Powerful Women in Ancient Japan

[Ross Bender]

Over the last twenty years Japanese women scholars have spearheaded a new discourse on female sovereigns in ancient Japan. Among them are Takinami Sadako, Watanabe Ikuko, Yoshie Akiko, and Irie Yoko. In the West, Joan Piggott has done most of the heavy lifting, especially with her contributions to the volumes Women and Class in Japanese History (1999) and Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (2003). Also notable is Barbara Ruch's tome Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan (2003). Despite these efforts, I know of no survey in a Western language of the era of female sovereigns in ancient Japan (and also in China and Silla).

The old paradigm of "placeholder" or "nakatsugi" empresses that devalued these women's contributions to Japanese history has been giving way, especially with a new emphasis on Himiko and what might well be termed the shamanistic charisma of archaic female rulers. Perhaps ancient Japan has never been more relevant than today, considering the advent of imperial abdication in contemporary Japan and possibly the reopening of female succession to the throne.

In the introduction to The Edicts of the Last Empress, 749-770 (2015) I briefly survey the record of female sovereigns although of course my emphasis is on Empress Koken/Shotoku. I have recently uploaded my chapter in Japan Emerging: Premodern Japan to 1850, (2012) edited by Karl Friday in honor of the late Cameron Hurst, but retitled it "Powerful Women in Nara" which seems a more appropriate title than the original.

If anyone knows of any work being done in America or Europe on the six ancient Jotei, I would be curious to hear of it.

Ross Bender

https://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

[Lisa Kochinski]

Dear Ross,

Although you asked for Western language work on the six female tennō of the ancient period, Takinami Sadako's Saigo no tennō: Koken tennō may be of interest.

Takinami Sadako瀧浪貞子. Saigo no Jotei: Kōken Tennō 最後の女帝: 孝謙天皇. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1998.    

​Best regards,

Lisa Kochinski

Lisa

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Lisa Kochinski

Dornsife / Graduate School Ph.D. Fellow

School of Religion

University of Southern California

825 Bloom Walk, ACB 130

Los Angeles CA 90089–1481

http://dornsife.usc.edu/religion/

https://usc.academia.edu/LisaKochinski

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[Barbara Ruch]

Dear Colleagues,

Dear Ross,

 

Congratulations to Amy Heinrich and her team for the forthcoming translation of Takagi Kiyoko’s 「八人の女帝」. It will be a fine addition to the English language material available to scholars who do not read Japanese – a much needed help to elevate the history of prominent women up out of the predominately Euro-American (as if standard) source bank.

 

In response to Ross’s inquiry seeking scholarship on current women tennō, I would like to call attention to Monica Bethe’s outstanding on-going research on Empress Kōmyō which will appears shortly co-authored with Bryan D. Lowe under the editorship of Richard Bowring in a new publication soon to appear. That will include not just the usual men but women as well in the cultural heritage of Japanese religion. Kōmyō was not a “jotei,” but in many ways she was a co-tennō with Shōmu, also the mother of jotei.

 

I do hope that you all are already familiar with 2009 Amamonzeki: A Hidden Heritage, Treasures of the Japanese Imperial Convents (Totally bilingual, English and Japanese. Available from Paragon Books) in which the real treasures are the founding and restoring abbesses of these thirteen convents, and which has a lot to say and provides primary data on at least two “powerful women” who date to the ancient “jotei” era.

 

I would like to offer a cautionary note about the word “powerful.” It is a highly genderized word, having been applied as praise by men about men since men began to write about themselves. If applied to women, historically, it has taken on the nuance of “akujo,” as we all know. I suppose today we scholars are trapped by our own culture, knowing that few will pay proper attention to women unless we label them “powerful.” But “power” is an ingredient of politico-economics, the choking fog that hangs over all of our histories, obfuscating the actual mechanisms of cultural creation and influence.

 

Having seen this I don’t have the answer to alternatives. But the women I have encountered in Japanese sources who had the ability to influence the course of history and to lead seem more like the pilots of their self-chosen ships. Out of sight but determining cultural directions the whole nation ends up following.

 

That does indeed make them powerful in ways not fully recognized – sound mechanisms that need to be seen and analyzed and understood.

 

Influential women’s lives matter deeply.

 

Deep “kansha” to Ross for his abiding revelations about what went on in the “Nara period”! And to all who are re-examining women who were “tennō.”

 

Barbara Ruch

 

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