How Japanese women were weaned from free love and the right to divorce to make them almost European

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Japanese woman is sometimes cited as an example of a meek wife and caring mother who lives only in the interests of the household and the household. Moreover, this is usually attributed to tradition. But the modern ideal Japanese wife is a product of the Meiji era (XIX century), when everything European was introduced in Japan. Traditionally, girls and women felt much freer.

Ladies in bedspreads

From Japanese classical literature, everyone knows that in ancient times, Japanese women hid from immodest glances, communicating with guests through the screen and going out into the street only with their heads covered. The role of the burqa for Japanese women was played by hats with veils or, more often, a kimono thrown over the head, specially tailored so that only in this way it could be worn. Such a kimono-veil was called kazuki. Those who wish can buy kazuki for themselves in our time, they are produced and sold.

Girls could not marry without the permission of their parents and could not divorce without the permission of their husbands. In the samurai estate, both the union and its dissolution had to be approved by the suzerain. The wives had maids to do the housework; women themselves were not allowed to work, but they were allowed to write something elegant, which is why the contribution of women to Japanese literature is so great. The stories, which were translated back in the Soviet Union, are almost all written by women. Ladies wrote and poems.

Another way to deal with boredom, which overcame without the opportunity to work or seek fulfillment, were friends' gatherings with ancient sacred rituals, which included drinking warmed up sake, a low-alcohol drink made from rice. But the life of most Japanese women was arranged in such a way that they were not bored, and they made marriages and divorces both easier and freer.

To you or to me?

More than 80% of women lived in villages, where everyone worked on an equal footing: either cultivated the fields, or caught and collected seafood, or engaged in handicrafts. The woman was a valuable worker, and this gave her the opportunity to insist on her own and, often, make independent decisions about marriage. Of course, she still had to honor her parents, but they rarely opposed the choice of daughters. More often than not, the problem was that parents took their husband's daughters too early in order to get working hands for the family.

Yes, in a Japanese village it was possible to create a marriage couple both within the family of the groom and the bride. So the question arose before the lovers: well, are we going to live with you or me? Marriages with the departure of the girl to the groom's family were concluded later - the average age of brides was eighteen years. But if the bride's parents wanted to get an extra worker for themselves, they married off their daughter much earlier - the average age was fourteen, but there was no bottom line at all. Of course, marriage to an immature girl was (or was considered) fictitious. The big age difference between husband and wife was considered silly.

Divorced often

Divorce in the village was a simple matter. The husband collected his things and left - at his own request or at the request of his wife. The woman did the same. In the village, if necessary, a divorce bill was issued not only by husbands to wives, but also by wives to husbands. More often they did without formalities.

The first, early, marriage broke up very often. If the husband lived with his wife's family, the chance of divorce was about fifty-five percent. If on the contrary - a little less, forty-one percent. That is, marriages arranged by parents broke up more often (girls usually left for the husband's family when they got married of their own free will). On average, the first marriage lasted three to five years. Second marriages, on the other hand, were usually strong, so the first marriage was often considered a trial marriage.

There were no restrictions on how many (in turns) the villagers could take their wives and husbands. A woman is known who replaced ten spouses and stopped at the eleventh. It is clear in which cases marriages were stronger: if the spouses were older, if they had children, if the family was wealthy.

Children were born outside of permanent unions. Since literally every pair of working hands was valued, they were simply adopted by the mother's family, and the child became a legal brother to his own mother. The young men often visited, according to the old custom, their beloved girls under cover of night (this custom was also known among the nobility, but in relation to adult ladies and gentlemen). On some holidays, dancing around the fire ended with the youth scattering in pairs. Back in the twenties of the twentieth century, in villages no more than 2% of unmarried girls were virgins. How did the ladies of the 19th century view such freedom of love? There is evidence that they were jealous.

Everything changed under Meiji

Emperor Meiji liked everything European, and he actively introduced the Western education system, costumes and even family customs. The ideal of the family under him was the well-to-do bourgeois family of European countries. In such families, girls kept their innocence until marriage, and women devoted themselves entirely to household chores. From now on, they demanded the same and more from the Japanese woman - to be ideal in everything: in appearance, household, manners and motherhood.

Of course, with European influences, 19th century ideas about emancipation poured into Japan. Many young Japanese women began to cut their hair like nihilists, wear trousers, talk about politics and society, and push the ideas of women's education. They published their own newspapers and gathered in circles. The authorities had to pass separate laws banning women's short haircuts and any women's trousers other than the traditional hakama, which were usually worn either for religious reasons or when working in the field.

During the twentieth century, the demands for women, based on the models of Europe and the noble families of the past, only strengthened. Even in the twenty-first century, Japanese politicians allow themselves to call women "machines for the production of children" aloud, and a teacher at school can make a remark to a mother if it seems to him that a bento collected by a child speaks of her insufficient efforts.

There are many unexpected and interesting things in the past of Japan: 10 historical facts about Japan that allow you to look at this country from a different perspective.