Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan

Representing an unprecedented collaboration among international scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States, this volume rewrites the history of East Asia by rethinking the contentious relationship between Confucianism and women. The authors discuss the absence of women in the Confucian canonical tradition and examine the presence of women in politics, family, education, and art in premodern China, Korea, and Japan. What emerges is a concept of Confucianism that is dynamic instead of monolithic in shaping the cultures of East Asian societies. As teachers, mothers, writers, and rulers, women were active agents in this process. Neither rebels nor victims, these women embraced aspects of official norms while resisting others. The essays present a powerful image of what it meant to be female and to live a woman's life in a variety of social settings and historical circumstances. Challenging the conventional notion of Confucianism as an oppressive tradition that victimized women, this provocative book reveals it as a modern construct that does not reflect the social and cultural histories of East Asia before the nineteenth century.

ISBN 0520231384   Pages 350 ISBN13 9780520231382 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher University of California Press   Weight (grammes) 485 Imprint University of California Press   Published in Berkerley Format Paperback   Height (mm) 225 Publication date 28 Aug 2003   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress 2003001855   Spine width (mm) 19 DEWEY 305.42095   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC21

		LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES
		PREFACE
		NOTES ON CONVENTIONS
		COMPARATIVE TIME CHART FOR CHINA, KOREA, AND JAPAN
		Introduction		1
		PART I. SCRIPTS OF MALE DOMINANCE
		I. The Patriarchal Family Paradigm in Eighth-Century Japan
		Hiroko Sekiguchi		27
		2. The Last Classical Female Sovereign: Køken-Shøtoku Tennø
		Joan R. Piggott		47
		3. Representation of Females in Twelfth-Century Korean Historiography
		Hai-soon Lee		75
		4. The Presence and Absence of Female Musicians and Music in China
		Joseph S. C. Lam		97
		PART II. PROPAGATING CONFUCIAN VIRTUES
		5. Women and the Transmission of Confucian Culture in Song China
		Jian Zang		123
		6. Propagating Female Virtues in Chosøn Korea
		Martin Deuchler		142
		7. State Indoctrination of Filial Piety in Tokugawa Japan: Sons and Daughters in the Official Records of Filial Piety
		Noriko Sugano		170
		PART III. FEMALE EDUCATION IN PRACTICE
		8. Norms and Texts for Women's Education in Tokugawa Japan
		Martha C. Tocco		193
		9. Competing Claims on Womanly Virtue in Late Imperial China
		Fangqin Du and Susan Mann		219
		PART IV. CORPOREAL AND TEXTUAL. EXPRESSIONS OF FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY
		More...

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