It is no doubt that Winnifred Eaton; the author of “A Half Caste” is a genius when it comes to using literary masquerade in relation to her treatment of Japanese women and mixed race. She is Otono Watanna in disguise. Through her pen name, she was able to shed light on issues relating to the Japanese race, or more specifically, the Japanese Caucasian persons. Watanna has successfully raised the representation of the Japanese women as being submissive under the men authority, Western or Asiatic. Watanna portrayed this image through the interaction between the half-caste Japanese women and Western characters. This view is demonstrated through her fictional prose of “A Half Caste,” “A Contract,” and her nonfiction work “The Half Caste.”
Watanna’s self-fashioning examines the reasons of submissiveness based on the relationship between Japanese women and Western men. Most people would agree with the depiction that women of the Japanese culture are weak due to their submission to the male figures. One can relate to this based on the upbringing of Japanese women. Often time, they are given very little authority during their lifespan. As a child, they are being controlled under their parents’ dictatorship. By the time they grow become adults, their freedom and liberty is still limited, to say the least. Furthermore, bigotry is also imposed upon the half-caste race by society. If there is any matter that the Japanese are against, it would be the existence and presence of the half-caste, which is a race, mixed of Japanese and Caucasian blood. Okikusan is a half Japanese, half European geisha girl in “A Half Caste.” There is an “unreasonable dislike” that Okikusan has developed for foreigners. This is can be easily explained through the t...
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...e” talks about the sad reality of being classified in the mixed race of Japanese and Caucasian. Those who fall under this category habitually encounter discrimination and unjust treatment from society. They are alienated from the community because they are said to look and act abnormal. It is arguable that Japanese women tend to submit to others due to the lack of lawful protection. Furthermore, they lack the care and love of others. Thus, it is easier to abide by the rules than to resist. The description of the “half breed” claim that the half Japanese, half European falls into one extreme or the other, either cynics or geniuses. If this binary opposition applies to all, it would be fair to assume that they are either very obedience or very heartless. For the most part, the majority of the Japanese women find it easier to get through the hardship of life in general.
'Even with all the mental anguish and struggle, an elemental instinct bound us to this soil. Here we were born; here we wanted to live. We had tasted of its freedom and learned of its brave hopes for democracy. It was too late, much too late for us to turn back.' (Sone 124). This statement is key to understanding much of the novel, Nisei Daughter, written by Monica Sone. From one perspective, this novel is an autobiographical account of a Japanese American girl and the ways in which she constructed her own self-identity. On the other hand, the novel depicts the distinct differences and tension that formed between the Issei and Nisei generations. Moreover, it can be seen as an attempt to describe the confusion experienced by Japanese Americans torn between two cultures.
This signifies the dominant presence of Japanese hegemony in Korea. Similarly, the dominance of Japanese colonialists’ educational agenda was evident, as the threat of the emergence of Korean women’s identity and role within the context of the new spaces created by education, led the colonial government to discharge advancements in female education(Yoo,60). Instead of creating equal opportunities for women and men, Japanese colonial authority’s educational agenda created “secondary education [that] aimed to create more ‘feminine’ women”, in which “the highly gendered division of courses encouraged women to select ‘feminine’ courses” (Yoo 70). This eventually led women to be in their original positions: to stay within the domestic sphere. For example, in the Japanese empire and colonial Korea, women were more encouraged to learn housekeeping and sewing in lieu of learning masculine courses such as “ethics, national language, literature, history, geography, mathematics or science” (Yoo 70).
Some were as young as fourteen while some were mothers who were forced to leave their child behind in Japan, but for these women the sacrifice will be worth it once they get to San Francisco. Yet, the women desired a better life separate from their past, but brought things that represent their culture desiring to continue the Buddha traditions in America; such as, their kimonos, calligraphy brushes, rice paper, tiny brass Buddha, fox god, dolls from their childhood, paper fans, and etc. (Otsuka, 2011, p. 9) A part of them wanted a better life full of respect, not only toward males but also toward them, and away from the fields, but wanted to continue the old traditions from their home land. These hopes of a grand new life was shattered when the boat arrived to America for none of the husbands were recognizable to any of the women. The pictures were false personas of a life that didn’t really exist for these men, and the men were twenty years older than their picture. All their hopes were destroyed that some wanted to go home even before getting off the boat, while others kept their chins up holding onto their hope that maybe something good will come from this marriage and walked off the boat (Otsuka, 2011, p.
On the day Samantha Lyn is born, Mura ask himself, “Can I teach my daughter Japanese cultural?” when Mura is barely understanding the cultural himself (Mura 35). Mura feels daunted by the situation because he “decided that [he] was not Japanese . . . [he] was never going to be Japanese, and . . . [he] was never going to be an expert on Japanese cultural” after his trip to Japan and discover his identity as Japanese-American. Mura’s regret, is he never took advantage to learn his Japanese cultural as a young kid, and now sees himself “as a person of color” (Mura 35). All of these regrets put pressure on Mura that he is incapable to teach Japanese cultural to his daughter Samantha and “would rather not discuss, [because] it seems much easier to opt in silence”. Shamefulness is also a worry for Mura. Mura is more attracted to “the ‘beautiful’ bodies of white women” than the other race and ethnicity. Mura also question if he should tell Samantha “[his] own desire for a ‘hallucinatory whiteness,’ of how in [his] twenties such a desire fueled a rampant promiscuity addiction to pornography . . . ?” (Mura 35). At the time Samantha is young and would not know how to take it
Other research has devoted to unveiling the origins and the development of their stereotyping and put them among the historical contextual frameworks (e.g., Kawai, 2003, 2005; Prasso, 2005). Research has shown that those stereotypes are not all without merits. The China doll/geisha girl stereotype, to some degree, presents us with a romanticized woman who embodies many feminine characteristics that are/ were valued and praised. The evolving stereotype of the Asian martial arts mistress features women power, which might have the potentials to free women from the gendered binary of proper femininity and masculinity. Nevertheless, the Western media cultural industry adopts several gender and race policing strategies so as to preserve patriarchy and White supremacy, obscuring the Asian women and diminishing the positive associations those images can possibly imply. The following section critically analyzes two cases, The Memoirs of a Geisha and Nikita, that I consider to typify the stereotypical depictions of Asian women as either the submissive, feminine geisha girl or as a powerful yet threatening martial arts lady. I also seek to examine
This paper is a review of the book Japan’s Comfort Women-Sexual slavery and prostitution during WWII and the US occupation by Yuki Tanaka. This book was published in 2002 by Routledge. The book deals with the thousands of Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other Asian and European women who were victims of organized sexual violence and prostitution by means of “comfort stations” setup by the Japanese military during World War II.
But as Dalby goes on to note, the geisha culture is marked by the "primacy of sisterhood", and represents a kind of counterpart to the bonds of brotherhood in such fraternal Japanese cultures as business corporations and company unions. The modern geisha's services are beyond the means of the average Japanese man today, but the geisha continues to represent a cultural ideal: the ideal of the witty, educated woman who can talk frankly with a man about life, sex, art, politics, or anything else his wife cannot.
Bainbridge, Erika. “The Madness of Mothers in Japanese Noh Drama.” U.S.- Japan Women’s Journal English supplement No.3 (1992): 84-104. PDF file.
Saikaku, Ihara. Life of a Sensuous Woman. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd Ed. Volume D. Ed. Martin Puchner. New York: Norton, 2013. 591-611. Print.
In the novel Life of a Sensuous Woman, Ihara Saikaku depicts the journey of a woman who, due to voraciously indulging in the ever-seeking pleasure of the Ukiyo lifestyle, finds herself in an inexorable decline in social status and life fulfillment. Saikaku, utilizing characters, plot, and water imagery, transforms Life of a Sensuous Woman into a satirically critical commentary of the Ukiyo lifestyle: proposing that it creates a superficial, unequal, and hypocritical society.
Matsumoto studies three generations, Issei, Nisei, and Sansei living in a closely linked ethnic community. She focuses her studies in the Japanese immigration experiences during the time when many Americans were scared with the influx of immigrants from Asia. The book shows a vivid picture of how Cortex Japanese endured violence, discriminations during Anti-Asian legislation and prejudice in 1920s, the Great Depression of 1930s, and the internment of 1940s. It also shows an examination of the adjustment period after the end of World War II and their return to the home place.
In addition, shortly thereafter, she and a small group of American business professionals left to Japan. The conflict between values became evident very early on when it was discovered that women in Japan were treated by locals as second-class citizens. The country values there were very different, and the women began almost immediately feeling alienated. The options ...
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. "The Ambivalent Self of the Contemporary Japanese." Cultural Anthropology 5.2 (1990): 197-216. Print.
A lady is an object, one which men attempt to dominate. A man craves to get a hold of this being beneath his command, and forever have her at his disposal. In her piece “Size Six: The Western Women’s Harem,” published in 2002, Fatema Mernissi illustrates how Eastern and Western women are subjugated by the control of men. Mernissi argues that though she may have derived from a society where a woman has to cover her face, a Western woman has to face daily atrocities far worse then ones an Eastern woman will encounter. Moreover, Mernissi’s core dogma in “Size 6: The Western Women's Harem” is that Western women are not more fortunate than women raised into harems in other societies. Additionally, she asserts that though women in the Western world are given liberties, they coincide with the unattainable ideals of what is aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, to strengthen her argument towards her wavering audience, Mernissi’s main approach in her paper is to get the reader to relate with her issue by means of an emotional appeal, while also utilizing both the ethical and logical appeal to support her thesis.
In the novel This Earth Of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, discrimination against social structure, race, and gender is apparent. The setting is in the Indies, or now called Indonesia. At that time, there are terms for different races in the book, which are “Native” indicating someone who is pure Indonesian, “Indo” a half European and half Indonesian, and “Pure Blood” or “European” when someone is pure European. An Indo and a Pure Blood receives more respect in society than a Native. Furthermore, European or Pure Blood is at the top of this social hierarchy, people who are European or Pure Blood receives the utmost respect in society. Differences in gender is prevalent in this novel, where most women in this book have power in their own homes, but in society is looked down upon. Female characters experiencing these are Annelies, the main character’s love interest, Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies’ mother who is a concubine, and Magda Peters, the main character’s European teacher. Women in this novel are portrayed differently according to what race, social structure, and gender they are born in, which can be seen through Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies, and Magda Peters.