Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook

Overview

1115 Women Philosophers Overview Throughout most of Japan’s history, only a small number of women who had distinguished themselves in literature were able to express their ideas publicly. Not even the increased educational opportunities and the birth of specialized journals dedicated to women’s issues that came with the Meiji Restoration of 1868 were any match for the deeply male view of women as domestic “property” unsuited to intellectual inquiry. We see this reflected in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s* plea to his compatriots in 1899: In the Imperial Restoration of thirty years ago people did away with the oppression of the feudal Tokugawa regime.… Had people hesitated at the time for fear of disturbing the peace, we Japanese would still be wallowing under the feudal caste system today. Therefore, to have women claim their legitimate rights and to create equality between men and women would be like discarding the old feudal regime and establishing the new constitutional system of the Meiji government. People were daring enough in the political revolution. I cannot see why they should not be the same in a social revolution. (Fukuzawa Yukichi 1899, 263–4 [195]) The many women who struggled against their disadvantaged position in society to serve as “public intellectuals” did so believing that a betterment of their circumstances would come only through studying and cultivating their ability to think rationally and write coherently. With Japan’s emergence from two centuries of isolation, wave after wave of western ways of thinking washed ashore, carrying with them stories of the intellectual, spiritual, and social struggles of women abroad. Such western feminists as Mary Wollstonecraft, Olive Schreiner, Ellen Key, and Charlotte Gilman soon became familiar names to the Japanese women intellectuals, as did the writings on women’s issues by John Stuart Mill, Leo Tolstoy, August Bebel, Lester Ward, and others. But, as Hiratsuka Raichō* and women who joined with her to found the “Bluestocking” circle in 1911 knew only too well, for Japanese women themselves, “literature” remained their only avenue for expressing publicly what they thought about all of this. Reflecting back on the history of their journal Seitō, she recalls: 1116 | wo m e n p h i l o s o p h e r s Their expectations for education betrayed, held down by the feudalistic family system, many women found that the only path left open to them was literature. And by expressing themselves through words, they had begun to awaken to their inner selves and to question their lack of self-awareness and individuality and their parasitic dependence on men. Young women today cannot imagine the degree to which young women at that time were drawn to literature. Seitō provided a new venue, and that, I believe, explains its great appeal. (Hiratsuka Raichō 1971, 1: 340 [163–4]) Within the limited forum accorded them, these women struggled to find ways to articulate their situation. Theirs was a new beginning, born out of their existential concrete situations and not of an attempt to juggle connections with an established body of philosophical texts. Today the works of Japanese women philosophers are included in anthologies of their specialized field of study, such as Leibniz studies or Thomistic philosophy. But the origins and development of women’s philosophy in modern Japan resist classification in the familiar categories of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, aesthetics, and ethics. Theirs was a “philosophy in the making” and needs to be read as such. As Nishida Kitarō* might have said, they were in transition “from the created to the creating,” leaving behind them resources for future introduction into philosophical forums. At the same time, these women posed a radical challenge to the traditional boundaries of “rational thinking” and cannot be dismissed as a mere “proto-philosophy.” Takahashi Fumi (1901–1945) was the first woman to graduate in philosophy from Tōhoku Imperial University. She studied abroad under Heidegger and others and became well enough versed in German to translate two essays of her uncle, Nishida Kitarō. Unfortunately, the career of this promising young woman was cut short by tuberculosis. With a few exceptions, those who, like Takahashi, were fortunate enough to be educated abroad or at one of the three Imperial Universities that accepted female students (Tōhoku, Hokkaido, and Kyushu), had to wait until 1947 to study philosophy formally. The first generation of such women is only now reaching retirement age. In an important sense, their careers stand on the shoulders of figures like Yosano Akiko*, Hiratsuka Raichō, and Yamakawa...