William Johnston’s ‘Geisha, Harlot, Stranger, Star’ is the first English-written contribution to the huge array of texts dissecting the life and actions of Abe Sada. The book describes Abe Sada’s life in all its stages, culminating on the recollection of May 19th, 1936, where she killed her lover Ishida Kichizōby, before castrating him and carrying his genitals around in her kimono. With so many texts on the subject, and the attempt of psychoanalysts, feminists, literary critics and those who knew her to explain why she killed and castrated Ishida, it’s one of the most sensationalised crimes committed in twentieth century Japan. Unlike many texts which attempt to construct meaning out of Abe Sada’s actions, Johnston aims to tell the story of …show more content…
It begins with the tale of her unremarkable middle class upbringing. He highlights that her adoring mother, poor performance in school and adoration of the geisha image were significant but not uncommon, and this, along with her family history that was clear of mental illness made her an unlikely criminal. (p.19-27). He does however say that she was familiar with sexuality from a young age due to her surroundings. He recounts that sexuality before the 19th century was distinguished through social class and region. (p.28) Women had more economic and social independence, but this changed during Abe’s era, causing a new perception for young women as otome, or, ‘the maiden’ (p.31) which highlighted the significance of virginity and in turn, the emergence of prostitution. Johnson highlights that this emergence of the pleasure quarters and the general adoration of geisha practices blurred the line between geisha and prostitute for many young girls, such as Abe, who didn’t fully understand what the profession sometimes
Julie Otsuka’s When The Emperor Was Divine told the unspoken stories of many Japanese-Americans during the Interment. Remembering the experiences that thousands of innocent people went through can leave them to feel uneasy and upset. The stripping of their identity and reclassifying them as enemy aliens left them with everlasting trauma and nightmares. Japanese-Americans were arrested, rounded up and transported to Internment camps across the United States where, in some cases, they were held for several years. Therefore, the Japanese-Americans during the Second World War had lasting repercussions from psychological, physical and financial aspects on the prisoners.
Tanaka’s next argument is, sex becomes a source of oppression, brutality and money in war. In his introduction to the book he states, “Sex is a beautiful and extremely enjoyable human relationship with a partner” (pg.1). As soon as war comes into the picture it is used for oppression in a country that has been dominated by another. One woman by the name of Yi Sunok was switched from one comfort station to a comfort station in Singapore, where she again demanded to give up her body to Japanese soldiers. The interesting thing is the Japanese didn’t use their own women for prostitution and if they were used it was only licensed prostitutes. The women used for low ranking soldiers were Korean and Taiwanese women. These two countries both belonged to Japan as colonies. They were forced into becoming prostitutes they had no way to de...
The book, Memoirs of a Geisha, is about a girl, Chiyo, who was born in a fishing village in Yoroido, Japan. Chiyo was born into a lower income village; she and her sister, Satsu, were sold by their father into the geisha society to make up for the lack of medicine that her mom needed. Satsu ended up in the pleasure district in Kyoto and Chiyo was forced to go to an Okiya house to work to become a Geisha for the rest of her life. The meaning of a geisha is artisan, it is a Japanese hostess trained to entertain men with conversation, dance, and song.
Throughout history artists have used art as a means to reflect the on goings of the society surrounding them. Many times, novels serve as primary sources in the future for students to reflect on past history. Students can successfully use novels as a source of understanding past events. Different sentiments and points of views within novels serve as the information one may use to reflect on these events. Natsume Soseki’s novel Kokoro successfully encapsulates much of what has been discussed in class, parallels with the events in Japan at the time the novel takes place, and serves as a social commentary to describe these events in Japan at the time of the Mejeii Restoration and beyond. Therefore, Kokoro successfully serves as a primary source students may use to enable them to understand institutions like conflicting views Whites by the Japanese, the role of women, and the population’s analysis of the Emperor.
In Yoshie's work, “Gender in Early Classical Japan: Marriage, Leadership, and Political Status in Village and Palace (2005),” she takes the example of Toji, women known to have played a m...
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
Known for her work as a historian and rather outspoken political activist, Yamakawa Kikue was also the author of her book titled Women of the Mito Domain (p. xix). At the time she was writing this work, Yamakawa was under the surveillance of the Japanese government as the result of her and her husband’s work for the socialist and feminist movements in Japan (p. xx-xxi). But despite the restrictions she was undoubtedly required to abide by in order to produce this book, her work contains an air of commentary on the past and present political, social, and economic issues that had been plaguing the nation (p. xxi). This work is a piece that comments on the significance of women’s roles in history through the example of Yamakawa’s own family and
Kingston’s mother told her this story as a warning; to avoid being a disgraceful and disloyal woman like her aunt. Kingston, however, does not view her aunt as a promiscuous woman, but rather a victim or a martyr. “Imagining her free with sex doesn’t fit”, she claimed. Kingston imagines her aunt as a woman who abandoned the traditions set forth by China’s extremely patriarchal society. She saw her and someone who did what so many Chinese women shou...
Savas, Minae. "Feminine Madness In The Japanese Noh Theatre." Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Ohio State University, 2008. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 11 Mar 2014.
At the center of Japanese and Chinese politics and gender roles lies the teachings of Confucius. The five relationships (五倫） of Confucius permeated the lives of all within the Heian and Tang societies.4 However, the focus here will be on the lives of the courtesans. The Genji Monogatari provides us with an unrivalled look into the inner-workings of Confucianism and court life in the Heian period. Song Geng, in his discourse on power and masculinity in Ch...
Suzuki, Tomi. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996.
In Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, Sayuri demonstrates that when the forces of fate and free will come into collision, the lack of determination to grasp control of one’s life will lead to a
“Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper” (Golden pg.428). The novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, is about a world where deception is prominent, where the main character Sayuri faces many hardships before she is able to achieve success as a Geisha. This is shown through multiple events in the novel such as, Mr. Tanaka selling Sayuri into slavery, which leads to something better as she finds love and eventually benefits from the betrayal. This is also shown through Hatsumomo, as her constant deception throughout the novel leads to Sayuri becoming the most popular geisha in Gion, eventually rendering Hatsumomo powerless, and through the betrayal
Yukio Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion, set in postwar Japan, gives way to a reflection of the postwar experience both the representation of military aggression and in use of symbolism of beauty, loss, and destruction. A story about Mizoguchi, a young, stuttering acolyte’s obsession with beauty lends itself to the conflagration of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, based loosely on a true story about the Kinkaku-ji.
In this account, the emphasis is placed on how Abe was affected by the harmful attitudes of the time, rather than using her to expand on what those attitudes meant for other women. She was marginalized, she began to act out, and she internalized the stigma from her rape because of society, but for something that must have been a common trend, the effects of this