The Society for Japanese Studies

Review: The Model Japanese Woman

Author(s): Gail Lee Bernstein
Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer, 1980), pp. 354-359
Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/132326
Accessed: 18/08/2010 03:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sjs.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Society for Japanese Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Journal of Japanese Studies.

http://www.jstor.org
354 Journal of Japanese Studies

THE MODEL JAPANESE WOMAN

A Certain Woman. By Arishima Takeo. Translated by Kenneth

Strong. University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1978. 382 pp. Y3,800.
The Waiting Years. By Enchi Fumiko. Translated by John Bester.
Kodansha International Ltd., Tokyo and Palo Alto, 1971. $7.95.
The Doctor's Wife. By Ariyoshi Sawako. Translated by Hironaka
Wakako and Ann Siller Kostant. Kodansha International Ltd.,
Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco, 1978. $8.95.

Reviewed by
GAIL LEE BERNSTEIN
University of Arizona

These three Japanese novels, made available to the English-reading

public in recent years, have women as their central characters.
Rather than focusing on the novels' literary worth or on the quality
of their English rendering, this review discusses their depiction of
women in Japanese society. Using fiction as historical or sociologi-
cal evidence is admittedly a dangerous enterprise. One must con-
stantly ask whether the author's imagination colored rather than
mirrored social reality. Since two of the authors, Enchi and
Ariyoshi, are contemporary writers whose novels are set in the Meiji
period, we might expect to find their modern consciousness influenc-
ing the historical faithfulness of their portrayals. What we find in-
stead, however, is that all three authors, whether consciously or not,
glorify the traditional role of Japanese women. In this sense, the
novels are interesting not only as intimate accounts of the lives of
late nineteenth and early twentieth century women, but also as reve-
lations of the authors' own attitudes toward women's role in
Japanese society.
Two of the novels were inspired by historical personages. The
Doctor's Wife (Hanaoka Seishu no tsuma, 1966) was based on the
life of the Meiji physician Hanaoka Seishu, a pioneer in the use of
anesthesia, while the model for Yoko, in A Certain Woman (Aru
onna, 1919), was Sadaki Nobuko, for a short time the wife of writer
Kunikida Doppo. The authors of all three books wrote from what
may be called a feminist perspective, consciously siding with their
female protagonists who, despite differences in social class, geo-
graphical region, and historical time period, shared a similar sense of
emotional deprivation, financial insecurity, and vulnerable social
status. There are thus numerous common themes in the lives of the
 Review Section 355

rural doctor's wife, the "important" (Meiji) official's wife (in The
WaitingYears, Onna saka, 1957), and the ex-wife of the early twen-
tieth century author.
A pervasive theme is jealousy and rivalryamong women. Fierce
competition sets women of differentages, classes and status against
each other. Consequently, the family is the setting for many of the
battles describedin the books. Subtle power plays between mother-
in-law and daughter-in-law,overt "pulling of rank" by household
mistresses in dealings with servants, tyrannicaldominationby older
sisters over younger sisters-these Japanese versions of hair-pulling
and eye-scratchingstand out more than do demonstrationsof female
solidarity.The women's self-awarenessmoreovermakes them seem
all the more manipulative.In A Certain Woman,the young divorcee
Yiko, using feminine guiles of fashionable dress and coy man-
nerisms, temporarilysucceeds in stealingthe attentionof fellow ship
passengers from an older, more respectable woman, who has been
treatingYoko with condescension. Having elevated her own stand-
ing amongthe passengers, Y6ko now feels she can speak to the older
woman as an equal. "Like a snake-charmerwatching the contor-
tions of a dying snake, Yoko observed with a mocking smile the
older woman's struggles" (p. 116).
At the root of such unabashedrivalrylies the rank-consciousness
inherited from the feudal period. Female antagonism in part is re-
lated to norms of social hierarchy. Daughters-in-law,house ser-
vants, younger sisters, and inn maids-women in inferiorpositions
within the hierarchicalsocial order-are deftly put in their place by
women in socially superiorpositions. For all her rebelliousness and
scandalous modernways, Yoko likes to act high class and insists on
being treated as such; she subscribes to the traditional superior-
inferiordelineationof rankin Japanese society. If women could not
receive such deferentialtreatmentfrom most men in their lives, they
could demand it from other women.
Competition among women is not merely due to rank-
consciousness; it reflects their helpless position in a family system
that made them dependenton their husbandsand in-laws. Women in
the novels thus compete with other women for men's support. Their
conflicts stem from their desperate need to hold on to their men,
without whom they could not survive. Because in all three books
this need is expressed in emotional as well as economic terms, it is
all the more poignant.
Although the Japanese family system, which perpetuatedfeudal
rank-consciousnessand male domination,is exposed as the villainin
356 Journal of Japanese Studies

these novels, what the female characters complain about, when they
allow themselves the luxury of complaint, is not the family as an
institution, nor social hierarchy, nor service to men as a feminine
ideal, but simply the failure of others to appreciate or deserve their
devotedness. Through the faithful, uncomplaining Tomo in The
Waiting Years, author Enchi Fumiko comes close to a radical
critique of the Japanese family, but she backs away.
Tomo felt a sudden, futile despair. ... Everything that she had
suffered for, worked for, and won within the restrictedsphere of a
life whose key she had for decades past entrustedto her wayward
husbandYukitomo lay within the confines of that unfeeling, hard,
and unassailablefortress summedup by the one word "family'....
Was it possible, then, that everythingshe had lived for was vain and
profitless?No: she shook her head in firmrejectionof the idea...
(p. 190).

Even Arishima's headstrong heroine, who clashes with most other

members of the family and who strikes out on a quest for indepen-
dence, discovers that what she wants most is to abandon herself to a
strong, yet tender, physically powerful and decisive man. Female
protagonists, in other words, continue to embrace the traditional
role of dependent and sacrificing wife.
This traditional feminine ideal is portrayed in The Doctor's Wife,
which pits mother-in-law against daughter-in-law in a literally deadly
combat over the doctor's affections. The two women compete in a
grim game of self-sacrifice leading to years of misery for both and
ending in tragedy for the wife. The conflict unfolds within an embel-
lished historical account of anesthesia experiments performed by
Dr. Hanaoka, a dedicated and daring rural physician whose rise
from poverty to a place in medical history is itself a fascinating
story. That the two female protagonists in their rivalry are reduced
to suicidal gestures-fighting over who will serve as the guinea pig
for the doctor's experiments-may be interpreted as the ultimate
indictment of the family system. It is not clear that this is the au-
thor's message, however, for although the inherent tensions of the
rural family are clearly evident, the compulsions and motivations of
the main actors are not attributed to social institutions, but are asso-
ciated with moral failings instead. The heroine, moreover, does not
expose the system; she simply survives it.
In this regard, the novel lacks a clear point of view. Although the
doctor in many ways is depicted as an attractive figure, his much
put-upon younger sister, who also has spent her life supporting him,
 Review Section 357

utters the following denunciation, considered by the translators to

be central to the message of Ariyoshi's story:
Don't you think men are incredible?It seems . . . that an intelligent
person like my brother... would have noticed the friction between
you and Mother. . . But throughout he shrewdly pretended he
didn't see anything . . . which resulted in both you and Mother
drinkingthe medicine.... I thinkthis sort of tension amongfemales
... is to the advantage. . . of ... every male. And I doubt that any
man would volunteer to mediate in their struggles.
The sister, who is close to death, then implies that her brother re-
fused to operate on their other sister's breast cancer because sisters
were expendable: "Maybe that's why sisters are expected to get
married ... They're of no use to their brothers." Finally, she gasps,
"Isn't the relationship between man and woman disgusting?" (pp.
163-164).
While the sister's perceptive remarks about women's rivalry is
valid, in the context of this particular story her anger hardly seems
fair to the doctor, whose anguish over his sister's painful death from
breast cancer and over his own helplessness forms part of the central
plot. Indeed, Hanaoka's major goal as a surgeon was to use anesthe-
sia to operate specifically on breast cancer-a woman's affliction.
He gets his wish in the end, furthermore, thanks to his determination
as well as the assistance of other women in the household. The
incongruity of a modern diatribe against men, presumably spoken by
a late Meiji rural woman, is jarring and at least partially unjust.
The petty power struggles of the two leading women in the novel,
set against a background of such historical importance, similarly
detract from the author's evident desire to elicit sympathy for them.
Once the humanitarian value of the doctor's work is grasped, the
women in his household lose their sympathetic appeal. Imagine writ-
ing a novel about the behind-the-scenes kitchen squabbles of Mrs.
Albert Schweitzer and her daughter-in-law. The extraordinary na-
ture of the doctor's work, his boldness, and his own total dedication
of self to his patients and his research minimize the legitimacy of the
feminist rhetoric implicit in the novel.
Further confusing the reader' s sympathies is the eventual
triumph of the wife-the triumph of a survivor, whose silent suffer-
ing is so impressive even her husband notices her in the end. If the
rhetoric in part is modern, the heroine surely is not; the author
succumbs to a maudlin version of the ideal Japanese woman-one
who is beautiful in her suffering, noble in her martyrdom.
A far more sympathetic and believable female protagonist
358 Journal of Japanese Studies

emerges in Enchi Fumiko's The Waiting Years. The full force of the
woman's antagonism in this novel is directed at her husband, a
provincial official of ex-samurai lineage who has achieved a modicum
of wealth and fame in the service of the new Meiji government.
Tomo is elegant and controlled throughout years of struggling to
maintain her role as mistress of her husband's household. If she
cannot retain her husband's affection, she can at least try to win his
gratitude, and by continuing to make herself indispensable to him,
even as he seduces not only one household servant after another but
also his daughter-in-law, she remains at the center of female power
within the household. A further strategy to preserve her authority is
to ally with her female rivals rather than weakening them. Tomo's
self-sacrificing too, however, is eventually reduced to grotesque
proportions, as when she helps arrange the boudoir for her hus-
band's liaison with the young girl she has, at his request, chosen for
him.
Tomo's response to her predicament, like the response of the
doctor's wife, is to elevate her suffering to a virtue. This is in keep-
ing with the common view that Meiji women (and their Victorian
counterparts) were expected to suffer silently and beautifully. The
Japanese woman's "masochistic morality," as George DeVos has
dubbed it, evidently continues to have a place in contemporary liter-
ature, television drama, and popular lore, where the reward for such
fortitude frequently comes with death. The imminent death of the
mother-in-law is often the occasion for her to show gratitude toward
her daughter-in-law and for the latter to feel vindicated and proud of
her endurance. In Tomo's case, the reward, if one can call it such,
comes through revenge, expressed on her own deathbed and ac-
complished by being so extraordinarily noble, so exaggerated in her
selflessness that she exposes her husband's callousness and, in a
final unique act whose revelation here would destroy the reader's
suspense, she virtually shatters his ego.
It is interesting that contemporary Japanese female authors like
Enchi and Ariyoshi, in trying to put themselves into the minds of
women of a past generation, reproduce stereotypes of the ideal
woman in existence at the time. Perpetuating the apotheosis of fe-
male misery without providing either alternate role models or histor-
ical or sociological insights into the cause of this misery, their novels
unintentionally affirm the traditional definition of the Japanese
woman's role even at a time of great change in Japanese women's
lives.
Writing in the early twentieth century, but about a woman of a
 Review Section 359

later generationthan the protagonistsin The Waiting Years and The

Doctor's Wife, Arishima Takeo likewise upholds this non-radical
image of Japanese women by showing what happens to a woman
who dares to rebel againsther ordainedrole. Yoko, an adulteress, is
punished first by society and then by impersonalforces-fate-and
she is made to suffer the torments of hell without the reward of
moral victory. By the end of A Certain Woman, Arishimaturns the
cause of Yoko's suffering inward, locating its origins in Yoko her-
self. Minutely analyzing her unstable emotions, rather than setting
her frantic behavior against the social, political, or economic cir-
cumstances of her time, Arishima makes Yoko's weakness of
characterthe cause of her ruin;and unlikethe virtuouswomen of the
other two novels, she dies, accordingly, without vindication.
The image of the Japanese woman as depicted in these three
novels suggests the compelling nature of the Japanese feminine
ideal. By glorifying women's suffering, explaining its cause in
Buddhist terms in the existential predicament of sentient beings
"powerless in the coils of a cycle of birthand rebirth" (The Waiting
Years, p. 147), failingto offer alternatives, and withholdingspiritual
salvation from those who deviate, all three novels ultimately, if in-
advertently, reinforce the traditional conception of the model
Japanese woman.

CITIES, SUBURBS, AND POLITICS

The Growth and Management of the Japanese Urban System. By

Norman J. Glickman. Academic Press, New York, 1979. xiv +
370 pp. $21.00.
Suburban Tokyo. By Gary D. Allinson. University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1979. xv + 258 pp. $18.75.

Reviewed by
JAMES W. WHITE
University of North Carolina
These two books share two majorvirtues-they deal with subjects
only rarely treated in English to date, and they do so with consider-
able skill. This is not to say that they are without flaws-Glickman is
somewhat repetitious and overdoes things methodologically, while
Allinson fails sometimes to give full credit to, or take full advantage
of, methods of analysis available to him. Overall, however, both