The Husband’s Chastity: Progress, Equality, and Difference in 1930s Japan

Abstract

Otto no teisō (The Husband’s Chastity) was one of the most successful popular novels of 1930s Japan. In recounting the consequences of a husband’s extramarital affair with his wife’s best friend, the story highlights the idea of male chastity or fidelity. Teisō, a term with such varied meanings as “fidelity to one’s spouse” and “sexual innocence before marriage,” represented a key set of notions associated with and prescribed for female identity but was never required as a male virtue. As the author Yoshiya Nobuko notes, in Japan “a wife’s chastity” is stressed, but “the idea of a ‘husband’s chastity’ is easily forgotten.” The Husband’s Chastity is known as a work that criticizes this sexual double standard. Rather than focusing only on this one aspect, however, I highlight the text’s complexity by analyzing the novel through its implicit engagement with issues of gender equality and difference, vital concepts for understanding prewar Japanese female identity. The Husband’s Chastity uses male chastity as a progressive idea to criticize legal and social inequalities for women and to problematize the view that gendered traits and social roles are natural and predetermined. But, at the same time, the story reifies the notion of gender difference, particularly through images of female purity and motherhood, in ways that mirror changes within specific women’s movements and the broader sociopolitical landscape. Through its critical engagement with ideas about gender and social/sexual progress, this popular novel provides a window into mid- to late 1930s Japanese society.