2023-02-07
This article introduces Seki Hei’s examination of the status of women in Edo-period Japan, comparing their freedom of movement, educational opportunities, divorce, and remarriage with the conditions faced by women in Ming-Qing China and Joseon Korea. Drawing on historical records concerning the Ise pilgrimage, terakoya education, marriage, and divorce, it challenges widely held assumptions about women’s status in premodern Japan.

2023-02-07
Women in Edo-Period Japan — Freedom, Education, Divorce, and Remarriage Compared with Ming-Qing China and Joseon Korea
The following is from a column by Seki Hei published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Hanada.
As he demonstrates in this chapter, the history of Japan should come as a surprise to those at the United Nations who know remarkably little about the country while making judgments about it.
People around the world who have placed unquestioning faith in the United Nations, while accepting the claims of China and South Korea about Japan, should reflect on how little they actually know about Japanese history.
The United Nations has repeatedly issued human-rights recommendations concerning Japan while, in my view, accepting claims promoted by China and South Korea without sufficiently examining their historical foundations.
At the same time, anti-Japanese Japanese activists have continued their activities at the United Nations in sympathy with China and South Korea, countries where anti-Japanese education has long been systematically promoted.
I regard their conduct as profoundly harmful.
They have obstructed the progress of what I call the “turntable of civilization,” which is part of divine providence, and have contributed to the dangerous world in which we now live.
God will never forgive them, and beyond the gates of heaven, King Yama awaits them with the severest judgment.
Unlike China and Korea, Japan Is an “Incredible Japan” — Society: The Status of Women, Part II
In the previous installment of this column, I outlined the truly miserable social position of women during China’s Ming and Qing dynasties.
During those roughly 540 years, Han Chinese women were subjected from an early age to the cruel practice of foot binding, which physically deformed their feet.
As adults, they were socially restricted and deprived of many of the freedoms and rights that should belong to human beings.
After marriage, they were expected to spend their lives in subordination to men, and when their husbands died young, they were often discouraged or forbidden from remarrying.
They were effectively left with only two choices.
They could spend the rest of their lives serving their husbands’ parents and raising their children, or they could be praised for remaining eternally faithful to their deceased husbands, even to the point of following them in death.
In this sense, it is no exaggeration to describe the treatment of women in Ming- and Qing-era China as extraordinarily harsh and uncivilized.
What, then, of Korea under the Joseon Dynasty during roughly the same period?
Although Korea did not practice foot binding, the social position of women was not greatly different in many other respects from that found in Ming and Qing China.
Japan, by contrast, presented a very different picture.
During the Edo period, from 1603 to 1867, the social circumstances of women differed markedly from those of women in Ming and Qing China.
First of all, Japanese women did not suffer from foot binding.
Neither during the Edo period nor at any other point in Japanese history did Japanese society adopt the Chinese custom of binding women’s feet.
While women in Ming- and Qing-era China were often confined to the household by strict social restrictions and had limited freedom to go sightseeing, attend theatrical performances, participate in festivals, or visit friends, women in Edo-period Japan enjoyed considerably greater freedom of movement.
With limited exceptions, such as restrictions on women entering Mount Kōya, women were generally free to take part in local festivals and to visit temples and shrines.
Written records and genre paintings from the period show that women participated in the pilgrimage to Ise, one of the great popular movements of the Edo era, just as actively as men.
According to Kazuyasu Nakanowatari, a member of the committee responsible for compiling the history of Namioka Town in Minamitsugaru District, now part of Aomori City, the Hirosaki domain granted permission on April 12, 1734, for members of the household of Denbei Ōta of Megasawa Village to make a pilgrimage to Ise.
A surviving document indicates that the party included Denbei’s wife, his two daughters in their twenties, and other members of the household and servants.
This account was introduced in the July 1, 2003 issue of Kōhō Namioka.
In the eighteenth century, a group including several women and young daughters making a journey of more than 1,000 kilometers from the Hirosaki domain in northeastern Japan to Ise would have represented a scene rarely encountered in China or Korea at the time, and indeed in many other parts of the world.
Women in Edo-period Japan also enjoyed significant opportunities for education.
According to Yutaka Yabuta and Keiko Yanagiya, editors of People and Status in the Edo Period, Vol. 4: Women and Status (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2010), a terakoya school called Jukendō operated in Tsukamoto Village, Iitaka District, Ise Province, from 1792 to 1822.
During those thirty years, the school admitted 478 boys and 165 girls.
The number of girls receiving an education is remarkably high for that period.
By this measure, educational opportunities for women in Edo Japan compared favorably with those found in contemporary European societies, while the difference from Chinese society of the same era was enormous.
In Ming- and Qing-era China, with limited exceptions, women had very little access to formal education.
One well-known saying associated with the period was, “Lack of learning in a woman is a virtue.”
There was also a striking difference in attitudes toward divorce and remarriage.
While women in Ming and Qing China were strongly discouraged or prohibited from remarrying after the death of a husband, historical research shows that women in Edo-period Japan enjoyed considerably greater freedom in matters of divorce and remarriage.
Oeyo, who became the wife of the second Tokugawa shogun, Hidetada, had herself been married twice before marrying him.
According to Tadashi Takagi’s Divorce Letters and Enkiri Temples (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2014), contemporary researcher Yūko Asakura examined the marital histories of members of 100 daimyo families and 100 hatamoto families during the Edo period.
Her research found an overall divorce rate of 11.23 percent, while the remarriage rate, including women, exceeded 58 percent.
Moreover, divorce in the Edo period was not necessarily a unilateral act imposed by a husband.
Divorce by mutual agreement between husband and wife was common.
The so-called “divorce letter,” often regarded as a symbol of a husband’s unilateral power to dismiss his wife, also functioned in practice as a certificate enabling the divorced woman to remarry.
In many cases, property that a woman had brought with her from her family at the time of marriage was returned to her upon divorce, as Takagi’s research also shows.
In this way, women in Edo-period Japan enjoyed freedom to travel, had access to education, and possessed significant freedom to divorce and remarry.
When the rights and freedoms of women are considered from this perspective, the contrast is striking.
Ming- and Qing-era China imposed severe restrictions on women, while Edo-period Japan had developed social practices that, in important respects, compared favorably with those of contemporary Western societies.