Edo, Where Are Your Women?
Lack of adequate female representation in Japanese history
“I’m tired of reading about men’s war strategy, their defenses, and sword’s sharpness. Isn’t there anything a little more normal? Where were all the women??” I rhetorically complained to Sabarish when getting out of Himeji castle.
We’d been in Japan for a fortnight by then, filling our days with castle hopping and pilgrimages to its numerous shrines and temples, punctuated by loads of delicious food. But after spending day after day in these places which only featured men, the tipping point came when I was looking at the weapon rack in Himeji.
“You’re asking that in the wrong place. It’s a castle and is meant for wartime. Wait till we’re in Kyoto.” Sabarish had great expectations from Kyoto, the cultural center of Japan.
As a city that wasn’t as damaged during WW2 as the rest of Japan, much of its history is well preserved. If I were seeking insights into ancient ways of life in Japan, Kyoto was going to be my best bet.
Kyoto was where the Japanese theater art, Kabuki, originated and in its honor stands the first licensed Kabuki Theater — Minamiza — in Gion, Kyoto.
Watching Uzu’s 1959 movie, Floating Weeds, one gets an impression that Kabuki, the classical Japanese theater, is a dying art. However, it is the most popular form of traditional art in Japan which is much respected, like Broadway shows. Since 2005, it also boasts the prestige of being on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage.
It originated in Kyoto when Izumo no Okuni performed with her female troupe in the city.
The comic plays were about everyday life. The tales of love, loss, and life, performed entirely by female artists, appealed to people beyond class distinctions.
Their popularity spread across the country and gave rise to newer troupes. Some of them were formed by prostitutes with their performances conducted in the pleasure districts. And with their universal appeal, people of all social classes co-mingled.
The Japanese seem to love a grid-like order, whether it’s in their vending machines or their social structure. This stir fry of all people must not have been acceptable to the authorities. Pretty soon, the men in power, the shogunate, banned women and young men from performing, hoping to kill Kabuki entirely.
So, the art form which was founded by a woman, performed entirely by women, became inaccessible to women. Even though the ban doesn’t exist anymore, women in Kabuki are still a tiny minority.
Kyoto is also one of the few cities where Japan of the Edo period still breathes through Geisha.
During our stay in Gion, on a rainy night, we were walking near the Minamiza Theater. We were freezing and cursing the rain even in our winter jackets.
A Kimono-clad doll-like lady passed us by. Her face was painted white and her hair looked like she had walked out with her velcro rollers. In that freezing rain, she walked by in short strides, straight-backed and eyes-lowered.
Thanks to the 2005 blockbuster, Geisha no longer need an introduction. They are high-profile hostesses trained from a very young age, in performance and fine arts such as dance, music, and calligraphy. Most importantly, they were honed in captivating conversations about varied topics such as arts, literature, current events, and such to entertain rich male guests.
Elegance and grace were their second nature. They epitomized beauty and perfection, chastity and demureness while evoking sensual desires in the clients.
Until the late 1700s, this was the role of men dressed as women. They were more like court jesters than the embodiment of perfect beauty that the female geishas are considered to be.
While girls or women could join the profession voluntarily, most often girls from poorer families were given up or sold to Geisha houses. They underwent rigorous training for years as apprentices until they became one. Once they did, their lives were devoted to the arts and were prohibited from any personal or romantic relationships.
They were expected to present the perfect femininity to male clients without offering sexual pleasure. The high-profile predecessors to Geisha, the Oirans, also offered sex.
As a profession that developed in the pleasure district next to red-light areas, Geishas were often confused with Oirans until the powers that be made a clear distinction between the two. Geishas could only entertain. Oirans could only offer sex; that was until prostitution was outlawed in the 20th century.
However, with or without the distinction, Geishas aren’t immune to society’s cruelty. My primer to the tradition came from Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 classic, A Geisha. As someone who himself benefited from the sacrifice of a Geisha, his sister, his movies cry in anguish at society’s injustice showered on the Geisha.
They are the sentinels of a male paradise who are trained to never refuse their client. When a patron imposes himself on them, they are defenseless. They could either refuse the client and risk going bankrupt since the clients are well-connected and powerful. Or they could yield, and cross over the thin line. So, whichever way I looked at it, I couldn’t see why there must even be Geishas.
At a time when women had fewer employment opportunities, Geishas must have been an option for economic liberation. Additionally, the kids from poor families who were sold to Geisha houses may not have had any alternative. But do women still opt for this way of life? What is in it for them?
The oldest novel in Japan, Tale of Genji was written by a woman, Murasaki Shikibu. Painted as a life story of Hikaru Genji, the son of an ancient Japanese emperor, it conveyed the life of high courtiers during the Heian period.
Once again it spoke of the everyday life of people; their love, loss, and life. Even without any complex plot, the novel had up to 400 characters, each with their own personality and unique sense of fashion, which Murasaki delivers with consistency.
But aside from the statue of Izumo no Okuni in Gion, I could find none of those women represented in a lasting form in any of the places we visited. As admirable as Japanese history might be, there are no women in stories of the shrines or temples or castles or museums.
Miko or shrine maidens are young priestesses in Shinto shrines. However, Shinto also practiced Nyonin Kinsei, or women’s prohibition in sacred sites. So, while treating every living being as a kami worth worshipping, the religion deemed to exclude one segment of the kami selectively.
On the other hand, even though Buddha was persuaded by his stepmother to ordain women into the religious order, his successor monks piled additional rules (eight garudhammas) to keep ordained nuns subordinate to monks.
So, the two most popular religions in Japan have no lasting female presence in their statues, scrolls, or paintings.
Kyoto National Museum, a major art museum in the cultural capital of Japan, had three floors that held pots, pans & ceramics, several paintings of dead Buddha, several statues of sitting Buddha, several scrolls of Buddhist monks, and row after row of Katanas. But there were no women anywhere inside those cases; the saving grace might be the female dolls.
Among the other non-religious paintings in other museums that included women, they melted into the background as the chorus in the orchestra. The rare exceptions that featured a solo woman were to admire her perfect beauty; the perfect femininity like the geishas.
This objectification is apparent even to an outsider like me.
Ryōsai kenbo, the traditional ideal of the invisible everyday woman is — Good wife, Wise mother. When she veers away from the role, she becomes an object of desire.
Walking through the markets in Tokyo or Osaka, it’s not unusual to see stores with posters of a topless woman. It’s especially jarring when I remember that it’s not a sexually liberated country. Women are still expected to dress modestly. The posters are in places frequented by families too.
The elements of patriarchy, which existed in most Asian civilizations since their inception, were only further strengthened during the shogunate or the era of the samurais. Staying true to the tribal roots, men’s bravery was valorized, and women paid their dues with femininity. Until 1871, women were allowed education in only delicate tasks of tea ceremony and flower arrangement.
Remnants of that patriarchy still reeks strongly in the society. In a brazen admission of guilt, Tokyo Medical University admitted in 2018 to having manipulated the exam results of women since 2006 to keep their results lower and ensure there were more male doctors than females graduating.
Veering further away into kyariaūman or the career woman makes life a living hell for her.
While the employment rate among women is over 69%, they earn only 74% as much as men for the same job. Every place I frequent as a tourist — restaurants, coffee shops, museums, ticket counters — is overwhelmingly managed by women. Several of them are part-time jobs, that do not allow women to pursue better pay or a career.
Women legislators, who could champion a change by introducing better policies, have remained historically low. Currently, it’s at a record high, at 25%, with five female ministers in the Kishida cabinet.
The workaholic culture that normalizes unpaid overtime reminds women that they can either have a career or a family, explaining the dwindling birthrates that might soon make the Japanese the new South Koreans, walking hand in hand into extinction.
In the words of Ichiko Ishihara, the managing director of Takashimaya, a retail giant like Saks or Bloomingdale’s—her supervisor had bluntly asked her to first make up for lost time due to maternity leaves before dreaming of a promotion.
The many aspects of this society that I appreciate, even those approved by the samurais — the tea ceremonies, the ikebana or flower arrangement, the varied culinary shades — were all shaped by women in various capacities. Yet, they are all conspicuously absent from the timeless art forms.
I wondered about the normal life in ancient Japan which didn’t just involve swords and fortresses. As we understand from the examples of Genji’s Tale or Kabuki theater, women artists tended to galvanize people around universal human emotions. They focused less on the broken fences and more on the broken hearts.
It’s unlikely that Murasaki Shikibu or Izumo no Okuni were the only female creators in Japanese history. Where are the rest? Where are the stories of the women? Where are the stories told by women?
I would like to believe that as a first-time tourist, who is ignorant by all means, I’m missing key pieces. I could have been going to the wrong places. I could have been prioritizing castles and shrines over something else because the crowds, which were also male-dominated, deemed them more important.
But given where I went and what I saw, I continued to scratch my head in irritation at yet another samurai sword displayed in the museum for its slightly sharper edge than its neighbor.
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
Whoever thinks flowers are less important than the katanas!
