The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

The Position of Woman in Historical Japan
Previously, up until the burgeoning twenty-first century, life in Japan was
quite different for women.
Ruth Benedict, in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, her seminal work on
Japanese culture and society, discussed women’s lot in the twentieth century
from the commencement of the post-war period through to the 1960s (her
time of writing):
Whatever one’s age, one’s position in the hierarchy depends on whether one is
male or female. The Japanese woman walks behind her husband and has a lower
status…. 162 A woman… wants children not only for her emotional satisfaction…
but because it is only as a mother that she gains status. A childless wife has a most
insecure position in the family…. 163 Japanese mothers [therefore] begin their
childbearing early, and girls of nineteen bear more children than women of any
age. 164 [And, as it is considered their honorable duty] women may not cry out in
labor. 165
It was thus usually for the roles of mother and wife that girl-children were
raised and on which their education was based. Benedict claimed that the
“Japenese [sic] daughter … must get along as best she [could]… while… the
attentions, and the money for education [went]… to her brothers…. [And
even] when higher schools were established for young women the
prescribed courses were heavily loaded with instruction in etiquette and
Page | 192