Culturally, both the Choson period in Korea (1392-1910) and the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603-1868) were heavily influenced by the Neo-Confucianist tradition and its social norms that consequently demanded a very specific, hierarchical structure of society. Within this structure, women were understood to assume a subordinate position to men and fulfill their roles within the family as daughters, wives and mothers. However, despite the ideological foundations of the social systems being based on the same canon of Neo-Confucian morality, we can detect differences in women’s positions and roles when comparing the societies of Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan.
By analysing chapters 6 (“Propagating Female Virtues in Choson Korea”, by Martina Deuchler) and 8 (“Norms and Texts for Women’s Education in Tokugawa Japan”, by Martha C. Tocco) of the book “Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea and Japan”, I have identified several differences, exterior to potential dissenting interpretations of Neo-Confucianism in Korea and Japan, that could explain why women’s roles were not more similar in the two countries. While a difference in the rigidity of societal stratums as well as a difference in economic prosperity are certainly major explanatory angles for this question, a large part also seems to come down to dissenting interpretations of what constitutes “women’s nature”. This is the aspect the following article will focus on.
- Diverging interpretations of “women’s moral nature”
While moral education for women (or “indoctrination”1, as Deuchler calls it in the Korean case) was valued in both Neo-Confucian Korea and Japan, the underlying reason for this, based on each culture’s understanding of what constitutes “women’s moral nature”, varied greatly.
In Korea, women acting according to Confucianist principles were considered essential “for setting the domestic realm in order”2. Yet, at the same time, women were thought to possess “inferior natural qualities”3 in comparison to men, which made their moral education all the more important, as they were basically expected to overcome their biological predispositions in order to contribute and not pose a danger to the Korean Confucianist society. Men, on the other hand, would “naturally distinguish between right and wrong [and] are able to keep themselves [on the right track]”.4 Teaching especially women about Confucian norms would hence have to be a central concern, according to Korean Choson society.
In Japan, on the other hand, Tocco claims that the education of Confucianist norms was regarded to be essential for both women and men. While moral guides outlining a woman’s subordinate role in society existed and were highly popular, similar to Korea5, “exhortational tomes”6 were just as important for the education of male members of society. This implies that the moral nature of women and men was not seen as inherently different in Tokugawa society. Furthermore, Tocco argues that moral guides for women gradually moved away from their original purpose of educating women about their societal role and status towards being used as textbooks for learning how to read and write.7 In this sense, their purpose would have been more emancipatory than oppressive.
- A difference in understanding the links between women’s biological roles and the roles they could assume in society
Women in Korea were effectively banned from public life and confined to the inner chambers. Their social roles were limited to their positions as daughters, wives and mothers within the family8, and a great focus was placed on elite primary wives’ capability to produce the male heir of the family’s wealth and social status9. Therefore, especially elite women’s social role and biological role, based on natural predispositions, got conflated. Within their nurturing capacity of mothers, Korean women also took on the role of educators of their children, at least when it came to basic knowledge and morality. For this purpose, a fundamental education was essential. Still, “excessive learning was deemed dangerous”10 for women, as it was seen as potentially disruptive for the family peace and potentially the wider social order.
In Tokugawa Japan women were also responsible for the education of their young children. However, several differences are crucial: For one, texts from the early 1700s show that this education was seen as part of a parenting task that ultimately relied on the involvement of both mother and father.11 On another note, the Japanese elite family structure, relying on concubines and wet-nursing rather than on a strict hierarchical separation between primary and secondary wives as in Korea, led to the fact that the responsibility to take care of any children was shared between all the women in the family. According to Tocco, it was thus uncommon to assume that “the physiology of childbearing was the origin of the qualities of nurturance required by child rearing”12. Rather, parenting was considered a skill that can be taught. This professionalization of women’s role as educators also led to them becoming schoolteachers and hence members of the public sphere, which is a level of emancipation that was not reached within the strict confinements of women bound to the domestic realm in Choson Korea.
- Martina Deuchler, ‘Propagating Female Virtues in Choson Korea’ in Dorothy Ko et al. (ed.), Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), p. 144. [↩]
- Quoted in Deuchler, ‘Female Virtues in Choson Korea’, p. 146. [↩]
- Ibid., p. 147. [↩]
- Sohye quoted in ibid., p. 147 [↩]
- Cf. Martha C. Tocco, ‘Norms and Texts for Women’s Education in Tokugawa Japan’ in Dorothy Ko et al. (ed.), Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 199-200. [↩]
- Ibid., pp. 200-201. [↩]
- Cf. Ibid., p. 200. [↩]
- Cf. Deuchler, ‘Female Virtues in Choson Korea’, pp. 142-143. [↩]
- Cf. Ibid., p. 145. [↩]
- Ibid., p. 150. [↩]
- Cf. Tocco, ‘Women’s Education in Tokugawa Japan’, p. 196. [↩]
- Ibid., p. 197. [↩]