Social Science Japan Journal Advance Access originally published online on November 11, 2008
Social Science Japan Journal 2008 11(2):201-221; doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyn057
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Social Science Japan Journal 11:201-221 (2008)
© 2008 Oxford University Press
Gender in the Meiji Renovation: Confucian ‘Lessons for Women’ and the Making of Modern Japan
SEKIGUCHI Sumiko is a professor specializing in Asian political thought and gender studies at Hosei University. Her recent publications include: Go-isshin to Jend
(The Meiji Renovation and Gender), Tokyo: T
ky Daigaku Shuppankai (2005); 
edo no Hime-sama (The Princesses of Edo), Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten (2005) and Kokumin-Dtoku to Jend (Gender, Morality and Nation: Intellectual Constructions in Modern Japan), Tokyo: Tky Daigaku Shuppankai (2007). She can be reached at Faculty of Law, Hosei University, 2-17-1 Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8160, Japan, or by e-mail at ssumiko{at}hosei.ac.jp
From the early Tokugawa period onward, the expression, ‘The hen does not announce the morning. The crowing of a hen in the morning indicates the subversion of the family’ from the Shujing (Book of Documents) was frequently called upon as a warning. At the height of the Tokugawa period, Ogy
Sorai deployed the authority of the Confucian Classics to subject the daimyo houses' ‘inner quarters’ (oku) to a scorching critique. But in conjunction with the Sann Gaiki (Secret History of the Three Rulers), attributed to his student Dazai Shundai, Sorai's Seidan (Discourse on Government) could also be perceived as targeting the house of the shogun. While the anonymous author of the Sann Gaiki meant to expose the sorry state of the shogun's rule, Sorai's Seidan offered a vision of what government ought to be like. Calls to remove ‘the hens’ from the inner sphere of power now rapidly grew in volume. Against this background, the ‘Meiji Renovation’ (Meiji ishin) must also be understood as an attempt to eliminate, in the diction of the times, ‘the power of the women’ (joken) from the deep recesses of the government's power structure, and to reaffirm the power (of men) which alone was considered legitimate. Thus, after their seizure of power, the imperial restorationists hurried to crush what they called ‘the power of women already lasting for centuries’ and moved an empress who ‘does not poke her beak into matters of government’ to the front instead. Ultimately, a program to educate ‘good mothers and good wives’, drawing on examples from Japan, China and the West alike, was embarked upon with the empress at its head.
* This article presents a partial summary of my Go-isshin to Jend
(Sekiguchi 2005a). The parts concerning the history of the term joken, however, are newly added. This article was translated from the Japanese by Michael Burtscher.