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This 5 page paper discusses the role of women in traditional Japanese and Chinese cultures, and how that role has evolved over the years. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVWmAsia.rtf
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the evolution of womens roles in traditional Chinese and Japanese cultures. Discussion The history of women and their place in ancient Japanese society, like much of the history of Japan
itself, is either unknown or full of gaps, according to historian Richard Hooker. Little is known of women much before the Heian Period (approximately 794-1195 AD) but in this period
there is a lot of information, most of it provided by the women themselves in what are known as nikki, or literary diaries (Hooker, 1996). He analyzes the nikki to
which he has access, and notes that its not possible to draw conclusions about the place of women in society by studying these works, since they describe one womans experiences;
he suggests each must be taken on its own (Hooker, 1996). The nikki called "The Gossamer Years" chronicles the unhappy relationship of a woman known only as the "Mother of
Michitsuna" (Hooker, 1996). The diary is "less of an account of the marriage then an account of her own bitterness and unhappiness in what was probably a typical upper class
Heian marriage" (Hooker, 1996). The woman recounts her love affair with the man she married and the 20 years they spent together, and the difficulties of the relationship (Hooker, 1996).
Her husband was frequently absent and had numerous illicit affairs "with other women which he, as other Heian nobles, carried out openly and frequently" (Hooker, 1996). From this diary we
can infer that men did as they pleased, women obeyed them, and that her value was as a mother, not a wife. Not all nikki are bitter, but sadness runs
through many of them. In the Murasaki Shikibu Nikki, the writer describes male courtiers at the Heian court are "drunken and gluttonous ... clumsy and loutish. Rather than sending love
...