Gender is one of the most important principles of social stratification in Japanese society. In the 12th century, women could inherit property in their own names without the consent of their fathers, brothers, and husbands. During the Shogunate period, the status of women declined. Peasant women were generally more free than upper-class women. Upper-class women were subject to a loose system of patrilineal and patriarchal ideologies (Allen, 39). This system was supported by the feudal government as part of its efforts of social control.
During the period of isolation, Japanese women from all classes were restricted to the household. Marriage was a matter of tradition rather than choice. Marriage was arranged and highly traditional. Women were commanded to respect and please their husbands, protect the household from vices, and care for the needs of the children. Upper-class women were prohibited from engaging in business or economic activities after marriage (Allen, 40). They were also forbidden to inherit or own property. Women, in general, were even prohibited from asserting personal opinion to their husbands. Upperclass women were prized gifts to members of the aristocracy. More often, arranged marriage created familial bonds between warring factions. It also served to strengthen family inheritance (Allen, 39).
In the Meiji period, urbanization and industrialization reduced the authority of fathers and husbands. At the same time, however, women were denied legal rights in the Meiji Civil Code. The Code essentially subjected women to the authority of household heads (either the fathers or husbands). Peasant women were more or less unaffected by this trend. By 1930, the government began to encourage the formation of womens associations and chambers.
In rural areas, however, the traditional face of marriage and family life remained untouched by these developments. Japanese women were restricted to the household. They were required to treat their husbands as superiors (as in many parts of East Asia). They were forbidden to participate in community meetings as such activity was reserved for men. Marriage was still an obligation rather than a choice.
After the Second World War, the position of women gradually improved (Allen, 40). The 1947 Constitution provided an equal rights clause. Individual rights were given priority over obligation to family. Women were given the right to choose spouses and occupations, to inherit and own property, and to retain the custody of children.
As early as 1946, the right to vote was bestowed on all Japanese women. Women were now given the opportunity to participate in community affairs, to create exclusive associations, and to engage in economic activities. Education was modernized to provide women opportunities to find good occupations. Postwar reforms required that women receive equal pay for equal work. By 1986, there were only few barriers to womens equal participation in Japanese society (achieved with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law).
Gender equality and development were certainly far from realization as far as women were concerned. This is the case of Haruko, a frustrated, hard-working Japanese woman in a rural village.
The book is divided into three major parts. The first part deals with personal characteristics of Haruko. The second part discusses the nature of farm family. The past part deals with the farm community itself. The ethnography has no transition. It relies on narratives to give a critical view of farm family life, village conditions, and the frustrations of a modern rural woman.
Haruko is a farmers wife, tending for the needs of the household. After Bernsteins initial meeting with Haruko, the latter worries that she would not be able to accommodate her guest with devoted care such as making breakfast, mending and ironing clothes, and cleaning her room. As Bernstein describes
Immediately his wife, Haruko, appeared beyond an open sliding door. She was standing a foot below us on the stone ground of the corridor that ran along one side of the house from the entryway in the front of the kitchen in the back. Before I could even rattle off apparopriate words of greeting, she began apologizing or, rather, explaining why it was clearly impossible for me to stay with her family as we had arranged (5).
She also has a very big concern with clothing and appearance. This obsession is directed not to her husband but to other women.
Haruko, like the women of the 19th century, is a traditionalist. She wants to be in charge of the household. She caters the immediate needs of her husband. However, her responsibilities are not limited to the household. She is responsible for organizing a small women association. She participates in community affairs.
In the introduction, Bernstein provides a vivid description of Haruko
For most of her life, however, Harukos world was limited to the hamlet in which she grew up and the hamlet of Bessho, to which she went when she was married, and her days were either spent in the rice paddies and vegetable fields or in the house of her husbands parents Although she repeatedly insisted that she was a typical Japanese farm woman, her outgoing personality and her willingness to share her innermost thoughts with me made her unique among the women of her community (XV).
Although Haruko is a traditional Japanese woman, she is open to possibilities and opportunities. She recognizes the need for restructuring the village to improve the standard of living. She also recognizes the need for institutionalizing education in the village. According to her, education is the lifeblood of development in the village (177).
Perhaps, Harukos outlook as a traditional Japanese woman has something to do with her immediate environment. The village is a backward rural area with no electricity and poor sanitation. Haruko is traditionally called to perform household chores to augment these deficiencies.
If, perhaps, Haruko is to live in the city, it would be awkward to perform the traditional duties of women. It would be self-defeating for a modern individual to remained attached to the old ways of Japanese society. In any case, it would also be self-defeating if Haruko would forget thr roots of modernity.
Haruko is a traditional-modern woman who follows the old ways while maintaining self-independence. What the books tells the reader is that the traditional roles of women are still observable in rural areas and such roles are never in conflict with the modern connotation of womanhood, at least in the eyes of Japanese women. Suffice it to say, many Japanese women adopts this claim as true.
Traditional Japanese lifestyle has never been completely erased. In the documentary Farm Song (1979), John Nathan paints a vivid view of traditional Japanese lifestyle. Farm Song focuses on that two centuries pattern of life reenacted day by day within the Kato family and on the contemporary human response to it. The film observes the family engaged in the familiar rhythms of farm life harvesting their rice, celebrating the New Year with a week of ritual activity and joyful frivolity, waiting out on the long winter when the farm lies buried under four feet of snow, then beginning all over again with planting in the spring.
Farm Song gently probes beneath the surface of ritualized activities and relationships to disclose how each family member reflectson his or her own role in life.
Women are traditionally portrayed as they were 300 years ago. Hisae, the woman of the household, fulfills the responsibilities of wife, mother, and daughter. She provides for the effectual needs of the household. Her husband works in the rice paddies. Educating the children is her main task. She must also keep the household clean, in order, and free from bad omens. What is really surprising is that this documentary is based on rural life in the 1970s a period which is both modern and non-traditional.
The implications of this documentary are as follows 1) women still fulfills the roles of a traditional wife in rural communities, 2) the traditional roles (in this case) are family-based (rather than community), and 3) gender is the main determinant of work attitudes. The woman is expected to fulfill her duties as a wife, daughter, and mother without complain. She is also expected to provide additional provisions for appendage families. In short, the life of a traditional married Japanese woman is restrictive and routinary.
During the period of isolation, Japanese women from all classes were restricted to the household. Marriage was a matter of tradition rather than choice. Marriage was arranged and highly traditional. Women were commanded to respect and please their husbands, protect the household from vices, and care for the needs of the children. Upper-class women were prohibited from engaging in business or economic activities after marriage (Allen, 40). They were also forbidden to inherit or own property. Women, in general, were even prohibited from asserting personal opinion to their husbands. Upperclass women were prized gifts to members of the aristocracy. More often, arranged marriage created familial bonds between warring factions. It also served to strengthen family inheritance (Allen, 39).
In the Meiji period, urbanization and industrialization reduced the authority of fathers and husbands. At the same time, however, women were denied legal rights in the Meiji Civil Code. The Code essentially subjected women to the authority of household heads (either the fathers or husbands). Peasant women were more or less unaffected by this trend. By 1930, the government began to encourage the formation of womens associations and chambers.
In rural areas, however, the traditional face of marriage and family life remained untouched by these developments. Japanese women were restricted to the household. They were required to treat their husbands as superiors (as in many parts of East Asia). They were forbidden to participate in community meetings as such activity was reserved for men. Marriage was still an obligation rather than a choice.
After the Second World War, the position of women gradually improved (Allen, 40). The 1947 Constitution provided an equal rights clause. Individual rights were given priority over obligation to family. Women were given the right to choose spouses and occupations, to inherit and own property, and to retain the custody of children.
As early as 1946, the right to vote was bestowed on all Japanese women. Women were now given the opportunity to participate in community affairs, to create exclusive associations, and to engage in economic activities. Education was modernized to provide women opportunities to find good occupations. Postwar reforms required that women receive equal pay for equal work. By 1986, there were only few barriers to womens equal participation in Japanese society (achieved with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law).
Gender equality and development were certainly far from realization as far as women were concerned. This is the case of Haruko, a frustrated, hard-working Japanese woman in a rural village.
The book is divided into three major parts. The first part deals with personal characteristics of Haruko. The second part discusses the nature of farm family. The past part deals with the farm community itself. The ethnography has no transition. It relies on narratives to give a critical view of farm family life, village conditions, and the frustrations of a modern rural woman.
Haruko is a farmers wife, tending for the needs of the household. After Bernsteins initial meeting with Haruko, the latter worries that she would not be able to accommodate her guest with devoted care such as making breakfast, mending and ironing clothes, and cleaning her room. As Bernstein describes
Immediately his wife, Haruko, appeared beyond an open sliding door. She was standing a foot below us on the stone ground of the corridor that ran along one side of the house from the entryway in the front of the kitchen in the back. Before I could even rattle off apparopriate words of greeting, she began apologizing or, rather, explaining why it was clearly impossible for me to stay with her family as we had arranged (5).
She also has a very big concern with clothing and appearance. This obsession is directed not to her husband but to other women.
Haruko, like the women of the 19th century, is a traditionalist. She wants to be in charge of the household. She caters the immediate needs of her husband. However, her responsibilities are not limited to the household. She is responsible for organizing a small women association. She participates in community affairs.
In the introduction, Bernstein provides a vivid description of Haruko
For most of her life, however, Harukos world was limited to the hamlet in which she grew up and the hamlet of Bessho, to which she went when she was married, and her days were either spent in the rice paddies and vegetable fields or in the house of her husbands parents Although she repeatedly insisted that she was a typical Japanese farm woman, her outgoing personality and her willingness to share her innermost thoughts with me made her unique among the women of her community (XV).
Although Haruko is a traditional Japanese woman, she is open to possibilities and opportunities. She recognizes the need for restructuring the village to improve the standard of living. She also recognizes the need for institutionalizing education in the village. According to her, education is the lifeblood of development in the village (177).
Perhaps, Harukos outlook as a traditional Japanese woman has something to do with her immediate environment. The village is a backward rural area with no electricity and poor sanitation. Haruko is traditionally called to perform household chores to augment these deficiencies.
If, perhaps, Haruko is to live in the city, it would be awkward to perform the traditional duties of women. It would be self-defeating for a modern individual to remained attached to the old ways of Japanese society. In any case, it would also be self-defeating if Haruko would forget thr roots of modernity.
Haruko is a traditional-modern woman who follows the old ways while maintaining self-independence. What the books tells the reader is that the traditional roles of women are still observable in rural areas and such roles are never in conflict with the modern connotation of womanhood, at least in the eyes of Japanese women. Suffice it to say, many Japanese women adopts this claim as true.
Traditional Japanese lifestyle has never been completely erased. In the documentary Farm Song (1979), John Nathan paints a vivid view of traditional Japanese lifestyle. Farm Song focuses on that two centuries pattern of life reenacted day by day within the Kato family and on the contemporary human response to it. The film observes the family engaged in the familiar rhythms of farm life harvesting their rice, celebrating the New Year with a week of ritual activity and joyful frivolity, waiting out on the long winter when the farm lies buried under four feet of snow, then beginning all over again with planting in the spring.
Farm Song gently probes beneath the surface of ritualized activities and relationships to disclose how each family member reflectson his or her own role in life.
Women are traditionally portrayed as they were 300 years ago. Hisae, the woman of the household, fulfills the responsibilities of wife, mother, and daughter. She provides for the effectual needs of the household. Her husband works in the rice paddies. Educating the children is her main task. She must also keep the household clean, in order, and free from bad omens. What is really surprising is that this documentary is based on rural life in the 1970s a period which is both modern and non-traditional.
The implications of this documentary are as follows 1) women still fulfills the roles of a traditional wife in rural communities, 2) the traditional roles (in this case) are family-based (rather than community), and 3) gender is the main determinant of work attitudes. The woman is expected to fulfill her duties as a wife, daughter, and mother without complain. She is also expected to provide additional provisions for appendage families. In short, the life of a traditional married Japanese woman is restrictive and routinary.
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