In “Norms and Texts For Women’s Education in Tokugawa Japan”, Tocco explores how a Confucian education impacted women during the Tokugawa era. Throughout the chapter, Tocco makes it clear that women like Tsuda Ume who could read and write in both the Japanese syllabary and Chinese characters, were, in point of fact, quite common in Japan’s urban areas across classes and that their education shared many of the same characteristics as men’s at the time. Furthermore, this higher level of education that women would receive, albeit specialized and honed towards the domestic sphere, as evidenced in writings such as Kaibara’s Great Learning For Women. Furthermore, women were given an education to the extent that they would be able to continue it on their own even after the roles that were dictated to them prevented them from continuing their education.[1] It is particularly interesting, then, that the era considered to be more passé and stagnant among historians is, in point of fact,seemingly more progressive and fits more closely to ideas of modernity than the Meiji era, considered to be a time of innovation on several fronts, including education. According to De Bary, Gluck, and Tiedemann, while the Imperial Rescript On Education (Kyōiku chukugo) provided the infrastructure for further education of the populace, women were largely excluded from the benefits of this reform since they were barred from public secondary and higher educational institutions.[2] While both had a clear Confucian focus and maintained the idea that women were better suited to the domestic sphere, I’d argue that women were better off in the Tokugawa era than during the Meiji era for this reason.
[1]Tocco, Martha C. “Norms and Texts for Women’s Education in Tokugawa Era Japan.” Essay. In Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Japan, and Korea, 193–218. University of California Press, 2003. https://web-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=3bccf320-85d3-4d1a-bf5c-82ceef6dc1a9%40sdc-v-sessmgr01&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNzbyZzaXRlPWVob3N0LWxpdmU%3d#AN=108495&db=nlebk.
[2] Theodore, De Bary Wm, Carol Gluck, and Arthur E. Tiedemann. “Education of Women in Meiji Japan.” Essay. In Sources of Japanese Tradition 2, 2:81–115. Columbia University Press, 2006.