Center for Japanese Studies Seminar Series

"Illustrated Classical Texts for Women in the Edo Period" by Joshua Mostow (Professor, University of British Columbia)

Debates occurred in the mid- to late-17th century over the appropriateness of The Tale of Genji and The Tales of Ise as reading material for girls and women. Owing to the overwhelming desire by members of both the warrior (buke) and townsman (chōnin) classes for their daughters to acquire cultural capital associated with the aristocracy, the ability to read and compose waka became a sine qua non, and this desideratum had, by the beginning of the 18th century, grown so strong that it almost rendered invisible the previous morally-based objections to the salacious content of the Genji and the Ise. The debates were revived in the Meiji period, as scholars and educators struggled with the construction of a canon of national literature.

In this illustrated lecture, Mostow looks at the rise of genres of books published specifically for females in relation to the Ise, the Hyakunin isshu and, to a lesser extent, the Genji. How were these courtly texts "packaged" for female consumers of the early modern period, and what can such packaging tell us about both the reception of such "classical" texts and the construction of femininity in the Tokugawa era?

Ticket Information
Free and Open to the Public

Event Sponsor
Center for Japanese Studies, Manoa

More Information
Center for Japanese Studies, 956-2665, cjs@hawaii.edu, http://www.hawaii.edu/cjs/

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