Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan

Representing an unprecedented collaboration among international scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States, this volume rewrites the history of East Asia by rethinking the contentious relationship between Confucianism and women. The authors discuss the absence of women in the Confucian canonical tradition and examine the presence of women in politics, family, education, and art in premodern China, Korea, and Japan.

What emerges is a concept of Confucianism that is dynamic instead of monolithic in shaping the cultures of East Asian societies. As teachers, mothers, writers, and rulers, women were active agents in this process. Neither rebels nor victims, these women embraced aspects of official norms while resisting others. The essays present a powerful image of what it meant to be female and to live a woman’s life in a variety of social settings and historical circumstances. Challenging the conventional notion of Confucianism as an oppressive tradition that victimized women, this provocative book reveals it as a modern construct that does not reflect the social and cultural histories of East Asia before the nineteenth century.

Representing an unprecedented collaboration among international scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States, this volume rewrites the history of East Asia by rethinking the contentious relationship between Confucianism and women. The authors discuss the absence of women in the Confucian canonical tradition and examine the presence of women in politics, family, education, and art in premodern China, Korea, and Japan.

What emerges is a concept of Confucianism that is dynamic instead of monolithic in shaping the cultures of East Asian societies. As teachers, mothers, writers, and rulers, women were active agents in this process. Neither rebels nor victims, these women embraced aspects of official norms while resisting others. The essays present a powerful image of what it meant to be female and to live a woman’s life in a variety of social settings and historical circumstances. Challenging the conventional notion of Confucianism as an oppressive tradition that victimized women, this provocative book reveals it as a modern construct that does not reflect the social and cultural histories of East Asia before the nineteenth century.

List of Illustrations and Tables
Preface
Notes on Conventions
Comparative Time Chart for China, Korea, and Japan
Introduction

PART I. SCRIPTS OF MALE DOMINANCE
1. The Patriarchal Family Paradigm in Eighth-Century Japan
Hiroko Sekiguchi
2. The Last Classical Female Sovereign: KQken-ShQtoku TennQ
Joan R. Piggott
3. Representation of Females in Twelfth-Century Korean Historiography
Hai-soon Lee
4. The Presence and Absence of Female Musicians and Music in China
Joseph S.C. Lam

PART II. PROPAGATING CONFUCIAN VIRTUES
5. Women and the Transmission of Confucian Culture in Song China
Jian Zang
6. Propagating Female Virtues in ChosPn Korea
Martina Deuchler
7. State Indoctrination of Filial Piety in Tokugawa Japan: Sons and Daughters in the Official Records of Filial Piety
Noriko Sugano

PART III. FEMALE EDUCATION IN PRACTICE
8. Norms and Texts for Women’s Education in Tokugawa Japan
Martha C. Tocco
9. Competing Claims on Womanly Virtue in Late Imperial China
Fangqin Du and Susan Mann
Part IV. Corporeal and Textual Expressions of Female Subjectivity
10. Discipline and Transformation: Body and Practice in the Lives of Daoist Holy Women of Tang China
Suzanne E. Cahill
11. Versions and Subversions: Patriarchy and Polygamy in Korean Narratives
JaHyun Kim Haboush

Glossary
Recommendations for Further Reading
List of Contributors
Index