Yonemoto - The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Kren Wigen, and Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Editors

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The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan, by Marcia Yonemoto

The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan

Marcia Yonemoto

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2016 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Yonemoto, Marcia, author.

Title: The problem of women in early modern Japan / Marcia Yonemoto.

Other titles: Asialocal studies/global themes ; 31.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016] | Series: Asia: local studies/global themes ; 31 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016015752 (print) | LCCN 2016017276 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520292000 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520965584 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : WomenJapanHistory. | WomenSocial conditions17th century. | WomenSocial conditions18th century. | WomenSocial conditions19th century. | JapanCivilizationTo 1868. | JapanHistoryTokugawa period, 16001868.

Classification: LCC HQ 1762 . Y 6435 2016 (print) | LCC HQ 1762 (ebook) | DDC 305.40952dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015752

Manufactured in the United States of America

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For Leah Julia and Emma Rose

Contents

Illustrations

FIGURES

CHARTS

TABLE

Acknowledgments

The convention in acknowledgments in scholarly books, however outdated it may be, is to address professional debts before personal ones. While that structure made sense in a time when ones personal life remained neatly in the margins of ones academic endeavors, it does not seem to me to reflect the world I and most of my colleagues presently inhabit, one in which research trips merge into family excursions, people have pressing obligations at home as well as at work, and teaching assignments and faculty meetings are scheduled with an eye to the needs of spouses, partners, children, commuting, and the like. In other words, for twenty-first-century academic professionals, as for the early modern Japanese women and men I write about in this book, work, family, friends, colleagues, private and public life commingle in ways that were and are exhilarating, challenging, and productive, if sometimes also exhausting and always humbling.

In this spirit, I should like to thank first and foremost the people who made this book and the entirety of my professional life possible: my wonderful, bright, funny, and loving daughters, Leah Yonemoto-Weston and Emma Yonemoto-Weston, and their father, my good friend and colleague for almost three decades, Tim Weston; my parents, James and Mary Yonemoto, who every day teach by example the values of perseverance and generosity and offer the wonder of unconditional love; my sisters in spiritAnna Brickhouse, Beth Dusinberre, Susi Jones, and Sarah Krakoffwho have been pillars of steadfast friendship, exemplars of scholarly achievement, and models of caring and sensible parenting and partnering, as has, more recently, Phoebe Young; my extended familythe Yonemotos, Noguchis, Mamiyas, Hruskas, Fujitanis, Brugueras, Fudennas, Hondas, Shojis, Hamaguchiswho provide moral and material support, laughter, and a lot of food; and my partner, Bob Ward, who takes great care with everything and everyone, who reads every word and always writes back. To all of these people I offer my deepest gratitude, in full knowledge that that is not nearly enough.