively for reconsidering the role that books played in the lives of European women, this collection consists of an introduction by the three editors followed by eleven essays. [End Page 430] The first, by P. F. Kornicki, “Women, Education, and Literacy,” covers a great deal of material, from issues of women’s education and literacy, to books written and published for female consumer-readers, to issues of women who actually engaged in writing. We learn, for example, that “a minimum of 176 women were running terakoya in the first half of the nineteenth century” (p. 21), supporting the realization that literate women were active in the field of teaching, in addition to their relatively active participation in the kokugaku (national learning) and shingaku (learning of the heart) intellectual movements (pp. 19–21). As Kornicki observes, our current understanding here is still “sketchy” and more detailed studies are needed to determine the specifics of how women functioned in these movements (p. 19). For this reviewer, the number and variety of books aimed at the female reader, ranging from conduct books and letter-writing guides to narrative fiction and poetry, was extensive and increased over the course of the early modern period. Kornicki’s essay provides a rich introduction to this fascinating body of material and on its own stands as a starting point for any number of future studies of the complex relationships that developed between women, books, and reading practices. The essays by G. G. Rowley, “The Tale of Genji: Required Reading for Aristocratic Women,” and Joshua S. Mostow, “Illustrated Classical Texts for Women in the Edo Period,” focus on the importance of certain Heian literary works as texts for women to read and learn from. From this perspective, the two essays would seem to overlap, but Rowley’s is more focused on The Tale of Genji and its importance for women of the court aristocracy and upper echelons of the military-bureaucracy, especially the wives and daughters of daimyō and other elite domain administrators. As the aristocracy continued to decline in authority in the face of increasingly powerful military families in the late sixteenth century, detailed knowledge of the Genji became more important than ever. As Rowley states, “Genji had become cultural capital that could be traded for cash” (p. 43). For this reviewer, the section on Ōgimachi Machiko (1679–1724), concubine of the powerful bakufu administrator Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (1658–1714) and author of the Matsukage nikki (In the shelter of the pine, c. 1710–12), is most rewarding. Rowley argues convincingly that Machiko uses her account of life at the center of bakufu power and authority to superimpose the world of the Genji on her own environment, thus raising Yoshiyasu “above his relatively humble origins,” enhancing “his rise to the heights of power,” and in the process recounting “her own situation in terms borrowed directly from Genji” (p. 55). Mostow’s essay focuses on two texts about which he has written extensively in the past, the Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise, before c. 950) and the Ogura hyakunin isshu (One hundred poets, one poem each, c. early thirteenth century). He argues, convincingly for this reviewer, that both works [End Page 431] seem initially to have formed part of the literary corpus for men occupying the lower echelons of the military-bureaucracy (buke) and urbanites (chōnin), and that it was only from the very end of the seventeenth century and later that these and other texts were produced for nonelite women (pp...