by KhayPrower

Created on: November 25, 2007   Last Updated: September 17, 2009

The western popular idea of Japanese femininity is an interesting study in fiction, exaggeration and stereotypes. When a common westerner thinks of an ideal Japanese woman, they imagine a pure, white skinned beauty, petite and quiet. She is non-confrontational and accommodating, obedient, and barely has a will or ideas of her own. Often likened to a flower, she is beautiful and mostly decorative, while shy and polite almost to a fault.

This "ideal" Japanese woman may, in fact, exist in some individuals, but this is neither the "typical" Japanese woman, nor is it even the Japanese ideal of a Japanese woman. Even a century ago, not only was this not the ideal that was expected in Japan, but many women in Japan were rebelling against the gender expectations which were being held for them. These "rebel" women were simply women who looked at their expected roles in society, the household, and politics consigned upon them by the fact of their gender, and not only had a problem with these roles, but refused to conform, standing up for themselves. During the early half of the last century, the official and popular ideals of Japanese women kept changing, and the ways in which women struggled against those ideals changed in response.

At the end of the Edo period, Confucian ideas embedded in Japanese society made women's roles in society negligible. Daughters could not inherit, women could not own land, and women could not be the heads of households, officially at least. The Confucian concept of the feminine role kept women out of school. "It is well that women should be unlettered. To cultivate women's skills would be harmful. They have no need of learning. It is enough if they can read books in kana. Let it be that way." This sums up Tokugawa attitudes towards women. The importance of the family, women's function as "heir provider" in the context of Confucianism, feudalism, and ancestor worship had rendered her on the eve of the restoration virtually devoid of legal rights. She could be summarily divorced, and she was not allowed any public role in society. Women during the Meiji restoration itself, on the other hand, were not all helpless spectators on the sidelines, waiting for men's approval before doing anything and staying out of public. One woman in particular stands out as a shining example of a rebel woman of these times; Nakano Takeko, a woman of the Aizu clan who led the so-called joshigun, or "Women's Army".

During the Edo period, it was not at all uncommon

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