This was for Japanese Modernism class.
Tanizaki, Kawabata, Noe
Japan of 1900-1935 finds itself freshly out of the Meiji Era in 1912 and in the midst of a very important cultural movement, the modernism movement. The modernism movement in Japan consisted of efforts to push Japan past fixed traditional ideas to catch up developmentally and culturally with the Western nations. A very important part of Japanese modernism is the feminist movement which sought to break the predefinitions of women of the Meiji Era to give women a social role beyond that of wife and mother. Novels written during the time, such as Junichiro Tanizaki’s Some Prefer Nettles, Yasunari Kawabata’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, and controversial essays written by female writers like Ito Noe’s The Path of the New Woman, sought to define what the Japanese women should become. Modern women became less of subject to restriction by male figures and more free willed when it came to their dress and ways of thinking and viewing their position in society.
During the early 1800s, the Meiji period coined the slogan ‘Ryousaikenbo,’ or good wife, wise mother, to define women’s place in society. Considered a modern way of thinking and strengthening the social structure of Japan, this definition provided that there would always be a controlling male figure in a women’s life that she would find herself bound to – be it as a young girl subservient to her father, as a wife subservient to her husband, then as a mother subservient to children and the home. Simple rights, such the right to a higher education had been denied to them denied. Once allowed further education, the curriculum of female schools consisted mostly of the arts, such ikebana and foreign language, excluding science and math that were taught at men’s schools. Even if higher education was achieved, women were still expected to fall into marry and take their places in society as determined by ryousaikenbo. In Tanizaki’s novel, Some Prefer Nettles, the wife of the main character, Misako, and the wife of Misako’s father, Ohisa, are both used to illustrate the idea of ryousaikenbo. Misako, raised in Tokyo, is married, raising her son and keeping the household in order, such as dressing and seeing to the appearance of her family, however at the same time she has a lover , the her husband is aware of, and often goes to visit him. Keeping up with current trends in fashion is important to her, as a modern Japanese woman, as there are numerous occasions throughout the novel that she publicly takes out a compact to apply bright red lipstick and facial powder. The opposing figure to modernistic Misako is Ohisa. Ohisa still wears older more outdated kimonos, plays traditional instruments like the samisen, frequents traditional Bunraku puppet plays wither her husband, and waits on her husband hand and foot. Raised in Kyoto, the reader is given a very rustic traditional, almost geisha-like, traditional Japanese view of Ohisa, and on more than one occasion, the main character describes her as a doll. Much like the puppets being controlled in the Bunraku plays, ryousaikenbo gives her husband the right to control her movements. Despite her seemingly docility, there is a hint that Ohisa too wants become a progressive modern woman. In the final chapter, Ohisa and the main character make this short exchange “He [in reference to her husband] brings home old wood-block books and tells me I should read them. But I can’t get interested in the dusty old things,” to which the main character responds “You’d rather read a woman’s magazine?” and Ohisa replies “He [once again in reference to her husband] says if I have time for that sort of trash I should be practicing my calligraphy.” Though the focus of the novel Some Prefer Nettles could be considered as the main character’s affair with a Western woman and the implications of this affair, the subtle hints of feminist liberation cannot be missed or mistaken. Misako, ho in her husbands plain sight has an affair and audaciously puts on her makeup in public and even Ohisa, who secret longs to go against her husband’s wishes and partake of reading a women’s magazine seem to foreshadow the greater movements towards social liberation for women to come during the period.
Where Tanizaki was subtle, Ito Noe is stringently straightforward with her approach to feminism. Even her essay, The Path of the New Woman, was met with disdain and harsh criticism during the time. The magazine her essay was published in, Seito, was banned in girls school and other public places. Ito discusses the woman’s path to social liberation as a struggle each woman must take to first find herself; she deviate from the footsteps on the path taken by previous women so hat each woman should make her own path thought the ‘wilderness,’ overcoming obstacles such as thorns, stinging insects, hanging on for life on the edge of jagged cliffs, and intense loneliness. If the wilderness is read as the uncharted territory of women’s rights during this period, then the thorns, stinging, and cliffs must be the opposition, which was great at the time, that wished women to keep their role in society in accordance to ryousaikenbo. As written by Ito in her essay “From beginning to end they [the pioneers] are alone and thoroughly suffering.” The extreme suffering endured by the women that decided to undertake the path described by Ito was the loneliness felt by these pioneering women’s right activists that were ridiculed and despised and, with more women who opted to secretly indulged in such feministic writing but did nothing to support the ideology, felt alone in the struggle. Such women were considered ‘stragglers’ to Ito, and she expresses that “The straggles do not have the right or qualifications to criticize the pioneer. Stragglers can only appreciate the pioneers and pursue their footsteps—they [the straggles] do not know advancement. They can only advance by learning from the pioneer’s advancements and tracing their footprints….Those seeking happiness, comfort, and sympathy are incapable of becoming pioneers.” Ito’s methodology for dispelling what she considered ‘backward’ and irrelevant’ views of women right of the time could only be dispelled if Japanese women were willing to flew their muscles and show Japanese society that they were strong and capable without a husband and were able to maintain this self-autonomy even after marriage. She believed whole-heartily in women’s right and the strength of women’s characters, a character that she did not want lost under the restrictive keep of ryousaikenbo. For her radical new ideas, in the end, even Ito paid a high price—her life.
Following the subtleness of Tanizaki and the radical women’s empowerment essay of Noe, is Kawabata’s novel the Scarlet Gang of Asakusa. In his novel, women have the upper hand; they create and run gangs, scheme, and they choose their sex partners freely. These women are the image of Japanese modernism. With short cropped or bobbed hair, fairly gaudy makeup, bright ribbons adorning their hair, short skirts, and dancing the Charleston, these women and young girls are the exact opposite of the Meiji Era counterparts. They are not encumbered with the ideology of ryousaikenbo, and the girls in Kawabata’s novel make fools of men and string them along on several occasions. On of the main characters, Yumiko, shifts from seemingly docile to an intimidating figure of a man killer throughout the novel. She constantly changes her appearance by the amount of makeup she puts on, the wigs she uses, down to her style of dress—she can put on the airs of a coy girl one moment and become a prowess at the next, even going as far as dressing up as a boy and changing her sex altogether. Yumiko seems to embody the feminism idea held by writers like Ito Noe at the time. Yumiko has a choice; a choice to love or not, and who to fall in love with. With her wild ways, Yumiko’s character can be described best by her statement “I was determined never, ever to be a woman.”
All of the novel’s, perhaps as a result of being written by men, objectifies women’s bodies. However, the trend goes from Tanizaki’s main character and his physical fixation on Ohisa to Kawabata’s Yumiko character who dresses and behaves in a manner that makes her body objectified; from conservative kimono clad Ohisa to leg baring skirt wearing Yumiko. Shortly after The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa was published, a Modan Manga Jiten was released. Several definitions of beauty can be found within it. For instance Beauty Art is defined as “…the technique of applying powder and eyebrow pencil to the face in order to deceive yourself and deceive others. Women have moved from the compact carrying Misako to the more ‘done-up’ Yumiko.
Through these works, the gradual change of women in society can be seen in modernism movement of Japan. Women begin to stray from simply being housewife or mother as education becomes more available, women’s magazines gain popularity, and the trend in Western fashion booms. Women begin to have more control over how they are seen, how they think, both of which are influences by modernism set to the pace of Western culture.
© Caroline Alicia Harris
post script If you are the copyright owner of anything metioned in the above essay, I do have the bibliography os my sources if you need to see them. I choose not to post them on this site, in the hopes nothing will be reused.