Patriarchy in East Asia: A Comparative Sociology of Gender [1 ed.] 9789004247772, 9789004230606

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Patriarchy in East Asia

The Intimate and the Public in Asian and Global Perspectives Managing Editor

Ochiai Emiko Editorial board

Fran Bennett (University of Oxford) Chang Kyung-sup (Seoul National University) Barbara Hobson (University of Stockholm) Ito Kimio (Kyoto University) Ochiai Emiko (Kyoto University) Ito Peng (University of Toronto) Tseng Yen-Fen (National Taiwan University) Patricia Uberoi (Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi)

VOLUME 2

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ipap

Patriarchy in East Asia A Comparative Sociology of Gender

By

Sechiyama Kaku Translated by

James Smith

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sechiyama, Kaku, 1963 [Higashi Ajia no kafuchosei. English.]  Patriarchy in East Asia : a comparative sociology of gender / by Sechiyama Kaku ; translated by James Smith.   pages cm. -- (The intimate and the public in Asian and global perspectives)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-23060-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Patriarchy--East Asia. 2. Families--East Asia. 3. Social discrimination--East Asia. 4. Married women--East Asia. I. Title.  GN479.6.S4313 2013  306.85’8095--dc23 2012047441

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CONTENTS Preface�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi List of Figures���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xiii List of Tables�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xv Introduction: Toward a Comparative Sociology of Gender���������������������������1 1. A Sociology of Gender����������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 2. The Meaning of Comparison����������������������������������������������������������������������1 3. The Meaning of Making East Asia the Subject��������������������������������������2 PART ONE

1. What is Patriarchy?����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������7 1. Bringing Order to the Discussion of Patriarchy�������������������������������������7 2. The Use of Patriarchy in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������8 2.1. Uses of the Concept in Cultural Anthropology����������������������������9 2.2. Uses of the Concept in Sociology�������������������������������������������������� 10 2.3. The Household System and Patriarchy in Japan����������������������� 12 3. How the Concept of Patriarchy is used by Feminists in the West���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 14 3.1. Attempts to Investigate Psychological Origins�������������������������� 15 3.2. Currents in the Study of Historical Origins�������������������������������� 16 3.3. Usage in Marxist Feminism������������������������������������������������������������ 17 4. Building a Broadly Applicable Concept of Patriarchy���������������������� 18 4.1. Peeling away the Layers of Danger Wrapped Around the Concept of Patriarchy������������������������������������������������ 18 4.2. Generation and Age as Elements�������������������������������������������������� 22 4.3. Patriarchy as an Analytical Concept with the Greatest Common Denominator������������������������������������������������������������������� 24 4.4. Describing the Forms of Patriarchy���������������������������������������������� 25 2. The Emergence of the Housewife and Transformations in Her Position��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 27 1. Married Women Become Housewives and a Source of Labor�������� 27 1.1. Our Focus: Housewives and Women’s Advance into Society������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 27 2. Charting the Course of the Emergence of the Housewife��������������� 30

vi

contents 2.1. Primitive Labor Relations���������������������������������������������������������������� 31 2.2. The Advent of the Modern Housewife���������������������������������������� 33 2.3. Contemporary Housewives������������������������������������������������������������� 38 2.4. The Disappearance of the Housewife������������������������������������������ 45 3. Socialist Models������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 46 3.1. Building Socialism����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 47 3.2. Indigenization of Socialism������������������������������������������������������������ 49 PART TWO

3. The Japanese Housewife and Patriarchy���������������������������������������������������� 53 1. Emergence from Primitive Labor Relations����������������������������������������� 55 1.1. Patterns in the Labor Force������������������������������������������������������������� 55 1.2. Forms of Female Labor�������������������������������������������������������������������� 56 1.3. An Expansion of Workers’ Incomes���������������������������������������������� 58 2. Background for Emergence of Japan’s Modern Patriarchy— Confucianism and the Ideal of the Good Wife and Wise Mother������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 60 2.1. Premodern East Asian Concepts of Women’s Education������� 62 2.2. Origin of the Idea of the Good Wife and Wise Mother (or Wise Wife and Good Mother) in China and Korea������������ 65 2.3. The Formation of the Ideology of the Good Wife and Wise Mother in Japan����������������������������������������������������������������������� 77 2.4. The Aim of the Ideological Campaign����������������������������������������� 80 2.5. The Japanese Form of Modern Patriarchy���������������������������������� 82 3. The Advent of the Modern Housewife�������������������������������������������������� 85 3.1. The Modern Housewife and a New View of the Family���������� 86 3.2. Duties of the Modern Housewife—Rational Household Management and Housework as Women’s Natural Occupation������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 88 3.3. The Culture Surrounding the Modern Housewife�������������������� 91 3.4. Salarymen and Professional Women�������������������������������������������� 93 4. The Modern Housewife in Wartime Conditions— Motherhood Emphasized Once Again�������������������������������������������������� 96 4. Contemporary Patriarchy and the Housewife in Japan�������������������������� 99 1. Postwar Economic Growth and New Forms of Industrialization������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 99 1.1. The Spread of a Contemporary Lifestyle�����������������������������������100 1.2. Labor Policies and Transitions in the Workforce��������������������103

contentsvii 2. Formation of New Patriarchal Norms��������������������������������������������������105 2.1. Japan’s Contemporary Patriarchy������������������������������������������������105 3. How the Agent has Responded�������������������������������������������������������������108 3.1. Reduction of Time Needed for Housework������������������������������108 3.2. Tendency for Role of Housewife in Reproduction to Persist���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������110 4. The Contemporary Housewife in Japan����������������������������������������������113 4.1. Home Life of the Japanese Contemporary Housewife����������114 4.2. Entry of Contemporary Housewives into Production�����������118 5. Problems in Contemporary Japanese Patriarchy������������������������������133 PART THREE

5. South Korean Patriarchy�������������������������������������������������������������������������������137 1. Industrialization in South Korea����������������������������������������������������������138 2. The Background of South Korean Patriarchy������������������������������������141 2.1. The Acceptance and Spread of Confucianism������������������������141 2.2. Yangban Confucian Norms and Women�����������������������������������145 3. Forms of South Korean Women’s Employment��������������������������������149 3.1. Forms of Employment when Modern and Contemporary Housewives Emerged����������������������������������������149 3.2. Forms of South Korean Women’s Employment����������������������151 4. South Korean Patriarchy�������������������������������������������������������������������������160 4.1. Gender-Based Allocation of Power and Roles�������������������������160 4.2. Views on the Family and Generations���������������������������������������165 6. Taiwanese Patriarchy�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������171 1. Industrialization in Taiwan��������������������������������������������������������������������171 1.1. The Process of Industrialization��������������������������������������������������171 1.2. Comparison with South Korea�����������������������������������������������������173 1.3. Women’s Labor���������������������������������������������������������������������������������175 2. The Background of Taiwanese Patriarchy������������������������������������������177 2.1. Taiwan’s Ethnic Makeup����������������������������������������������������������������177 2.2. Modes of Family Life and Work in Southern China���������������178 2.3. The Formation of Taiwanese Patriarchy������������������������������������181 3. Forms of Women’s Employment in Taiwan���������������������������������������182 3.1. Trends when the Modern and then the Contemporary Housewife were Born���������������������������������������������������������������������182 3.2. Patterns of Women’s Employment in Taiwan��������������������������184 4. The Taiwanese Model of Patriarchy�����������������������������������������������������195

viii

contents 4.1. Gender-based Allocations of Roles and Power������������������������196 4.2. Generation and Age in Taiwanese Management��������������������199

7. Patriarchy in North Korea�����������������������������������������������������������������������������203 1. Socialist Construction������������������������������������������������������������������������������205 1.1. Policy Development and Views on Women�����������������������������205 2. Indigenization��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������210 2.1. Kim Il Sung Idolatry Resonates with Tradition�����������������������210 2.2. Establishing the Kim System��������������������������������������������������������210 2.3. Kim Il Sung’s System and a Nation-State with a Patriarchal Order��������������������������������������������������������������������������212 2.4. Changes in the View of Women���������������������������������������������������217 8. Patriarchy in China�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������223 1. Building Socialism������������������������������������������������������������������������������������223 1.1. From the Soviet Period to the Marriage Law����������������������������223 1.2. From the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������227 1.3. A Comparison of the Kim Il Sung System and the Cultural Revolution�����������������������������������������������������������������230 2. Moving away from Socialism or Indigenization, Compromising with Tradition���������������������������������������������������������������233 2.1. Economic Reform and “Er Bao Yi”�����������������������������������������������233 2.2. The Struggle around the Idea of Women Returning to the Home��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������235 3. Gender Issues in China—Now and in the Future����������������������������237 3.1. Farming Villages�������������������������������������������������������������������������������237 3.2. Cities���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������238 3.3. Future Gender Problems in China����������������������������������������������244 9. Recent Social and Political Changes in East Asia�����������������������������������247 1. Declining Birth Rates and Destabilization of Marriage������������������248 2. Patterns of Women’s Labor���������������������������������������������������������������������253 2.1. The Position of Housewives and the Relationship between Educational Levels and Women’s Participation in the Labor Force��������������������������������������������������253 2.2. The “M” Curve Illustrating Women’s Employment����������������257 3. Employment Patterns among Older Citizens������������������������������������258 3.1. Differences in Desire to Work������������������������������������������������������258 3.2. Data on Types of Work and Level of Education����������������������262

contentsix 4. North Korea Pushes ahead with its Own Line��������������������������������267 5. Life in China under a Socialist Market Economy��������������������������274 10. Conclusions����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������281 1. Comparative Sociology of Gender in East Asia������������������������������282 2. Looking for Approaches to Resolving Women’s Issues in Contemporary Japan������������������������������������������������������������������������285 2.1. Comparing Systems for Bearing the Cost of Reproduction���������������������������������������������������������������������������������286 2.2. Moving beyond Patriarchy���������������������������������������������������������289 Afterword: A Man Concerned About Gender Equality?����������������������������299 Afterword to the English edition����������������������������������������������������������������������302 Bibliography�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������305 Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������325

PREFACE We live in societies in which social roles and lifestyles are significantly limited by gender discrimination, and it is probably safe to say that no society can claim to be free as long as this is the case. However, we might be able to break free of this limitation, at least to some extent, if we understood its special nature. Compared to other societies, what are the special characteristics of the society we live in? To what extent would the “conventional wisdom” of one society be accepted in others? Comparative sociology enables us to discover how aspects of our society, which seem perfectly natural to us, would appear very unnatural to people of another age or another society. We can learn how behavior we think of as preposterous might be readily accepted elsewhere. Such discoveries should enable us to free ourselves from a few of the shackles that we accept as natural. This book will have served its purpose if reading it becomes a journey of inspection on the road toward freedom. We will attempt to bring out special features of Japanese society by comparing gender discrimination and the allocation of gender roles in several East Asian societies. To readers unfamiliar with “patriarchy” the title, Patriarchy in East Asia, may make the book seem esoteric. However, I am convinced that using the concept of patriarchy will help us deepen and clarify our understanding of how societies based on gender inequality are formed. To make the comparisons significant, Part I presents the basic concepts applied and the axes of the comparisons that will be made. Examples of how others have approached the subject theoretically are also presented. Part II discusses patriarchy in Japan’s early modern and contemporary contexts, and Part III discusses patriarchy in several East Asian societies. The book is intended for general use in research of the areas covered. However, we hope it will also be of interest in that it goes beyond an examination of conditions in each of the societies to provide a systematic comparison along a fixed line of reasoning. Reading the entire book should give the reader a broad grasp of gender relations in East Asia. Since this is the work of an ordinary scholar, I cannot say, as an Olympic athlete might, that these results are the best that could have been attained. However, this volume represents years of earnest effort to develop the ideas presented. I invite everyone to join me for a while on the journey toward freedom. Kaku Sechiyama

LIST OF FIGURES 1.1. Todd’s family categories������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23 3.1. Four East Asian societies����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 55 4.1. Rate of diffusion of household appliances�������������������������������������������101 4.2. Rate of female participation in the labor force in postwar Japan������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������118 4.3. Rate of female participation in the labor force (1975–90) (Census)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������120 4.4. Rate of female participation in the labor force (1995–2005) (Census)���������������������������������������������������������������������������������121 4.5. Rate of female participation in labor force in Nara and Fukui (1990) (Census)������������������������������������������������������������������������124 4.6. Percentage of employed wives in relation to husband’s income������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129 4.7. Female labor force participation rate by age and educational level in 2007���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������130 5.1. Rate of diffusion of household electric products�������������������������������140 5.2. Female labor force participation rates by age in S. Korea and Seoul ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������152 5.3. Attitudes toward divorce (1998)��������������������������������������������������������������165 6.1. Rate of diffusion of household electric appliances����������������������������176 6.2. Taiwanese women’s participation in the labor force by education level (2008)��������������������������������������������������������������������������189 6.3. Rates of women’s participation in the labor force in East Asia, including Taipei and Seoul (2007/2008)������������������������190 6.4. Women’s participation in the labor force in culturally Chinese societies����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������194 8.1. The flag of the Worker’s Party of North Korea ������������������������������������231 8.2. Female labor force participation rate by age cohort in China��������241 9.1. Total fertility rates in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong (1995–2010)���������������������������������������������������������������������248 9.2. Unemployment rates for South Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese men age twenty-five to twenty-nine (1993–2009)����251 9.3. Changes in divorces per marriages in East Asia (1981–2009)����������252 9.4. Changes in the rate of employment among older South Korean urban and rural male workers������������������������������������������������������������������264

xiv

list of figures

9.5. Employment rate among older Japanese men and women (1980–2009)���������������������������������������������������������������������������265 9.6. Employment rates among Taiwanese men and women aged sixty-five and above (1980–2009)������������������������������������������������266 10.1. Comparison of four East Asian societies in Confucian cultural sphere�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������282

LIST OF TABLES 3.1. Ratios of Male/Female workers in key industries (1909)����������������� 58 4.1. International comparison of weekday household labor time (hours:minutes)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������116 4.2. Comparison of weekly amount of time spent on housework by men and women (hours:minutes)��������������������������������������������������117 4.3. Daily time spent on housework by men and women (hours)������117 4.4. Percentage of working wives by state, district or prefecture (2005)����������������������������������������������������������������������������������123 4.5. Birthrates in states, districts or prefecture, ranked lowest to highest (2005)��������������������������������������������������������������������������125 4.6. Percentage of labor force in tertiary industries by state, district or prefecture, ranked highest to lowest (2005)�������������������126 4.7. Percentages of women employed by level of education����������������130 5.1. Income discrepancy in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan (1985/1988)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������139 5.2. Women’s participation in the labor force (1970–2010)��������������������150 5.3. Percentage of workers employed in primary industries (1985–2008)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������150 5.4. Women’s participation in the labor force in South Korea (1965–2010)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������150 5.5. Rate of citizens advancing to college education (1992)������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������154 5.6. Women’s participation in the labor force by level of education in South Korea (1990/2000)��������������������������������������������������������������������155 5.7. Numbers of employed women by education level (when number of men working is set at 100) (1990–2010)�������������156 5.8. Differences in pay for workers with different levels of education (with high school graduates’ pay set at 100) (1985–2005)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������157 5.9. Differentials in average pay for different types of work in Taiwan and South Korea (1992/2007)���������������������������������������������158 5.10. Unemployment rates and levels of education in Taiwan and South Korea (1985–2009)����������������������������������������������������������������159 5.11. Attitudes toward women’s employment (1991/1998/2006)������������162

xvi

list of tables

6.1. Composition of labor force in Taiwan and South Korea by industry and work status (1988)������������������������������������������������������185 6.2. Composition of labor force in Taiwan and South Korea by industry and work status (2008)������������������������������������������������������185 6.3. Rate of women’s participation in labor force by level of education in Taiwan (1992)���������������������������������������������������������������187 6.4. Rate of women’s participation in labor force by level of education in Taiwan (2007)���������������������������������������������������������������187 6.5. Rate of participation in labor force by level of education among married Taiwanese women with children (2009)��������������191 7.1. Childcare centers and kindergartens in North Korea (1949–1966)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������208 8.1. International comparison of time spent on housework by employed men and women in 1980s����������������������������������������������240 9.1. Percentages of women employed by level of education (1992–2008)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������255 9.2. Ratios of women’s employment by education level (with men’s set at 100)�����������������������������������������������������������������������������256 9.3. Rates of participation in the labor force among older citizens in 2008����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������259 9.4. Reasons why people age sixty and above and now working want to work in the future����������������������������������������������������������������������261 9.5. Reasons for wanting to continue working�����������������������������������������261 9.6. Percentages of workers sixty-five and older engaged in various sectors of the economy��������������������������������������������������������262 9.7. Percentages of older workers in labor force by level of education�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������264 10.1. Patterns of reproduction of the labor force centering on childcare systems��������������������������������������������������������������������������������288

INTRODUCTION

TOWARD A COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER 1. A Sociology of Gender Comparing several societies, we will present a sociology of gender to reveal special characteristics of Japanese and other societies in East Asia. While “sex” indicates biological differences, “gender” is used to indicate social differences established according to sex1. Social roles and genderbased distribution of power may appear to be natural because they seem to be determined by biology. Using the concept of gender helps us learn that this is not the case, that relegating persons to special roles on the basis of gender is a social phenomenon. A detailed discussion of the concept of patriarchy is presented in Chapter 1. We use the term to indicate the gender-based allocation of power and roles in a given society, and we will compare how patriarchy functions in each of the societies examined. An observable point we will look for is whether or not married women are being brought into the labor force. This is an example of the most important purpose of this book, which is to depict the gender situation in the societies studied by examining trends among housewives. Since gender pertains to relations between the sexes, making the woman’s side the primary point may seem onesided, but we choose this focus for a strategic reason: to better describe social change. Compared to changes in women’s roles, the changes that have occurred in men’s roles are not great, and they are not as useful for describing transitions. 2. The Meaning of Comparison We adopt comparative sociology as our method to grapple with a key question: How unique are the gender-based norms that Japanese society takes for granted? We have to use other societies as a mirror to answer this 1 This may sound simplistic due to the frequently discussed idea on how “sex” is socially constructed, but this book will focus on how gender in each society has been constructed on the basis of “biological” differences.

2

introduction

question and to bring the features of Japanese and other East Asian societies into relief. My standpoint is not Eurocentric. I do not look at Western conditions as the universal pattern and then judge different conditions to be “unusual.” I choose to make comparisons from a cultural-relativist standpoint and view all differences as unique. However, if we stop there and regard everything as unique, we could end up with simple presentations of situations in various regions, merely saying that Society A has this set of characteristics, while Society B has another set, and so on. This is not the goal. An axis of comparison must be established to give greater meaning to the comparisons. The line of development we use is a systematic depiction of the stages in the emergence of the housewife and the changes occurring in her social role. Comparisons can be charted along a common line to examine the stages Western or East Asian societies are in and the direction of change. Our final goal is to bring the features of Japanese society into relief. A given society’s uniqueness will emerge in comparisons with others. This strategy of comparisons should enable us to contribute to gender theory. Almost any society can be indicted for being sexist, and we should recognize the political effectiveness of discovering sexual exploitation to elicit anger and sympathy. However, gender research that would advance social science might be stifled if that is all we do. Our aim is to go beyond discovering and denouncing sexual oppression. We want to examine the forms it takes in different societies, to clarify how they differ, and to trace the differences along an axis of comparison. By doing this we hope to arrive at a clearer way of posing the problem and presenting an even stronger indictment of the system. 3. The Meaning of Making East Asia the Subject Rather than Western societies, our comparisons are centered on South Korea, Taiwan, North Korea and China.2 The motive for this is more ambitious than simply a desire to add East Asia to areas that have been studied. Japanese gender issues are frequently studied in light of conditions in the West. Conditions in the United States are often presented as a preview of 2 To avoid confusion and for the sake of simplicity with no political implication intended, we use South Korea rather than the official country name, the Republic of Korea. Similarly, we use Taiwan rather than the Republic of China, North Korea rather than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and China rather than the People’s Republic of China.



toward a comparative sociology of gender3

what is in store for Japan. Western conditions are useful reference points. In fact, we rely on them in creating the schematic used in Chapter 2. However, the characteristics unique to Japan cannot be specified by only using the West as our mirror. When we compare societies that greatly differ, big differences, of course, appear—but we are left with the question of what causes them. On the other hand, the special features of a society will stand out if, as much as possible, we compare it with others that appear to be similar. It is commonly believed that Confucianism is the source of sexual inequality in Japan. However, this belief does not stand the test of scholarly investigation. As we compare Japanese society with other societies in the Confucian cultural sphere and compare each of them, one to the other, we will obtain better answers to questions pertaining to Confucianism and gender by clarifying special features of each of the societies. This will also help us distinguish the uniquely Japanese and the general aspects of issues intertwined with gender in Japan. In studying the transitions in the role of the housewife we don’t mean to imply that the very existence of the housewife should be taken for granted. We will see that the housewife could very well disappear as a role required by society. The use of comparative sociology will enable us to see through the idea of the “self-evident” necessity of the housewife, and this in turn will show us ways to move beyond the Japanese patriarchal system. In the following pages, Part I lays out the basic concepts and schematic the book will use. Chapter 1 mainly presents the academic and theoretical work that forms the background for what will follow as it examines the various concepts and definitions of patriarchy. Chapter 2 charts the emergence of the housewife and the changes that have occurred in her role. The following chapters examine and compare the forms of patriarchy and the role of the housewife in several East Asian countries. Readers not particularly interested in the theoretical questions described in Chapter 1 may want to jump ahead. Part II discusses conditions in Japan, and examines the role of the housewife in the early modern era. Chapter 4 discusses the current roles of the housewife. Part III examines and compares gender issues and patriarchy in South Korea, Taiwan, North Korea and China, in that order. New material added to Chapter 9 traces changes in gender relations that have occurred since the end of the twentieth century. Along with commentary on East Asian gender issues and special characteristics of Japanese society, Chapter 10 presents conclusions in regard to the direction of change.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IS PATRIARCHY? 1. Bringing Order to the Discussion of Patriarchy The use of patriarchy as a key term in the women’s liberation movement and the effort to construct feminist theory has led to confusion because various usages of the term had already been developed in sociology and other social sciences when feminists added their own. A common feeling is that only those who understand feminism understand the meaning feminists give the term. A source of confusion in Japan is the wellestablished use of “patriarchy” to indicate the pre-war Japanese household (ie) system. Some theoreticians feel that feminism ignores existing scholarship and sets off on a course all its own, disregarding scholarly discourse as it boldly challenges existing thought. On the other hand, the feminist position tends to be that conventional scholarship is unable to share the anger they want to convey. For feminism, patriarchy is not simply a concept to be used as an analytical tool; it also serves as a matrix in which feminist anger is generated and expressed. When opinions such as “This is what patriarchy is all about” are stated, the person making the statement is venting what is assumed to be a shared feeling of anger. For persons sharing this feeling, this type of expression can describe an injustice felt to be self-evident. No explanation is needed. Those who do not share the sense of outrage tend to see the feminist use of patriarchy as part of a code understood only by those already in the know. Consequently, those who distrust the feminist concept of patriarchy transfer that same distrust to feminism itself. It is as though the concept of patriarchy is isolating feminism. I will first of all try to clarify and sort out various concepts of patriarchy, and then develop feminism’s view of it into a form that can be used as an analytical tool in comparative sociology. This will be an attempt to lay the theoretical groundwork for the concrete discussion of the subject that will begin in Chapter 2.

8

chapter one 2. The Use of Patriarchy in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology

Used by social scientists long before feminism attached a special meaning to it, the concept of patriarchy has its roots in the idea of the patriarch— the leader of a clan or tribe. We find striking examples of this in the Old Testament stories of the forefathers of the people of Israel. As an extension of this, the Christian bishops and popes were described as patriarchs. Closer to modern times, we find the first systematic exposition of a theory of a patriarchal system in Patriarcha, written by R. Filmer (1589–1653) on the eve of the English Revolution. Filmer’s view was that the power of a monarch derived from the power invested in Adam as the progenitor of humanity and head of the first household. Filmer believed that the patriarchal power of a king was bestowed by god, and that it was meant to be absolute. Sociologists and cultural anthropologists subsequently developed concepts of patriarchy separate from the theory of the divine right of kings and patriarchy as the basis of the nation state. As a starting point, we will take a look at a dictionary definition of “patriarchalism” (kafuchosei), commonly used in Japan. It appears in the 1988 edition of the Dictionary of Sociology (Shakaigaku Jiten, Kobundo). A patriarchal family is a form of the family in which the male who heads it controls or manages the family members. The oldest son generally inherits control over the family members, family property and the authority to lead the ceremonies held to worship family ancestors. This leadership right is manifested as absolute authority, and the family members personally submit to and obey the patriarch. This is a model sanctified by tradition, and to the extent that no other limitations from other authorities are in place, the patriarch is entitled to freely exercise his authority. The patriarchal system  existed in ancient and medieval Europe and Japan …The patriarchal system supported by the Meiji Civil Code prescribed the family system upheld by feudal society. This code legally protected the system in which a male line of descent was used to continue a family business and maintain family property and the family line, and the position of head of the family and household was passed on from the patriarch to the oldest son. After World War II, however, patriarchy is steadily disappearing [my emphasis] with the emergence of the modern family and the dissolution of the old ie (household) system.

To feminists, this type of definition is a source of great resentment. To those seeking to denounce gender discrimination, it is certainly not the case that the “patriarchal system is steadily disappearing.” To them it is



what is patriarchy?9

very much alive. It is somewhat surprising to see only this definition in a sociological dictionary published in the late 1980s—after the construction of feminist theory. Let’s review how this concept of patriarchy was formed. The Japanese expression for patriarchy comes from two terms expressed in English as “patriarchy” and “patriarchalism.” The former is used in cultural anthropology and the latter is primarily used in sociology. The Japanese term, kafuchosei, is a translation of the two words taken together. This has become a source of some confusion in Japan. 2.1. Uses of the Concept in Cultural Anthropology The use of “patriarchy” became established in cultural anthropology in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The first of the early cultural anthropologists to offer a systematic theoretical description of the patriarchal family was Sir Henry Maine (1828–88) in his work Ancient Law (1861). There he used the Roman patriarchal family as a representative type to describe the characteristics of the ancient family. He found that in most cases the patriarch (usually the father) held absolute power over the members of the family, including slaves and others not related by blood who were brought into it. The patriarch was the owner of all family property, which he passed on to his sons. Maine also posited the patriarchal family as the earliest social unit. Cultural anthropology in the Victorian age developed a theory of comparative cultural evolution with Western Europe as the central point of reference. This perspective spurred others to develop theories of a period preceding the advent of patriarchal systems when matrilineal systems prevailed. Arguments positing an evolution from matriarchy to patriarchy were advanced by J.J. Bachofen (1815–87) in his Das Mutterrecht (Mother Right), and by J.F. McLennan (1827–81) in The Patriarchal Theory. European society was placed at the apex of the evolutionary chart.1 This work of the early cultural anthropologists served as the basis for the development of a socialist theory of women’s liberation as seen in Engels’ famous work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the 1 Bachofen and other Victorian-age thinkers viewed the European family as the highest form of the family, and they saw the European society they were born in as the pinnacle of a straight-line upward evolution of society. This ethnocentrism and sense of issues differs from the approach of Engels and later feminist anthropologists, who investigated the historical origins of male domination.

10

chapter one

State (1891). Along with the work of Bachofen, Engels relied heavily on The Ancient Society (1877) and other works of L.H. Morgan (1818–81) to discuss the patriarchal family. He theorized that, after matriarchy was overturned in a “world-historical defeat,” patriarchy emerged as a transitional form of the family prior to the development of monogamy. In this transitional form, the father managed the entire household, not only the couple’s children, but slaves, livestock, and other property. We will not enter into a detailed discussion of the content of these works, but it is important to note that patriarchy has been used in cultural anthropology in the sense of being the alternative to matriarchy—father’s rule rather than mother’s rule2. Patriarchy, as used in cultural anthropology, is often translated in Japanese as fukensei, literally, “father’s rule.” In sociology the term is used in the study of the forms or patterns of power relations. The focus is not on which subject holds power, the father or the mother. The forms of the power relationships are compared, and the comparisons are used to clarify the characteristics of the systems of power relations. This approach shifts the emphasis away from the question of which sex holds power to a study of particular historical forms of the patriarchal family. This means that, rather than making the location and exercise of power the problem as modern feminism frequently does, the focus becomes the specific family relations themselves. 2.2. Uses of the Concept in Sociology In Japan, we see kafuchosei defined as “patriarchy” in cultural anthropology and as “patriarchalism” in sociology. The sociology dictionary referred to above uses kafuchosei as a translation of “patriarchalism.” What is the significance of this difference? We turn to Max Weber to get at the thinking involved in using kafuchosei to mean patriarchalism. Weber discussed

2 It should be noted that patriarchy is no longer much used as an analytical concept in cultural anthropology. The concept of patriarchy is regarded as blurring distinctions between different areas of study in diverse societies. It is felt that concepts such as patrilinity and patrilocality, used along with matrilinity and matrilocality, are better suited to precise classification. At a time when no society exists that can be called a matriarchy, it is natural to feel that we are not saying much when we classify a society as a patriarchy. The decline of the use of matriarchy as a concept after the nineteenth century has also contributed to a decline of the use of patriarchy. When feminism began using “patriarchy” to identify societies, patriarchy had for the most part already fallen out of use in actual analysis and remained primarily as a historical concept in cultural anthropology.



what is patriarchy?11

“Patriarchalismus” as the prototypical example of traditional domination. His patriarchalism is a system in which the control exercised by the male head of the household is unbound by any restrictions other than tradition. Tradition sanctifies the system of relationships in which submission to the system’s norms is expected and it justifies the filial respect (Pietät) family members give the master. Like the cultural anthropologists, Weber pointed to the traditions of ancient Rome as an example of this system, but there are subtle differences in the points he examined. While early cultural anthropology focused on patriarchy as a form of the family, Weber’s discussion was at a higher level of abstraction as he studies patriarchy as part of a typology of domination. Weber’s starting point was the household community. The patriarchal family included members not related by blood, and it took on the character of an enterprise. He said that, by extension, the relationship between a monarch and his agents and subjects was akin to that of a patriarch and his children. This meant the system could be seen as a form of political control in which, bound by nothing other than tradition, the monarch wields absolute power, and his agents and subjects obey his orders on the basis of personal loyalty.3 This method of describing the issues does not define patriarchalism as a system indicating where power is located on the basis of gender—as a system which is the opposite of matriarchy.4 Instead, it is used as a tool to examine the exercise of power within a certain type of family or a group that imitates the form of a family. It is used to analyze the limiting conditions and the ways in which this form of domination is justified. To present the issues involved more clearly, it may help to divide the objects of analysis in the study of patriarchy into three levels. The first is

3 In Weber’s analysis, the family system began to be called patrimonialism as the scale of the household enterprise established by the patriarch’s agents expanded. Then a transition to a system based on social position and hierarchy occurred as the tendency of the agents to become independent grew stronger. Weber called the patriarchal elements not part of the patrimonial system created by the agents “primary patriarchy.” Patrimonialism can be seen as a sub-category within patriarchalism. In this way, Weber’s patriarchalism is treated as a type of traditional political domination. The patriarch is “bound only by tradition and wields arbitrary power.” This characteristic and the “obedience of the members” are the guidelines defining the general concept of this type of domination, which could be expanded beyond the patriarchal family. 4 Weber’s discussion of patriarchal domination included a description of cases in which the woman (Hausmutter) assumes control when the man of the household capable of using weapons is away (Weber 1972).

12

chapter one

(1) the gender of those wielding power. The second (2) is a specific form of the family. The third (3) is a specific type of domination. Of these, cultural anthropology mainly deals with object (1), and early cultural anthropology examined the patriarchal family in terms of object (2). Cultural anthropology examines objects ranging from (1) to (2). Sociology primarily sets (2) and (3) as its objects for analysis. 2.3. The Household System and Patriarchy in Japan When they think of patriarchy in Japan, many scholars envision the household system (ie seido) established under the provisions of the Meiji Civil Code of 1898. When feminism introduced kafuchosei as a translation of “patriarchy,” more than a few theorists complained that patriarchy, the Meiji-era household system, was already disappearing. This seems like a reasonable reaction since the concept of patriarchy, or patriarchalism, was introduced in the fields of sociology and legal history, in an attempt to apply it to Japan as it was in Europe, particularly by Weber. However, rather than a typology of domination, the term was introduced primarily to study a specific form of the family. Teizo Toda, a pioneer in Japanese sociology, viewed the Japanese household and traditional family in modern times as patriarchal. In his Family Structure (Kazoku Kosei, 1937), he compared the modern family to a patriarchal family and found that the Japanese family of his time had the same essential characteristics. He examined the transition to the modern family structure, particularly in large cities, in this light. While Toda did not focus on the subject of patriarchy itself, Seiichi Kitano set out to analyze the Japanese household and family unit on the basis of this concept. He applied Weber’s concepts to what he saw in the traditional Japanese family: “Authority is derived from tradition, with the power exercised by the patriarch based on household norms rooted in tradition. The subjugation of the family members and the bonds and cooperation between them and the patriarch are based on personal loyalty (Kitano 1976).” In his eyes, the traditional Japanese family, from the modern period on, generally conformed to the concept of patriarchy. The European concept of patriarchy assumed that the social unit would include members not related by blood. This could be applied to Japan, but as Takashi Nakano (1978) and others have pointed out, aside from this common characteristic, submission to authority in European patriarchy was submission to the power of the individual patriarch. Obedience had a strong element of personal loyalty. However, in the traditional Japanese



what is patriarchy?13

household, the predominant feeling of the individual members (including the patriarch) was one of loyalty and devotion to the house (ie) itself, the collective within the social system. The same sort of discussion has taken place in Japanese legal history.5 Some scholars claim that a core component of patriarchalism was a ‘spontaneous’ form of rule created by the rulers and the ruled, and that the situation in Edo period does not satisfy that criteria. The opposing view affirming the applicability of the term, as expressed by Kamata (1972), is that, although it is true that the feudal power structure under the shogun­ ate was artificially created to give control to the lords and heads of the households, the order within the household was a patriarchal set of interrelationships maintained on the basis of authority and submission. It is generally agreed that patriarchy was actually established in the household system enforced under the Meiji Civil Code. Our concern is to confirm the way in which the concept of kafuchosei was approached before feminism brought it into the discussion. Rather than gender issues, the analysis of patriarchalism focused on the source of authority in the household and how it was exercised. On the other hand, the everyday use of “patriarchy” is limited to indicating that the father held power and to describe the household system under the old Meiji Civil Code. In either case, a special form of power in the family is referred to as patriarchy. Of course, it is correct to say that “patriarchalism is steadily disappearing”—as long as we are not using the term to mean “male domination” as “patriarchy” is used by feminists. Patriarchalism in a specific sense of the term is disappearing. To say this does not mean that male domination is coming to an end. It is hardly the case that gender discrimination is steadily disappearing. This fact sets the stage for the use of kafuchosei in feminist theory. 5 “The Household and Patriarchalism” (Ie to kafuchosei), a study produced by the Society for the Study of Comparative Family History, is typical of this treatment of the question (Nagahara, Sumitani, Kamata; 1992). In his The Theory of Patriarchalism (Kafuchosei no riron), Hiroshi Kamata discusses how patriarchalism has been applied in Japan. The question of whether or not it can be applied to the Japanese family from ancient times on has been much discussed, and an extraordinary amount of debate has taken place on the question of the applicability of the term “patriarchalism” to the Japanese family in the Edo period. The points raised are covered in the works of Kamata (1987) and others. The main point of contention, as put forward by Ishii (1971), is that, if one understands Weber’s theory of patriarchalism as emphasizing the natural emergence of the dominance of the father, then one cannot describe the system based on the dominance of the heads of households as patriarchalism.

14

chapter one 3. How the Concept of Patriarchy is used by Feminists in the West

“Kafuchosei” in feminist theory refers to male domination, and it is used as a core explanatory concept. We will analyze this usage in order to further refine it. One of the earliest writers to use the concept of patriarchy for its associations with male domination was Kate Millet, in her Sexual Politics (1970). The root words in “patriarchy”—patri for father and archy for rule or government—provided a clear image of what was meant. Pointing to the fact that men held the reins of power in every area of society—in industry, politics, science and military affairs—Millet stated that society had a patriarchal structure. While her concept of patriarchy included the point that older men controlled younger men, the core of the problem, she felt, was society’s placing all men in a position superior to all women. “Patriarchy equals male domination” set the tone for the use of the concept in feminist theory. While Millet successfully indicted society by pointing out some hard truths, it is difficult to say that she produced an analysis. The biggest point Sexual Politics made was that, women’s individual problems had a political significance based on sex, just like “The personal is political” became a slogan of the second wave feminism. This was correct as far as it went—in condemning specific conditions. However, Sexual Politics did not go much beyond this statement of fact. There was no attempt to theoretically explain the cause-and-effect relationships underlying the basic issues raised. When feminism used the word “patriarchy,” the intent was to grasp the nature of existing male domination. Millet’s discussion of patriarchy amounts to the substitute of one word for another. Feminism’s usage of patriarchy was a starting point in an attempt to explain that the issues intertwined with various forms of sexual discrimination are part of a unified system of domination. The trend in the construction of feminist theory has been to use patriarchy as a word indicating the current system of sexual discrimination and then to move on to an inquiry of its origins. One can describe the history of feminism’s use of the concept by tracing how patriarchy has been set up as a problem. For feminism, grasping the origins of the oppression of women is a crucial point in developing a strategy in the struggle for liberation. There­ fore, studying the problematic of the concept of patriarchy becomes a study of the problematic of certain feminist perspectives. One can build an analysis of feminism by analyzing the way the problem of patriarchy is constructed.



what is patriarchy?15

First used simply to describe male domination, before long, the concept of patriarchy was being defined and used in different ways by feminist the­oreticians. As a result, confusion about the concept has become a serious issue. We will trace two types of approaches taken in investigating the origins of patriarchy—the psychological approach and the historical approach. In discussing the psychological origins of patriarchy, ontogeny was examined as the process in which an individual internalizes values rooted in sexism. The points made in this type of analysis cannot be proved or disproved empirically, which means that arguments based on them are, in the narrow empirical sense, positioned externally. Opposed to this is the flow of the investigation of historical origins, in which theoreticians seek to determine when and under what conditions sexual discrimination began. 3.1. Attempts to Investigate Psychological Origins Early radical feminists launched a strong attack against Freudian theory and psychoanalysis, because they strongly required “femininity.” In contrast to this position, Juliet Mitchell said in her Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974) that Freud could be used in a detailed analysis of the origin of the problem of male domination, which had been posed as the core question by radical feminists.6 Mitchell positioned Freudian theory as an analytical tool that could be used as a starting point for clarifying the process in which women are formed as women, and that this could be a starting point for an examination of the origins of patriarchy.

6 Mitchell’s view was that the sociality and morality of men and women become differentiated because men tend to develop a powerful superego in a process involving fear of castration that leads to repression of their Oedipus complex. Women develop an indefinite, weaker superego because penis envy leads to an incomplete repression of oedipal feelings for their fathers. In addition, while on the one hand, penis envy leads to the formation of a characteristic form of jealousy, on the other, it is transformed into a desire for the father’s children. This leads to a form of femininity in which women are left wanting to receive or be given something from men, which generates feelings of passivity. It is against this theoretical background that patriarchy in Mitchell’s analysis is not men dominating women as Millet sees it, but the domination of the father as described in Freudian theory (Mitchell 1974). Theoretical work from a psychoanalytical perspective on the question of “how women are created as women” has been continued by Coward and others in the Lacan school of psychoanalysis and by Nancy Julia Chodorow, in her Reproduction of Mothering (1978). Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970) also studied the question of origin. She sought the origin of gender inequality in men’s monopolization of women’s means of reproduction. This point would later be connected to the way Marxist feminism set up the problem. This category of explanation of the origin does not make historical and non-historical explanations mutually exclusive.

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Theoretical work from a psychoanalytical perspective on the question of “How are women created as women” has been continued by Rosalind Coward and others in the Lacan school of psychoanalysis and by Nancy Julia Chodorow, in her Reproduction of Mothering (1978). This type of study of psychological sources of patriarchy puts forward concepts that are too universal, structural and ahistorical. If they accept Freudian theory as a universal background for all humans, just as ontogeny repeats phylogeny in the making of a human individual, then arguments such as Mitchell’s simply say that gender domination is universal. Accepting this would lead to the paradoxical conclusion that women’s liberation was impossible. These arguments also would not be applicable to the study of historical transitions. This theoretical approach should be viewed as one that uses Freudian analysis to elucidate the mechanism in which women are created as women in bourgeois monogamous households. In other words, the formation of women’s identity and the mechanisms in which certain norms are transmitted are subject to the limitations of a given age and a given region, and these should be interpreted historically. Historical rather than ahistorical explications are required. 3.2. Currents in the Study of Historical Origins A steady flow of work has been done by cultural anthropologists and others to trace the historical origins of patriarchy. When considering the historical roots of patriarchy one thinks of Engels’ work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Engels theorized that, as livestock, slaves and instruments of labor became the private property of the family, the owner of this property, the father or the husband, was able to seize power. He suggested that, in this way, a great transition occurred as matriarchy was supplanted by a new patriarchal order. A famous passage in Engels’ book describes this transition as a “world-historical defeat of the female sex.” His message was that the abolition of the system of private property, the basis for the patriarchal order, would lead to women’s liberation.7 7 A look at the situation of women in socialist societies shows that the abolition of private property does not necessarily mean that women will win full liberation. However, if we think of Engels’ theory schematically to consider that at a certain point in history a change in the form of ownership brought about a change in the power relationship between men and women, then a liberation strategy based on changing the form of ownership that took shape when sexual domination originated can be judged to be theoretically



what is patriarchy?17

For feminist anthropology, the result of investigating the origins of sexual inequality is that no decisive or conclusive discovery of societies with gender equality prior to patriarchal societies has been made. Sherry Ortner (1974) has gone so far as to declare that, to some degree—no matter where you look and in any culture that we know about—the status of women has been inferior to that of men.8 The idea seems to be that male domination cannot be explained without assuming that its sources are due to non-historical, non-social differences—to physical and biological factors. This suggests that the historical starting point of inequality cannot be specified. Accordingly, many feminists have shelved the question of the historical origin of patriarchy, and have adopted a strategy of examining historical transitions. Specifying when male domination began as Engels did is deemed to be excessive schematization. What must be done, they say, is to seek the sources of modern patriarchy within the context of historical transitions. 3.3. Usage in Marxist Feminism In the latter half of the 1970s, writers part of a trend known as neo-Marxist (or later Marxist) feminism9 began to investigate historical transitions in modern society and to explain the problems of discrimination and gender-based allocations of social roles. Their analysis centered on the dialectic between the capitalist system and patriarchy. An example of their use of the concept of patriarchy can be seen in the work of Natalie Sokoloff (1980), who explained how power relationships in society enable men to control women. This work was an advance in feminist theory for several reasons. It differed from the traditional socialist theory of women’s liberation by positioning patriarchy and the capitalist system as independent variables. In Sokoloff’s formulation, under patriarchy and the capitalist system, the household and the workplace are not treated as independent, exclusive areas of domination. She points out that the power of both systems

very consistent. In other words, if we search for the cause of women’s oppression in history, then a schema that makes eliminating that cause the liberation strategy is a very clear one. 8 “The search for a genuinely egalitarian, let alone matriarchal culture has proved fruitless.” (Sherry B. Ortner, 1996, Making Gender: the Politics and Erotics of Culture, Beacon Press: Boston). 9 Here, Marxist feminism corresponds to what Sokoloff (1980) called “later Marxist feminism.”

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extends to both areas, and this affects how social relationships based on gender are formed. When later Marxist feminists talk about the material basis of patriarchy, this is not a simple reduction of patriarchy to the economy.10 They are reminding us not to neglect the dynamism of patriarchy’s link to the capitalist system. They explain how patriarchy influences social relationships outside the home. As Carol Brown (1981) puts it, “Private patriarchy becomes public patriarchy.” Later Marxist feminists are saying that the concept of patriarchy can be applied to the issue of power distribution in society as well as in the home.11 4. Building a Broadly Applicable Concept of Patriarchy 4.1. Peeling away the Layers of Danger Wrapped around the Concept of Patriarchy Chizuko Ueno (1990) is the leading theoretician among those who have brought clarity to the study of how patriarchy applies to Japan. She has introduced, classified, and presented her views on the various feminist theories we have been discussing, particularly Marxist feminism. In her series of articles in, The Science of Thought (Shiso no Kagaku), she defined patriarchy as follows (1986–88 : chapter 5, 103): “Broadly speaking, a system giving authority to males and senior persons—from among the various asymmetric gender and generational variables—is called a patriarchy.” This is a good definition because it concisely presents elements extracted from the uses of the concept. Ueno later expanded her usage to include various elements that made it less consistent.12 Readers interested in my 10 Marxist feminism tends to use Marxist terminology in unique ways. This can be seen in the use of the idea of “women as a class.” An important reason why Ueno’s Capitalism and Household Labor (1985) earned high praise is that she discarded elements of this trend considered by many to be unrealistic. 11 The later Marxist feminists sharpened the use of patriarchy to bring out its interrelationship with the capitalist system. It would merely be a tautology if, like the early radical feminists, they refer to the gender inequality found everywhere in society as patriarchy. They have moved beyond this to apply the concept in a more analytical fashion—for example, by explaining the interaction between the way the family wage, a wage enabling male workers to support a family, can result in the stable provision of a labor force to meet the needs of capitalism. 12 Ueno’s Patriarchy and Capitalism (1990) lacked a clear definition of patriarchy. Rather than as a descriptive concept, Ueno uses patriarchy as a refined analytical concept that, to a great extent, can be universally applied. By critically examining problem areas in it, I hoped to be able to establish a concept of patriarchy that could be adopted as a step



what is patriarchy?19

critique of her treatment of patriarchy are invited to read Notes 12 to 14 in the following pages. We have mentioned the dangers of talking about patriarchy. It can convey feelings often only understood by those who already share them, and at times it takes on the qualities of a “magic word” that makes it conceptually vague. We want to peel away the layers of danger wrapped around the concept, clearly distinguish it from other concepts, and help resolve the difficulties feminism has with it. Once we have done this we can expect to have in our hands a useful and endurable concept. At this point I would like to offer my definition: Patriarchy is a comprehensive set of relationships and norms characterized by a gender-based allocation of set roles and a distribution of power that places men in a superior position (Sechiyama 1996).” Generally, feminist theory treats unequal distribution of power as the major problem within patriarchy, and the allocation of gender roles is tacitly seen as determined by power. The basic feeling of feminism—that power is not equally distributed between men and women—can be well understood. However, the issues are not that simple. An allocation of roles taking the form of “men outside and women inside” does not in and of itself indicate an allocation of power. There is room for saying that this type of arrangement doesn’t necessarily mean that either men or women are superior or more important, and that, despite having different characteristics, men and women can be equal. Of course we might not mind if here and there we have communities in which everyone thinks this type of role allocation is good. Nowadays, however, many people feel that there is a denial of freedom involved. It would be quite difficult to perceive role allocation as being based on superiority or inferiority if social relationships took the form of men and women helping one another as they fulfill their respective roles. If that forward in our analysis. In my paper “On Patriarchy” (Sechiyama 1990a), I examined Ueno’s earlier treatment of the subject (1986–88). One of the problem areas raised was the intermingling of authority and power with roles. For example we find the following doubtful example of roles and power relationships being used together as equally important (Ueno 1986–8: chap 2–149): “The [relationships bound up with rights and obligations surrounding reproduction], roles which are allocated according to norms and authority based on gender and generation, are instances of unequally distributed power relationships. Feminists call such a system patriarchy [my emphasis].” Here, elements that should be analytically separated, “allocation of roles” and “distribution of power” are intermingled, and “power” is used to serve as an explanation.

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were the case, then an appealing argument, of the type made by Ivan Illich, would be one in favor of a collective in which men and women respect one another as they carry out separate roles. Nevertheless, in addition to equality in the relations between the sexes, freedom must also emerge as a principle to be upheld. If biological sex is used as the criteria for assigning specific roles, even if these roles do not include superiority and inferiority in terms of power, such an arrangement would not be a free one. A problem with gender roles would remain even though they were separated from power. The fact that this point is ignored in Ivan Illich’s argument would make it dangerous if it were put into practice in modern times. It could be said that the problem is not that power enters into the allocation of roles according to gender. It is the very fact that roles are assigned on the basis of sex that is the problem. This is because such a system rests on a denial of freedom from sex. Theoreticians have to include roles as elements in the analysis of patriarchy to be able to handle a counter argument from those in the “essentially different, but equal” camp, who might say that a system allocating roles only on the basis of biological differences should not be called patriarchy. That is why this book will frequently discuss gender roles. It is very difficult to use data alone to specify how power is allocated to men and women. Situations that can be described as examples of men dominating women are not simple. Truly, if the female half of humanity were dominated by the male half through the exercise of power alone, then reforming such a situation should be much simpler than it is. Rather than this, the situation is one in which the majority of men and women alike adhere to a great set of standards that exerts power over them. Patriarchy exists as a pervasive power present in all personal relationships. We want to observe the forms of patriarchy, how it acts as a set of norms— as fixed roles for men and women. The situation is simplified by overemphasizing the concept of power. Compared to an easy argument in favor of liberating women from men’s domination, directly examining how and why patriarchy is always supported by at least some women will enable us to deepen our analysis. Koichi Hasegawa ( 1989) has stated that patriarchy has become an ahistorical concept that cannot be used to give an account of historical change. My objection to this would be that, while it is true enough that we cannot grasp historical changes by only using an analytical concept indicating an unequal allocation of power, later Marxist feminists have generally avoided this type of oversimplification. They have analyzed the nature of patriarchy within capitalist society and the historical transitions that have



what is patriarchy?21

occurred. Patriarchy can be effectively applied to grasp the historical and spatial deviations and transformations in social relations intertwined with gender in a particular society. To do this, we should develop descriptive concepts, properly defined. Ueno’s concept of patriarchy is put forward in her Patriarchy and Capitalism, which is often read as part of the general literature of feminism in Japan. The uniqueness of her argument is that, starting with a discussion of the material basis of patriarchy, it establishes patriarchy as a mode of reproduction that coexists in a given society with the capitalist mode of production.13 Her view is that patriarchy forms a unique mode of reproduction. This idea relies on the work of Claude Maillassoux (1975), who developed the theory of an articulation of modes of production. It is never the case that the capitalist system covers an entire society. Noncapitalist modes of production coexist within the confines of society, and the capitalist mode of production can be propped up by them. In a sense, the actual existence of the family is external to the capitalist system. Yet the family helps sustain it. Patriarchy serves the capitalist system as a mode of reproduction. In taking patriarchy as a mode of reproduction, Ueno has extended the concept of patriarchy to the field of sexuality. She says [1990: 90], “A more fitting way for feminism to perceive the problem is rather than defining patriarchy as a system in which men expropriate women’s labor, it is better to define the system as one in which men expropriate women’s sexuality.” Here we can see a non-economic aspect of the concept of patriarchy.14 13 Ueno’s view is that patriarchy is a mode of reproduction not production. Three types of meanings can be intended when reproduction is discussed: (1) reproduction of the system itself; (2) reproduction of the labor force; and (3) biological reproduction of human beings. Ueno’s usage involves a combination of (2) and (3). She relies on the work of Maillassoux as she develops her theory of reproduction, and she criticizes Christine Delphy’s theory of a “domestic mode of production (Delphy 1984),” referring to it as a position “putting production above all else.” To avoid confusion with meaning (1), the idea of reproduction of the system itself, I use meaning (2), the idea of “reproduction of the labor force,” which is what is meant in the later use of “men’s productive labor” and “women’s reproductive labor.” 14 I have expressed misgivings about Ueno’s emphasis on the material basis. When, presumably, we are not talking about the economic base always being decisive, it is difficult to understand why Ueno insists on a material basis to the extent she does. Emphasizing that patriarchy has a material basis might not be the best approach when studying sexuality and various inequalities between men and women. As Ehara (1995) has also pointed out, it is difficult to clearly say what constitutes the material base. Also, if we say that patriarchy is a set of norms, this should not mean that consciousness and norms are ideological elements existing completely apart from actual relations (including of course relations involving economic interest, in other words, the material basis Ueno discusses).

22

chapter one 4.2. Generation and Age as Elements

The root words for patriarchy literally mean “rule of fathers.” In discussing this, Ueno pointed out that “this comprises control by the father and control according to generation (Ueno 1990: 94).” In other words patriarchy includes two elements: gender and generation.15 It is theoretically important to view gender and generation as two important constituents of patriarchy. The phenomenon of general interpersonal relationships being built as extensions of relationships based on a family model is rather common. Although, as elements in family life, gender and generation can be taken as separate factors, they should be treated as a single concept in the sense that patriarchy exists as the starting point when the various relationship models within the family based on gender and generation are extended to society outside the family. Perhaps the best use of generation as an analytical element can be seen in the work of Emmanuel Todd in his study of European societies (1990). He divided families into four categories according to the power relations prevailing between parents and children and older and younger siblings. Then he examined principal social organizations, looking for correlations with the family categories. His analysis demonstrates that types of important social organizations correspond to the main family categories. Todd classified families according to whether or not children continued to live at home after marrying and whether the inheritance was equally or unequally distributed among children of different ages, and he used these factors to determine whether family relations could be characterized as authoritarian or liberal. He then combined the results of the two classification projects to derive four categories of European families. These are illustrated in the graph in Figure 1. Todd’s categories serve well as a model of how the concept of generation can be categorized within patriarchal systems. If this graph were applied, families in Japan and on the Korean Peninsula could be placed in the stem category and families in China in the communal category.

15 As for including generational authority as an element along with gender, my position had been somewhat different from Ueno’s in that I felt that the core element in the concept of patriarchy must always be the problem of gender (1990a). I had thought that bringing generation into the analysis would not help to refine it. However, my studies in Korea convinced me that the questions of generation and patriarchy cannot be separated.



what is patriarchy?23 Liberal relations between parents and children Egalitarian nuclear family (Mainly Latin countries)

Absolute nuclear family (Mainly U.K., Denmark, etc.)

Equality between brothers

Inequality between brothers

Communal family (Central Italy, Russia)

Stem family (Germanic: Germany, Austria, etc.)

Authoritarian relations between parents and children

Figure 1.1. Todd’s family categories.

Briefly, in regard to the relationship between gender and age, I would say that the order established between parents and children is a generational issue, while the rights and privileges given children of different ages are an age issue. In Japan and Korea, inheritance rights were traditionally unequal. Today this pattern of inequality can be seen in the form of “senior-junior,” or “senpai-kohai” relationships often established among students and co-workers. Status is based on who is older. Rather than generation, this can be thought of as pertaining to age. For example, in Korean society, when they first meet, people will, almost without fail, steer the conversation in way that will reveal their ages. This is done to enable the proper use of honorific words when they address one another. Even if the age difference is only one year, a superior-subordinate relationship is established and adhered to. This is clearly a case of age rather than generation determining status. In these forms of patriarchy, the father holds power—on the basis of generation—and an older brother will be given power over his siblings. (Generational difference is assumed to reflect an age difference of about 30 years). On the other hand, the social order is not based on age, as distinguished from generation, in societies in which people don’t readily get information on age. In Britain and the United States, inheritance is not based on age or

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order of birth and the effect of a will basically overrides other principles. In these societies it is difficult to foster a status system ranking people by age. Unlike Japan and South Korea, we see very little concern about age as a factor determining status in work-place organizations. As we will discuss later, these types of differences can indicate different models of patriarchy. Important variations should be accounted for. However, since social-status systems based on age do not exist in all societies, it is probably difficult to think of age as an indispensable element in patriarchy. Later on we will see that, when necessary, the question of status being determined by age can be woven into the question of generation. 4.3. Patriarchy as an Analytical Concept with the Greatest Common Denominator Our critical look at the various ways in which patriarchy has been used has brought to light several problem areas. As a step toward dealing with them, I have offered the following working definition of patriarchy as an analytical concept: “a comprehensive set of relationships and norms characterized by, first of all, a gender-based, and also a generation-based, allocation of set roles and an unequal distribution of power.” Some may excuse the imbalance of power between the sexes in patriarchy as merely part of a system in which men and women are recognized as essentially different but equal. We see it as a system in which men are in a position equal to or superior to women—generally, superior to women. In addition, patriarchy must be seen as comprising two elements: (1) sexual inequality based on an unequal distribution of power and (2) an accompanying genderbased allocation of roles (often referred to as gender roles). For now, we have to recognize that patriarchy is seen in various forms determined by social conditions related to the historical period and region in which it exists. The concept of patriarchy that we extract and use analytically must represent the largest common denominator of elements seen in these forms. The concept of patriarchy developed in this way will not be a special form of control, as is the case in traditional sociology. It will indicate the gender of the subjects holding power and a system that allocates roles based on gender. In the sense that it will position gender-based relations as the problem, the concept will be somewhat outside the scope of Weber’s general typology of domination. However, this is true only in the sense



what is patriarchy?25

that it will not make the constraints of tradition and family members’ obedience necessary conditions. It will be a broad sociological concept denoting a specific form of the family. 4.4. Describing the Forms of Patriarchy Of course it is impossible to describe or explain an actual situation with only the bare bones of an analytical concept. Descriptive concepts of patriarchy indicating specific historical and regional limitations have to be used. For example, “patriarchy” was conventionally used in Japan to describe the gender-based allocation of power and roles under the household system established by the pre-war Civil Code, which enforced newly created “traditional” gender values that included severe gender segregation and discrimination. Subsequently, as we will discuss, “patriarchy” received the stamp of the modern age, as its use reflected the modern “men outside, women inside” allocation of roles and was used to describe the distinct pattern in Japan, which compared to Western countries, emphasized the bonds between parent and child, particularly mother and child, rather than between husband and wife. This situation could be called the modern form of patriarchy in Japan. Then, when this particular Japanese form of modern patriarchy was superseded by a contemporary model, it did not mean that patriarchy was vanishing in Japan. Even though the difference between the power held by men and women had been slightly reduced, the ties between mother and child continued to be emphasized. On the other hand, contemporary Japanese patriarchy now allows work outside the home when it will not affect housework. This model of patriarchy leads to an M-shaped pattern, when women’s participation in the labor force is graphed by age. This phenomenon has never been a universal process. A comparison with the situation in other countries makes it clear that this process has special Japanese features. Patriarchy used as an analytical concept representing the largest common denominator can be brought together with a specific manifestation of patriarchy—one with historical and spatial restrictions. It can bring into relief what the general character of patriarchy is and what the special characteristics of patriarchy are in a particular historical and geographical setting. Enriching the descriptive elements of patriarchy is the only way to avoid having its use become a simple repetition of the charge of sexism. We must enrich our concept of patriarchy with the wealth of content

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that the concepts of sociology and other fields offer. We will seek to discover various forms of patriarchy and to make full use of comparative sociological contexts. In this sense, this book is a comparative sociology of patriarchy. Of course, one cannot generalize about the efficacy of descriptive concepts. The extent to which they can be used will have to be determined by verification analysis. I have taken a somewhat circuitous path as I sharpened the tools we now have. In the following chapters I will test the sharpness of the blades.

CHAPTER TWO

THE EMERGENCE OF THE HOUSEWIFE AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN HER POSITION 1. Married Women Become Housewives and a Source of Labor 1.1. Our Focus: Housewives and Women’s Advance into Society Our study of patriarchy begins with an examination of where married women have been positioned in society. We will trace the emergence of the housewife and the changes that have occurred in her situation by looking at gender-based allocations of power and roles. We define a housewife as a married woman economically dependent on her husband’s earnings and responsible for housework—for domestic chores removed from the sphere of production. Shufu, the word for housewife in Japanese, has two different uses, which seem very close, but they have different shades of meaning. Traditionally, the housewife was the woman who took charge of a family’s domestic work and had the right (shamoji ken) to decide how meals would be prepared and dished out. The other meaning of the word as it is frequently used today is closer to the idea of “the woman taking care of the home,” which also means that the housewife is the person in charge of housework. The former meaning has the nuance of the housewife being mistress of a large household, something like an important landlady. She took charge of the younger women in the extended family (often her daughters-in-law) and supervised the work of servants and other household employees. This image is now all but lost. Worldwide, the contemporary housewife in industrialized countries is almost always responsible for the housework of a single home. We will use this meaning as we examine how the mode of existence for women known as housewives emerged in Japan and elsewhere. This will enable an analysis of gender-based distributions of power and social roles; and it will secure a strategic base from which we can indict the system. Why? First of all, in societies that have attained a certain level of industrialization, housewife is often the most common role allocated to women. Secondly, in many societies, women are educated and socialized for little else than to join the ranks of a reserve army of housewives.

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chapter two

If the life of the housewife is the dominant manner in which women are expected to live, analyzing this mode of life involves describing and explaining the core mechanisms used in distributing power and roles on the basis of gender. In our analysis patriarchy and industrialism will be handled as independent variables, and the interaction between them will be clarified. This will enable us to learn how the norms governing gender differences are used, and we can come closer to gaining a full picture of women’s status in each society we examine. Although I refer to neo-Marxist feminists’ ideas in developing my theory, my stance is far from that of a Marxist in that I consider socialism to have been another path taken by industrialism. Rather than a system that came after capitalism, socialism has been one approach to solving the problems faced in early industrialization. Using the housewife as a standard of comparison will also help bring into sharper focus issues related to her role—issues such as the treatment of married women as workers or how men should live their lives. In grasping “women’s advance into society,” data on the housewife will serve our purpose as an axis of comparison.1 Why focus on housewives? Our discussion may seem to be one-sided— only about married women, when we say we are putting patriarchy on the block for analysis. While it is true that the overarching issue is the nature of the relationships between men and women, this book will mainly describe the conditions and problems women face. For the most part, men’s issues will be set aside. We do this for several reasons. First of all, it is easier to discern the course of change when we center our attention on women rather than men. The man’s main role in the family has almost always been that of the breadwinner, the member the others rely on to earn a living. In contrast, even though they have never been able to escape 1 Two types of moves might be taken to rectify the imbalance in the allocation of men’s and women’s roles. Men could enter women’s domain and women could enter men’s. Either move might be meaningful, but in practice, very few men become house-husbands, and the latter move has occurred with overwhelmingly more frequency. Even if the role of housewife is positively evaluated, it is unrealistic to expect more than a relatively few men to become house-husbands. With calls from some quarters for a work-life balance and appeals being made for men to participate more in home life, which I totally agree with, the situation has shown signs of gradual change, but it is difficult to describe this as a big transition, and general conditions are not likely to rapidly change. Therefore, it is “women advancing into society,” in the form of their fully entering the workplace, that is likely to have a real impact, contributing greatly to eliminating the unfairness inherent in the current allocation of men’s and women’s roles. It is for this reason that we discuss “women advancing” in the sense of a full advance into the workplace. No other value judgment is intended.



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their household responsibilities, women have experienced great changes in the nature of their family duties and in the additional roles societies have given them. From the standpoint of comparative sociology, we will describe the changes experienced by women since the beginning of the modern era, focusing on the gender-based allocation of power and roles. Studying these changes is a strategically effective analytical method.2 Women experience the straitjacket of patriarchy with its discrimination and genderbased norms much more frequently and intensely than men do, which means that viewing issues from their perspective makes it easier to expose the contradictions in the system.3 These are the reasons we will primarily

2 Ueno (1985) has contended that there have been only two currents of thought in social theory on women’s issues: One comprises Marxist socialist theories of women’s liberation and the other is radical feminist theory that emerged out of the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s. Marxists tend to set up the market as the problem, while the radical feminists focus on the household. Their views on the causes of gender inequality differ sharply, with Marxists seeing economic conditions as primary and radical feminists assigning the key role to normative factors. The Marxists look for the source of the oppression of women in class relationships based on the ownership of private property and analyze the ways capitalist markets determine social relationships. Marx in Das Kapital saw the maintenance and reproduction of the working class as a constant and necessary condition for the reproduction of capital. The capitalist was seen as content to leave the reproduction of workers up to the instinct for self-preservation of the workers themselves. The question of the domestic labor needed to sustain the reproduction of a single laborer was not discussed. Pointing out that the Marxists have generally disregarded the private sphere, radical feminists have exposed the inequality in power relationships between men and women in all households—an inequality that prevails regardless of social class. Discrim­ inatory  norms governing gender roles become independent variables in their analysis of social conditions, and patriarchy becomes a key concept used in describing how these norms support gender inequality. The task of synthesizing the two theoretical approaches, of integrating the problematic of the market and the problematic of the household with an analysis of economic forces and social norms as determining factors has been taken up by later Marxist feminism. The work done by theorists in both camps, socialist women’s liberation and radical feminism, should be built upon, and both market forces and patriarchy, including household norms, should be handled as independent variables. Our approach will incorporate both economic and normative factors into explanatory variables, and we will seek to identify points where norms operate—for example, outside the household at the workplace or at school. This approach gives gender sociology a basis for comparing different cultures and societies at different stages of economic development. This has enabled us to break free of ad hoc explanations, and, to some extent, engage in comparative research on the basis of an integrated schema. 3 Some critics of the line of thinking reflected in expressions such as “the straitjacket of patriarchy” have asserted that the life of a housewife is fulfilling. Issues such as environmental pollution became serious concerns in Japan in the early 1970s, when millions began to feel that it was time to reform a society that had placed industry above all else. During

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study the phenomena of married women being transformed into workers and into housewives. We do this to bring the features of patriarchy into sharp relief as we examine how it operates. 2. Charting the Course of the Emergence of the Housewife (1) The Capitalist Model In this section we will base our discussion on the course traced in the emergence of the housewife in Britain and the United States, and we will provide an explanatory schema for the emergence of the housewife and the transitions that occur.4 The account of the emergence of the modern housewife from the time of primitive labor relations is based on the English historical experience, and the account of the emergence of the contemporary housewife and the movement toward the disappearance of the housewife will be based on the example of America. For this reason, the line of development described cannot be considered universally applicable. The processes of industrialization that have unfolded in each society have differed significantly because in each case they were affected by different cultural and historical factors. It is well known that modernization and development in non-Western societies cannot be brought about by simply introducing from the outside models of economic development as they occurred in the West. The failures of the United States’ optimistic attempts in this direction based on theories of linear stages of growth created in the 1950s make this abundantly clear. However, an economic development model, such as that put forward in W.W. Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, can serve as an axis of comparison and provide a minimal set of criteria for a comparative analysis of individual societies. Also, we can expect to be able to develop an axis to illustrate social conditions by theoretically explaining cause-and-effect this period a debate among women activists was sparked by Kyoko Takeda’s article “The Housewife as the Epitome of the Liberated Human (Takeda, 1972).” Written partly in response to those in the women’s liberation movement who stressed that housework was a source of economic value, her article asserted that productive labor should not be considered the sole source of value in society and that the housewife absorbed in daily life was a 100% living human being. (See http://femjapan.pbworks.com/w/page/8848002/ Housewife%20Movement). 4 Although several historical accounts such as Ann Oakley’s (1974) have been produced and partial explanations of the birth of the housewife have been developed, at the abstract theoretical level, no consistent theoretical explanation appears to exist.



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relationships seen in each stage of development in specific societies. Later in our examination of the interaction of socialist development and patriarchy, we will see how industrialism, whether under capitalism or under socialism, was the key force driving change. Capitalism and socialism can be viewed as sub-categories of industrialism. The fact that the lives of housewives reflect the prevailing modes of life in a given society is an important point in the theory of the birth of the housewife and the transitions in her situation. Therefore, the history of these transformations is also the history of the changes that occur in people’s lifestyles. When we view the phenomena in this way, we can distinguish two main types of housewives. Put another way, the housewife was born twice, at two different stages of social development. We will now set out to describe the processes of change that occurred in the emergence and transformation of the housewife. 2.1. Primitive Labor Relations Kazuo Okochi uses the concept of primitive labor relations to theoretically grasp labor conditions prior to factory legislation in the first stage of the industrial revolution. Primitive labor relations were a characteristic of the initial period in the development of a capitalist economy. The principal characteristics of this period when the industrial revolution began were large numbers of wage laborers, particularly women and children, entering the industrial labor force to work in factories, an absence of legal protections, no rebellions on the part of the workers, and extremely low wages and severe overwork. It was a period when workers were dominated purely on the basis of power (Okochi 1948: 235).

The characteristic severe exploitation and powerlessness among the workers in the initial stage of capitalist development was common to almost all societies that underwent industrialization. In the case of Japan, as Tsubura (1979) points out, employment of women and children was extensive, primarily in light industry. With the exception of a strong aversion to women working outside the home in certain areas, women were exploited as a low-cost, disposable source of labor power. Masses of females entered the labor market, and the sad history of factory girls began.5 In Britain, 5 Joko Aishi was a famous first-hand report by Wakizo Hosoi published in 1925 on the cruel working conditions faced by young women in the cotton spinning factories of that period.

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very large numbers of women were used as workers, and the initial period of industrialization in Japan was sustained by the labor of young women in silk reeling and spinning industries. The manner in which labor was allocated set the stage for the preliminary period in the birth of the housewife. The situation in which both husband and wife were driven by poverty into abject labor conditions and low-wage employment was a precondition for this development. Although a lack of reliable quantitative data means that a description of the situation can only be based on rough estimates, if we reflect on what must have taken place, we can assume that the rate of employment of females was extremely high across all age groups at wages that were barely enough for bare survival. When the wages earned by adult males were extremely low, the gap between men’s and women’s wages was often not that great. These primitive labor relations were formed with no regard for natural or physical limitations. In Okochi’s terminology, abusive exploitation by particular capitalists was at a rate that did not even recognize the need to cover the cost of “labor power as a commodity.” From the standpoint of the capitalist system as a whole, the lowering of wages below subsistence levels was not a welcome situation, and as this was recognized in ruling circles, social policies aimed at preserving the labor force began to be adopted, resulting in the enactment of factory legislation, which, as Okochi emphasizes, was not done out of a merciful desire to protect the weak. Britain’s Factory Act of 1833 tried to limit child labor and the 1844 version tried to limit married women’s labor to less than twelve hours a day.6 These were measures indispensable to the operation of the capitalist system. Primitive labor relations arose during the period of transformation from a primarily agricultural society to an industrial society. It may seem strange to say so, but we would position as the starting point of the process leading to the modern structure of gender discrimination the point at which the stability of the system centered on agriculture broke down and 6 The Factory Act of 1833 was one of the earlier laws enacted in Britain to protect women and children from the murderous conditions of work that prevailed in primitive labor relations, particularly in regard to child workers in cotton and woolen mills. Provisions limiting hours of work for children aged 9 to 13 to eight hours give one an idea of the situation. The Textile Factory Act of 1844 was the first to limit hours of work for women—to 12 hours a day. These early laws were poorly enforced due to insufficient numbers of inspectors, resistance from employers, and other factors. It is interesting to note that the British movement for reforms protecting industrial workers dovetailed with the movement to abolish participation in the slave trade. The Slavery Abolition Act was also passed in 1833.



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a period of confusion ensued until a new order could be formed. The point at which the problems caused by primitive labor relations began to be solved was the point of origin of modern household relations. 2.2. The Advent of the Modern Housewife Placing limits on child and female labor was one pillar of factory legislation passed to deal with social problems caused by primitive labor relations. The other was to improve working conditions for men. The withdrawal of children and women from labor markets would mean that, without these wages helping to sustain them, men would have to earn enough to support their families. These changes led to men becoming the core workers in the labor force. Another reason for women leaving the labor market was the replacement of light industry, which had supported the initial stage of industrialization, with heavy industry. These changes marked the beginning of modern labor relations. The process of industrialization also had led to a separation of the workplace from the home. The employed worker at the point of production became one pole in the process of transformation. At the other pole we find the modern housewife. If sufficient labor statistics had been gathered during this time of transition, we would surely be able to create a graph of female participation in the labor force, by age, in urban areas that would show a high plateau for all ages during the period of primitive labor relations. Then, with the shift to modern labor relations, such a graph would show an early-period peak only among young women. (1) Mechanisms Involved in the Birth of the Modern Housewife The following process can be found by reconstructing the logic of transformation underlying the emergence of the modern housewife. During the period of primitive labor relations, individual capitalist enterprises were able to exploit labor without restraint—to an unbearable point. However, this practice, which hindered the reproduction of the labor force, was harmful to the overall interests of capitalism. This was an example of capitalism itself being swollen with contradictory tendencies. At the same time, patriarchic norms continued to make women responsible for household activities—under the direction of the male patriarch. The nationstate became the mediating agency in this complex dynamic. The result was the adoption of social reform and factory legislation. Some Marxists fail to recognize the complexities involved in the role of the nation-state and tend to regard its role as simply that of a monolithic mechanism

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enforcing the demands of the capitalists. In the case of the early industrialization period, sharp disagreements arose within ruling circles about the need for labor reforms and protection of family life. It was this period that set the stage for the emergence of the modern housewife. A compromise settlement was reached due to the nation-state’s mediation in the interaction between industrialism and patriarchy. Seeking to enhance the power of the nation, the modern state acted to (1) facilitate rapid industrialization, and (2) preserve patriarchy as a system needed to ensure stable reproduction of the labor force. The political leaders of the modern nation state saw that protecting laborers from the abuses of individual capitalists was an overarching need of the system. To do this, instead of having husband and wife both work for extremely low wages, employment took the form of a broad division of labor in which men would engage in productive labor and women in reproductive labor. In this way, a stable supply of labor power could be reproduced in the form of the next generation of workers, and the veteran workers who had long been employed would be sustained. Part of this solution was ensuring that the earnings of production workers were sufficient for the livelihood of their families. By themselves, these measures would not rationally determine the poles at which men and women would be placed—at least logically from the point of view of industrialism. In some families women could have been the breadwinners. Here, social norms governing role allocation in each society were reinterpreted to arrive at the modern formula of men engaging in productive labor and women engaging in reproductive labor. This was the modern allocation of roles according to gender. Human beings were positioned along this production-reproduction axis creating the man as the mainstay worker and the women as the modern housewife. Combined with preexisting norms establishing a sexual division of labor, this process resulted in a structure in which men were placed outside the home and women inside. The old patriarchal structure in which the household engaged in productive labor as a unit and the patriarch gave the orders was replaced by one in which the husband went off to work and the wife stayed home. New functions for family members emerged. Subsequent reforms and legislation promoting compulsory public education in Britain led to a separation of children from the workplace and a general separation of the daily lives of children and adults. Fathers were no longer in charge of children’s education. The idea of the child emerged, and the role of the housewife as the member responsible for child raising expanded.



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On the economic front women were now responsible for ensuring the development of a stable supply of labor—the next generation of members of the work force. Ideologically, by the Victorian era, the concept of the husband as the head of the household became entrenched in Western countries. As promoted by Evangelicalism, the father was seen as the moral leader in the family. Upper-class evangelical Anglicans used their financial strength to lead movements for moral and legislative reforms, including the abolition of slavery in the British empire. Their ideas became dominant not only among the new bourgeoisie, but at the level of common citizens as well (Hall 1979). As the workplace and the home became separated, the world outside the home tended to be viewed with hostility, as a battleground in a competitive environment. The home became an inner domain, a place of love and an inner sanctum for the Christian faith and morality. Obedience of the wife to her husband was paramount among the virtues of this new model of patriarchy, and by extension, this meant that women were to obey men. At the same time, the wife was expected to provide emotional support and a wholesome religious influence in family life. The housewife was to be the “angel in the house (Banks 1964).” The modern housewife was born when the new system was established, creating separate male and female domains in the economic sphere and new patriarchal norms for family life. In this sense the modern housewife was truly the product of industrialism and patriarchy. From the standpoint of the married women as agents, entering the life of a modern housewife was often a release from a very severe role as an underpaid laborer. It meant a rise in social position, which was generally welcomed. Although not as many women could take it, there was another route to becoming a modern housewife. Bourgeois families all over the world often employed several maids in their households. The work of these maids was supervised by a landlady who generally did not have to get her hands dirty doing household tasks. Being a maid or domestic servant was a commonly accepted employment opportunity for young women. Then, as “pinkcollar” work became available as industrialization progressed, young women saw such jobs as typist, secretary or telephone operator as opportunities to escape the more oppressive work of a housemaid, with its various restrictions and lack of fixed working hours. As the supply of domestic workers dwindled, middleclass wives, relatively prosperous as they might have been, began to have to do their own housework. In their case, this was a downward move, from landlady to housewife. It differed from the upward move to housewife by women in

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the ranks of low-wage labor. Here it must be noted that, by itself as an economic factor, the shortage of domestic workers does not fully explain the emergence of the middleclass housewife. The new Victorian paradigm was also needed. The actual conditions of work for the housewife, and, as we will later examine in detail, a new mentality regarding this work began to act as a normative factor. The above account was based on the example of Britain as the classical model of the emergence of the modern housewife. In societies that industrialized later, the basic mechanisms were much the same. One difference in East Asia was the fact that a vast agricultural sector, whose population would serve as a reserve army for further industrialization, remained after an initial stage of capitalist development.7 Another somewhat different circumstance was the fact that it was not necessarily the case that married women were generally employed in industry. Rather than become the cause of a great change in their position, factory legislation contributed to a rise in men’s wages that gradually made it possible to establish a division of labor in which men provided productive labor and women reproductive labor. In these societies too, abusive exploitation of labor in the course of industrialization under the capitalist system made it necessary for the nation-state to act to bring labor relations into some sort of harmony with patriarchal family relations in order to stabilize the reproduction of the work force. (2) The Lifestyle of the Modern Housewife What were the actual conditions of life for the modern housewives that emerged? Historians of family life such as Philip Ariès (1960) and Edward Shorter (1975) have turned their attention to the inner life of family members, their ways of thinking, rather than the outer forms of the family. In her analysis of this new mentality in Japan, Emiko Ochiai (1985: 79) identified five significant characteristics of the emergence of modern family life which were: (1) a separation of the public sphere from the family sphere; (2) the development of intensely emotional relationships between family members; (3) a division of labor in which men worked outside and women inside the home; (4) children becoming the primary focus of the family’s activity; and (5) a strengthening of the groupism of the family. 7 It is interesting to think of industrialization in North America relying on a work force bolstered by mass immigration of peasants from Europe—from Ireland, Italy, Germany and Poland, for example.



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Characteristic (1) means that, behind the emergence of a new public sphere, was the formation of an independent private sphere, as described by Jurgen Habermas in his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1962).8 Ochiai explains characteristic (5) as follows: “A family cutting itself off from a social network and turning inward, away from the public domain means a strengthening of the family’s groupism— a greater cohesion as a community.” Men find themselves assigned to the public sphere and women to the private, which pertains to characteristic (3) above. Then the power of emotional ties between the family members comes into play, as seen in emotions such as love between husband and wife and motherly love, which comes under characteristics (2) and (5). Viewed this way, we can see that three key elements are included in the modern family: a separation of the public and private spheres; a sexual division of labor; and an emotionalization of family ties. As we will discuss later, during the initial stage of industrialism, unlike British, American or French societies where adults generally did not live with their parents, in East Asian societies, it was difficult for love between husband and wife to grow because the intentions of the parents were strongly reflected in marriage. This helps explain why, as in the case of the Japanese modern family, a situation emerged in which strong emphasis was placed on motherly love and a sharp division of family roles. The modern housewife is a constituent element in the modern family. Supported by two forces, the power of love between husband and wife and motherly love, the housewife viewed home life as the sphere of her own activity, which became focused on the new task of reproductive labor. Prior to the emergence of the modern family, housework for the common people was intermixed with other types of work—farm work, for example. Housework was not necessarily thought of as being that important. Poorer families had very few opportunities to eat warm meals. With no living room to be kept attractive or decorated, cleaning was not that big a task. Most families lived in one room. The best they could hope to do was keep the place they worked in separate from the sleeping area. Mothers did not spend their days absorbed in attending to their children. Children would often be turned over to foster parents, sent out to apprenticeship or domestic work, or brought to the work site. Little children wrapped in a 8 Here, the schema “from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (from community to civil society)” developed by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies can be called into question because, as soon as one establishes a pure Gesellschaft, a pure, tiny Gemeinschaft in the form of the modern family is born.

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blanket and left at the side of the field where the mother worked was a common sight in all parts of the world. Indeed, as Ariès describes it, even among middle-class families, the idea of “the child” as a unique form of existence was not a belief that arose out of the distant past. Among the poorest of the common folk, children were much more likely to be treated as simply “small adults.” It was not until the emergence of the housewife that the modern idea of the child began to exist. Nevertheless, as Ann Oakley (1974) points out, the level and amount of housework demanded rose in tandem with the emergence of the full-time housewife. Hot soup had to be made every day. Rooms had to be cleaned. At times flower decorations were called for. Children had to be taken care of before they were of age to be sent off to school. These tasks were not handled collectively by any sort of community, and they were not the responsibility of the entire family. They became the mother’s exclusive responsibility. Much of the housework that we now take for granted actually was a newly discovered product of the period in which the modern housewife was born. In contrast to the contemporary housewife, a very important characteristic of the life of the earlier modern housewife was this new responsibility for reproductive labor. The entire day of the modern housewife was taken up with it. Housework that had once been handled by maids or other domestic helpers basically became a job for one woman. This is quite different from the life of the contemporary housewife. Just one or two generations ago, the modern housewife had almost no time to even think of any pursuits other than housework, and becoming a housewife often meant the family was rising up a notch in the social scale. It was for these two reasons that, unlike the housewives of today, early housewives had almost no doubts or complaints about their mode of life. 2.3. Contemporary Housewives One can say that the contemporary housewife is one that does not find her entire day absorbed in reproductive labor. While many contemporary housewives engage in productive labor along with reproductive labor, we do not restrict our definition to this situation. The contemporary housewife is a housewife whose day is not completely taken up with the tasks of reproductive labor. By broadening the concept to this extent we can bring together as a single group housewives whose lives are determined by the same factors. The fact that the contemporary housewife is still truly a housewife is due to the fact that the mechanisms leading to her existence



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and to that of the earlier modern housewife are similar. The same division of labor, men handling productive labor and women reproductive labor applies, as does the interaction of the needs of industrialism and patriarchal norms. In this sense one can say that the contemporary housewife is nothing more than a modified form of the modern housewife. On the other hand, the mechanisms involved in the formation of the con­ temporary housewife and the reality of her life are engraved with a “contemporary” brand that sets her apart from her earlier counterpart. (1) Factors Linked to Industrialism The contemporary elements in the formation of the housewife of today are the factors in patriarchy and industrialism that have undergone slight modifications since the modern housewife emerged. Turning to industrialism first, we see the marketization of housework, which is exemplified by household appliances becoming indispensable. This process, which accelerated as industrialism advanced, led to a great reduction in the time that housewives would have to devote to housework. If the level of housework remained the same, the labor time expended in doing it should decrease. This became a potential condition for the emergence of the contemporary housewife. A second factor was the expansion of the service sector of the economy, which meant a surge of growth in white-collar jobs and a rise in demand for labor provided by women. If we describe the first of these factors as tending to push housewives out of the home, the second can be seen as a force pulling them away. It would seem that the two factors just discussed, one giving housewives more free time and the other drawing them into employment outside the home, should suffice as an explanation for the emergence of the contemporary housewife, but they do not. While the marketization of housework might reduce the time housewives have to spend on specific household tasks, for this possibility to be realized—for the time spent on household work to be shortened—norms that approve of such a move must be in place, and the housewife, the agent of the process, must consciously decide to make the move. In other words, the housewife must feel free to spend the amount of time by which specific housework tasks are shortened on activity other than reproductive labor. Closely related to this is the fact that, as long as a housewife does not want to reduce the time she spends on housework, she will not create more free time to be spent away from home, and she will not engage in such activity as finding outside employment.

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The fact is that, as market forces produce goods freeing housewives from specific forms of housework, housewives might choose to engage in more housework, perhaps a higher level. In that case the result would be that time spent on housework might not decrease at all. The fact that it can actually increase is borne out by observed social phenomena. (2) Contemporary Patriarchy The norms referred to above, which were needed to make reducing housework labor time possible, are those of contemporary patriarchy. Under the norms of contemporary patriarchy, as long as the housewife fulfills her reproductive role, she is free to spend any free time she has on other activities. In other words, housewives can be allowed to engage in pursuits other than reproductive labor as long as they do their duty as assigned under the system of modern patriarchy, in which men are required to perform productive labor and women reproductive labor. In many cases, women are able to go to work outside the home as long as it does not affect their reproductive labor. This current level of tolerance has enabled the emergence of the contemporary housewife as a working housewife (or at least potentially a working housewife). It should be noted that, when this situation exists, in most cases, home responsibilities will be given precedence if a choice has to be made, which means the contemporary housewife is first and foremost a housewife who might engage in outside work. Accordingly, the form of a housewife’s employment is often part-time work. When we graph women’s rate of participation in the labor force along an age axis, we often see an “M” pattern, in which the rate of employment peaks in the initial years of employment then drops sharply during child-bearing and child-raising years before rising again when women reach middle age. From this description, we could say that compared to the case of the emergence of modern patriarchy, contemporary patriarchy has not had a great deal of independent normative power. Clearly, however, patriarchy still demands that the housewife shoulder the burden of reproductive labor at a fixed level of performance. Housework will have a tendency to become streamlined as the diffusion of household electric appliances and other labor-saving devices increases. Then the fixed amount of time required for a housewife to do her duties will decrease, and, as long as it did not infringe on her performance, under contemporary patriarchy, it becomes easier for her to be allowed to work outside the home. In such a case one could probably say that the social norms did not change. At most they were somewhat altered as a result of the progress of industrialism.



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The types of roles emphasized and required in the gender-based allocation of rights and duties are a function of the cultural norms prevailing in each particular society. We find an example of this in Japanese society, in a situation we will later discuss in detail. In Japan, the role of the mother is a position with special rights and prerogatives. This might not be the case in another society. Whether or not such a practice exists will depend on the cultural norms of the society in question—or we could say that it will depend on the model of patriarchy that exists. In this sense, patriarchy will always be an independent variable. Patriarchy can have an even greater determining power when, in a given society, patriarchal requirements placed on women go beyond simply having them perform the duties of reproductive labor. When men and women are strongly required to fulfill separate roles and to occupy spatially different places, the situation becomes markedly different from one in which the demand on women is merely to provide reproductive labor. When powerful cultural norms dictate a strict sexual division of labor, even if women are potentially able to work outside the home, it is difficult for new norms permitting it to emerge. In such a society, even if industrialism under patriarchy substantially progresses, special norms will continue to inhibit women’s employment. This is another example of patriarchy as an independent variable, separate from industrialism. We cannot say with general certainty that the formation of patriarchal values will depend on whether or not they serve the needs of contemporary industrialism. (3) The Response of the Agent The response of the agent has for the most part not been closely examined in the case of the modern housewife. This is because the early modern housewife almost always responded to the change in her economic situation, namely a rise in her family’s income, in a positive way, and she accepted the paradigm that men provide productive labor and women reproductive labor. She viewed this as a move upward on the social scale— up from the harsh conditions of primitive labor relations. In the case of the contemporary housewife, although the marketization of housework has enabled her to spend less time on routine chores, it has not automatically resulted in her spending less time on housework. The contemporary housewife did not emerge in quite that way. Here, it must be explained how, without the conscious efforts of the agents, the labor time spent on housework does not go down. For this to happen, housewives have to first of all feel that housework is labor, that the work of a housewife is a burden they must bear and that they should

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try to reduce it.9 If this does not occur, housewives will not be able to seek outside employment. Here, we would like to explain the mentality of the contemporary housewife when she arrives at the idea that housework is “labor.” The marketization of housework begins with the fact that, in the eyes of the housewife, the tasks associated with the role of reproducing labor power are not sacred tasks that only she is capable of performing. She realizes that, with money, someone else can be hired to take her place, and she tells herself, “If I don’t have to do this work, I’d rather not.” If the housewife sees housework as labor, the emotional meaning that might have been attached to it is taken away. When this happens, then household labor time will be reduced if she sees around her activities which she feels will bring greater meaning to her life than housework does. The advances in women’s education that occurred in many post-war societies were often accompanied by expanded employment opportunities for women who had studied beyond the high school level. This change played an important role in the transition to the contemporary housewife. The appearance of the so-called career woman drew great attention in the post-war period. This was an indication that women were becoming aware of new possibilities beyond staying at home with housework, possibilities that had opened up to housewives who had graduated from college or received some form of higher education. Although few in number, the fact that activities with more meaning than full-time housework existed helped women begin to realize that their household tasks were a form of labor. The emergence of the contemporary housewife did not occur merely as part of a trend among housewives with higher levels of education to find employment outside the home. An important part of the transition was a change in the meaning women attached to household chores, a change spurred by the new possibilities for employment that had opened up. Will women’s participation in the labor force go up or down when their level of education rises? The answer to this question is significantly determined by the image held of women’s participation in productive work in a given society. The tendency for the housewife to disappear will accelerate in a society where participation in the work force is viewed in a positive light. On the other hand, the disappearance of the housewife will be

9 When we say that housework is “labor,” we wish to make a distinction between work and labor, in the sense that this form of labor is toil or drudgery.



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inhibited in a society where the status of the full-time housewife is relatively high. This is why we are going to carefully examine female labor force participation rates by educational level in East Asian societies. The status of the full-time housewife can be a decisive factor determining whether or not a society will move closer toward the disappearance of the housewife. One cannot simply say that women’s status will change as a result of their working outside the home. How a society views women’s participation in productive work has an important bearing on this question. (4) The Lifestyle of the Contemporary Housewife The contemporary housewife emerged as a result of the action of the three factors outlined above. What characteristics does the contemporary housewife have that set her apart from her predecessor, the modern housewife? The first part of an answer to this question has to be the big change that has taken place in the way she spends her time. Ongoing industrialization brought a large volume of electrical appliances to the home, and the development of service industries—with the thriving restaurant business as just one example—was accompanied by the marketization of housework. These developments led to a great reduction in the amount of time contemporary housewives were required to spend on specific household tasks. In many cases in East Asia, a shrinking of the size of the family and a transformation of life cycles has paralleled this overall trend, which strengthens it that much more. Housewives’ increased free time and their attaching the meaning of “labor” to housework enabled them to pursue activities other than reproductive labor. All of this has made the contemporary housewife different from her predecessor, the modern housewife. Her day is no longer fully absorbed in housework. The amount of free time she has would have been unthinkable two or three generations back. This has become a determining factor in the rise of a new lifestyle. The possibility of working outside the home, the first characteristic of this lifestyle, is determined by the leeway in the housewife’s daily schedule. The biggest difference between the modern and the contemporary housewife is that the latter is at least potentially a working housewife. She can enter the domain of production while remaining a housewife. Not merely a married female worker, the working housewife has emerged for the first time. She earns a certain amount of income from her employment, which means her portion of the allocated power in the family moves closer to that of her husband’s. In most cases,

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the housewife’s role in the home takes precedence ahead of her role as a worker. We can classify her status as that of a working housewife, but primarily a housewife. A broader meaning of “working” in this classification is that it does not have to be limited to employment. Working for a wage outside the home certainly tends to equalize the power relationship in the household. For that reason, it is not readily tolerated under patriarchal norms. This makes it different from other activities outside the home. Nevertheless, as a structural factor (on the objective as well as subjective level) other outside activity does have the common aspect of the housewife leaving the home to engage in activity other than housework. Volunteer work, joining a citizen’s movement, or even going to a culture center or sports club amount to an expansion of the sphere of the contemporary housewife’s activity. A second point must be raised in our comparison of the modern and contemporary housewife— one related to the greater leeway in the latter’s daily schedule and the loss of emotional meaning attached to housework. This is the fact that doubts have been raised in the ranks of housewives and the reserve army of housewives about the very need for the existence of the housewife. Two or three generations back, women generally saw becoming a housewife as a move upward on the social ladder. Very few had doubts about the need for such a role. Here, we must mention that the rise of the first feminist movement exemplified by woman’s suffrage campaigns occurred at about the same time that the modern housewife emerged. However, this movement did not spread widely enough to involve many housewives. It was limited to relatively small numbers of intellectuals. In contrast, the next surge in feminist activity, exemplified by the women’s liberation movement emerging with the advent of the contemporary housewife, has had a fairly mass character. In this movement, the very need for the existence of the housewife has been called into question. The work of a housewife has become simply “labor” rather than a “service of love.” Strictly speaking, when housewives begin to feel this way, they become household workers, and doubts about the role of the housewife come to the fore. A third point to be raised is that, if we examine cases in which housewives seek self-fulfillment in some sort of activity outside the home, we must also examine the tendency for housewives to seek meaning and fulfillment in home life. Although the housewife has gained greater leeway in her daily schedule, the level of expectations pertaining to housework has also risen.



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The level of work demanded of the contemporary housewife has become generally higher than that placed on the modern housewife—for example, in the frequency of cleaning and washing clothes and the quality of the meals to be prepared. The housework of the modern housewife generally had a more practical meaning than that of the contemporary housewife. In some respects the housework of the contemporary housewife has taken on aspects of a high-class hobby or artistic pursuit, in such activities as interior decoration, baking pastry, knitting and sewing. This tendency has become a very common characteristic of contemporary housewives. 2.4. The Disappearance of the Housewife After the emergence of the contemporary housewife, participation in the labor force rapidly rose among women with spouses. This is a phenomenon common to all advanced capitalist countries. The possibility of the housewife disappearing rises as the employment of women with spouses continues to progress. Up to this point in our account, we have attempted to clarify how the housewife came into being under specific historical conditions as the product of modern society. It should not be strange to assume that a new set of conditions could lead to her disappearing. If a woman’s level of earnings results in her no longer depending on her husband’s income, and if the allocation of roles no longer leaves her saddled with all the housework, this means the end of the housewife in our meaning of the term. For such a situation to take shape, industrial demand for high-quality labor must be strong enough to grant women equal opportunity for employment and for promotions, which tends to be the case in societies like the U.S. Another possibility would be providing such opportunities as part of a national policy initiative, which would be the case with Scandinavian countries where basically every married woman is engaged in some sort of paid work. Another example might be a policy of promoting women’s employment and ensuring equal employment rights. This could be part of an approach dealing with the problem of an aging population. Giving women such rights could be a “soft-landing” measure to deal with a labor shortage in an aging society. In regard to patriarchy, it can be projected that a tendency for power distribution to become more equal would accompany women’s free participation in the labor force. For patriarchy to disappear, freedom from gender roles would also have to be realized. Also, the tendency for women to seek self-fulfillment outside the home would have to become stronger.



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of organizing a mechanism for reproducing their work forces. The need for such a mechanism existed, regardless of who owned the means of production. Two socialist societies, one in China and one in North Korea, still exist in East Asia, the part of the world we are studying, and comparing conditions in those societies with conditions in Taiwan and South Korea, the countries they are matched with, is extremely significant. Socialism remains an important factor in the subjects we are studying. In our research, identifying the extent to which the differences between the various societies of East Asia can be attributed to ethnic differences (or differences in culture or patriarchal norms) or to differences in social systems (differences between capitalist and socialist systems) is very important. In the following section, we will briefly examine socialist strategies adopted to break away from primitive labor relations. 3.1. Building Socialism With the exception of special cases such as Islamic socialist societies, women’s participation in the labor force was encouraged in socialist societies. The emergence of the housewife did not become a mass phenomenon as it did under capitalism. “Liberate Women!” was put forward as a slogan to help guide the move to extricate workers from primitive labor relations, and both husbands and wives were employed at low wages. Typically, the policy in the initial stage of development was to encourage women to work outside the home. In many cases, the gap between wages paid men and women under socialism did not greatly expand as it did under capitalism. It did not become large enough to lead to the birth of the housewife. Often families could not live without the earnings of the women in the household. In other words, along with socialist policy, the pressure of poverty forced women to work outside the home. Women were a source of labor in building socialism. Of course conditions would not differ greatly from primitive labor relations and the next generation of workers could not be produced if all that was done was to have both husband and the wife work. To resolve this issue the socialist nation-state established facilities such as child-care centers. Rearing children was socialized. The first stage of socialism was a period in which the utilization of women’s labor was a powerful force for moving ahead with socialist development. During this period the concept of socialist women’s liberation was the rationale for drawing women out of the home to work. Accordingly,

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even though some compromises were made with traditional norms, the state resolutely struggled against patriarchy when it came into conflict with the policy of promoting women’s participation in the labor force. The enactment of new divorce laws and the collectivization of agriculture were typical manifestations of this struggle. In most cases in the initial stage of building socialism, legislation was implemented that made divorce simple to obtain for women that wanted one. This can be viewed as a move to remove the burden of oppressive norms of pre-modern, traditional society—to free women as individuals from the yoke of the family and to move ahead with converting women into productive workers. In East Asia in particular, it was not necessarily the general case that women had worked outside the home. The policy of turning women into workers was sure to encounter strong resistance from those wishing to uphold traditional norms. In view of this, the new divorce laws were indispensable to freeing women from patriarchy. In this regard, the collectivization of agriculture and nationalization of industry had the same meaning. In the old society, families or extended families had often functioned as units operating a business or agricultural enterprise. Patriarchal culture was an integral part of the norms applied in the management of these organizations. Farming and family management of the enterprise were under the direction of the patriarch, as was the allocation of roles to family members and relatives making up the organization. In other words, patriarchy was supported by the family circumstances themselves, by the traditional ways in which land was cultivated and family enterprises managed. Collectivizing agriculture and abolishing private enterprise eliminated the family’s role as a management unit, and the family members who had been controlled by the patriarch came under the direction of the collective farm or factory manager. In this way, collectivization and nationalization had the effect of pulling women out from under the umbrella of patriarchy. Developing socialism became a force for a partial change in traditional patriarchy by bringing women into the labor force. It led to reform of patriarchy when reform was indispensable to the development of sources of labor. However, compromises were made with patriarchy in each socialist society. To be more precise, the effort to revise the allocation of household roles was not very strong, as the tendency was to leave management of family life up to the families themselves. As a result, women were frequently subjected to severe toil in being sent out to work and then being expected to shoulder the burden of housework. This amounted to double workdays being imposed on women. There was also the aspect of poverty



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driving women into the labor market—since the family could not survive without the earnings of both husband and wife. This led to the desire among some married women to stay home if it became possible for the family to survive on the earnings of the husband. The turning of women into production workers by building socialism is not equivalent to the disappearance of the housewife in capitalist society. As suggested above, in the actual course of development, the socialist system also carried the seeds of the future emergence of the housewife. This was at first a subtle characteristic, but one can see that liberation under socialism was not necessarily a bed of roses for women. The compromises made with patriarchy led to several contradictions in the system. We will discuss this subject in more detail in chapters 7 and 8, which are on North Korea and China. Discussion of the ongoing interaction of the capitalist system and patriarchy is one of the pillars of Marxist feminist theory. However, this type of interaction is not limited to capitalism. Socialism also had to interact with patriarchy. A patriarchal type of socialism exists just as patriarchal capitalism exists.10 3.2. Indigenization of Socialism When it was being built, the socialist system took precedence over patriarchy, and progress was made in converting women into workers in the name of women’s liberation. However, a return of patriarchy could be seen in subsequent stages, as socialism retreated in various ways. For now we will refer to this as a period of indigenization and withdrawal from building socialism. Several patterns of withdrawal took place, but typically the withdrawals were related to stagnation of the socialist economy. To counter lack of growth, capitalistic economic principles were adopted. In the Soviet Union these reforms were referred to as perestroika (restructuring). In China, a “reform and openness” line was adopted. Restructuring entailed the introduction of capitalist profit principles. In agriculture, collectivization was reversed, and private family farming was allowed to motivate farmers to work harder. In factories, profits were emphasized under new management policies. Socialist enterprises, where the mood was “the state is the owner,” were restructured under policies 10 Judith Stacy (1983) uses the term “patriarchal socialism” in describing women’s issues in China. This book uses this view as a point of reference. We also apply it to the discussion of North Korean society.

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that stressed careful cost accounting. In farming villages, reforms led to families once again becoming the working unit. In urban areas, costcutting and rationalization programs resulted in layoffs of female workers. This led to the emergence of the housewife among classes with higher levels of income; and it resulted in a relative strengthening of the latent influence of patriarchal norms, which was a reversal of the situation during the period when socialism was being built. Did the move to convert women into workers during the stage of building socialism simply create a situation in which dual burdens were placed on women—a set of conditions with the potential to lead to the birth of the housewife? Or, was it a course of development that had a tendency to lead to the ultimate disappearance of the housewife? The answers to these questions should give us a glimpse into the nature of this period. We cannot predict what the future of socialist societies will be. Of course, one question is, how long will the socialist system itself continue to exist? This is also difficult to foresee. In the field of gender issues, if we assume that the system will continue to exist in some form, foreseeing the direction of change will be difficult. Nevertheless, this period of indigenization, will reveal the patriarchal norms that each society has, enabling us to grasp the underlying, fundamental tendencies in each society, tendencies which are temporarily independent of the social system in question. Then, to a certain extent, we should be able to anticipate the changes that will take place.

PART TWO

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We should be able to verify the quantitative aspects of such conditions. Data should show that (1) the standard of living is, to a certain extent, high; (2) therefore, even though women were not being driven to work because of the pressure of poverty, a graph of the rate of women’s participation in the labor force along an age axis should take the shape of a high plateau; and (3) the gap in wages between men and women would have to be relatively small. Of course, very few societies exhibit a trend toward establishing these conditions as a general norm. All we currently see is nothing more than a tendency in that direction in the U.S. and Scandinavian societies. Even when the rate of women’s participation in the labor force markedly rises, we see cases in which the set of norms we refer to as patriarchy are not transformed at all because women are expected to do all the housework. In these cases, the end of the housewife is a long way off. 3. Socialist Models In the previous section we examined the emergence of the housewife and the transformations that have occurred in her mode of life in capitalist societies. To put it another way, we have looked at the history of the reorganization of the mechanisms involved in the reproduction of the work force. We saw how the home and productive labor were separated in the course of industrialization with the generalization of “special” work environments. We saw that, under primitive labor relations, it became extremely difficult to look after children while working. This was a contradiction that hadn’t existed in pre-industrialized societies. The nation-state administering the new system came to recognize the need for reforms protecting workers’ families and a new mechanism to meet the need to reproduce labor power. The solutions hit upon in capitalist societies led to the birth of the modern housewife, a person who would specialize in reproductive labor. How did socialist societies meet such needs in the course of their industrialization? Unlike the general projections of the early socialist theoreticians, socialist societies did not evolve out of capitalist societies in advanced countries. Instead, most socialist societies that actually emerged were systems used as an alternative to capitalism to promote industrialization in underdeveloped areas. As I stated earlier, capitalism and socialism can be viewed as subcategories of industrialism (or industrialization). The home and the work place became separated in the industrial societies being developed. Socialist societies had to face the same difficult problem

CHAPTER THREE

THE JAPANESE HOUSEWIFE AND PATRIARCHY We will now turn to our discussion of patriarchy in several East Asian societies. This will be done using the role of the housewife as an axis of comparison and against a background of women’s labor conditions. Japan is the subject of Part II, and South Korea, Taiwan, North Korea and China will be examined in Part III. We will discuss East Asian capitalist societies, all of which to some extent have seen the emergence of the housewife. A comparison of Japan and the other societies will enable us to identify the general aspects of the problem of patriarchy in Japan. Due to important historical and cultural differences, the process in which the housewife emerged and the transitions in the role of the housewife in East Asia differ markedly from those seen in the West. Unlike Europe and the U.S., the start of modernization and industrialization in East Asian societies was not spontaneous. The philosophical basis of social norms in East Asia was also different. Rather than Christianity, Confucianism holds an important position as the source of standards of behavior connected to gender. The idea of a common Confucian tradition is often raised in discussions of East Asia. The rapid pace of economic growth in recent years in Asia has touched off a great deal of discussion of common factors underlying economic development in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and other societies viewed as belonging to the Confucian cultural sphere. A commonly accepted idea in Japan is that the status of women is low in all societies in this sphere. I do not completely deny the meaning of setting up the idea of a Confucian sphere as a question for discussion. For example, it is possible to account for the high regard for academic achievement common to East Asian societies by pointing to a Confucian tradition. However, the potentially misleading nature of sweeping statements about a “Confucian cultural sphere” can be seen when one recognizes the big differences in the processes in which Confucianism was spread and the extent to which it penetrated Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean societies. It should be clear enough that the position occupied by Confucianism and the power it has had as a set of norms guiding behavior has varied significantly from region to region. Care must be taken to recognize the

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key differences between the societies we include in it. In this chapter we will try to clarify the largely unrecognized differences in gender relations in the societies in the Confucian cultural sphere by showing how the characteristics of patriarchy in each society are related to Confucianism. This effort should enable us to disprove certain conventional ideas about the characteristics of Japanese patriarchy—ideas that haven’t been subjected to a process of scholarly study. The comparisons made in Parts II and III proceed in two directions. One mainly brings out the special features of Japanese society by comparing it to South Korean and Taiwanese societies. The other direction of change is that discussed in the comparisons of societies within East Asia we will turn to in Part III. The research done to compare gender issues in China with those in Japan has not yielded a great deal in the way of results. Comparisons of the two countries, which have such different social systems and cultures and are at different stages of economic development, end up by, indeed, confirming that there are differences, but factors responsible for the differences are generally not specified. Are they due to cultural factors, to different social systems, or are they due to the fact that the two countries are at different stages of economic development? Viewed from this perspective, we can begin to see that comparing Japan with Taiwan and South Korea might be more fruitful than comparing Japan with the United States or European countries. This is because the unique characteristics of Japanese society stand out in clear distinction when it is compared to other societies that are also capitalist and in the Confucian cultural sphere. Figure 3.1 has lines representing ethnicity and social systems of four societies—South Korea, Taiwan, China and North Korea—neatly crossing. The controlled variables enable several comparisons. Comparing Japan with these four societies enables us to create a fairly inclusive image of patriarchy in East Asia. This work should be a contribution to research on the East Asian region. At this point, we will begin tracing the first direction of change with an examination of Japan. We will discuss patriarchy and the emergence of the housewife in early modern Japan. In the following chapter, we will examine these subjects in contemporary Japan. Then, based on this, we should be able to clarify how general and how unique the various characteristics of Japanese society are by comparing them with the characteristics of the South Korean and Taiwanese societies we will study in Part III, Chapters 5 and 6.



the japanese housewife and patriarchy55 (Pattern of industrialization) Capitalism Confucian cultural sphere? South Korea

Taiwan

North Korea

China

(Patriarchy) Ethnic Korean

Ethnic Han Chinese

Socialism

Figure 3.1. Four East Asian societies.

1. Emergence from Primitive Labor Relations 1.1. Patterns in the Labor Force We begin with a look at the labor situation in the initial period of Japan’s industrialization in the 1880s. If we focus on the patterns of labor procurement as Okochi (1948) has done, we cannot assume masses of workers who had no home to return to, as was the case during the industrial revolution in Britain when peasant families were driven from the land by the enclosure system. In the case of the early modern period in Japan, workers based in farming villages would leave their homes for extended periods to work in industry in another area. These workers had homes in rural villages that they were expected to return to. This phenomenon was not unique to Japan. Leaving aside instances in societies that would modernize later, where large farming villages survived but plantation agriculture lost the capability to absorb labor, the labor power sustaining industrialization was supplied by workers who had homes in rural villages, who identified themselves as belonging to their old homes. They thought of their time working elsewhere as periods of separation from home. The differences between Japan’s labor patterns and those of other countries can be seen in what occurred during economic slumps and in the social policies adopted for workers. In Britain, unemployed workers had no rural village or anywhere else to return to. Mass unemployment led to the formation of urban slums that bred a host of social problems. Factory Acts and other measures were adopted to alleviate grave social problems such as urban slums. The transition from the primitive stage of labor

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relations to modern relations between employers and the employed was spurred by a movement for social and legislative reforms. In contrast, in Japan and other societies where workers left their homes to work in industry, the rural village absorbed the unemployed during economic crises. This had a dampening effect on unemployment as a social problem. This cushion took away the urgency for clear social policies to mitigate labor problems.1 These social differences help explain differences in the process in which the modern housewife emerged. In Britain, the Factory Acts created opportunities for women to leave the labor market, and the modern housewife emerged as the wages of the key male workers rose. In Japan, on the other hand, when the majority of the population was still in farming villages, not so many married women were employed in modern industry, and factory legislation did not have much effect on their lives. This meant that, compared to Britain and elsewhere, the emergence of the modern housewife in Japan was more limited at this stage of industrial development. It did not have the same mass character, and the process in which the housewife emerged was quite different. 1.2. Forms of Female Labor In Britain the birth of the modern housewife was directly linked to changes in the forms taken by women’s labor. In Japan the connection was not as close, which means that an examination of women’s labor does not lead to an immediate explanation of the emergence of the modern housewife. On the other hand, women’s labor was an indispensable factor at the core of Japan’s industrialization. Therefore, at this point, we would like to summarize the types of labor women provided in the early period of Japan’s industrial development. The situation women were placed in set the stage for the later development of the modern housewife. We mentioned that Japan’s industrialization relied on workers leaving their farming villages to work in industry. Young, unmarried women accounted for a high percentage of this labor force. In contemporary Japan, a comparison of wages that can be earned in agriculture and in industry will show that wages are much higher in industry, and it is mainly men who are able to leave farm work to become wage workers in industry.

1 Japan also enacted factory legislation in the prewar period, but as is widely known, they were ineffectual. A full transition from primitive labor relations had to wait until postwar reforms guided by the occupation forces.



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However, in the early modern period, low-wage labor was a key factor in the initial stage of industrialization. Young unmarried females were recruited from farming areas as wage workers. Farming families went along with this because these young women were not considered as important as other members of their households. After all, in maintaining the line of inheritance, the household and land were to be passed on to the oldest sons—a gender-based allocation of power and roles in line with patriarchy of that time. The patterns of female labor during Japan’s early period of industrialization can be classified according to type of industry and the way the labor was supplied. Such a classification has been broadly broken down into six categories (Nakamura 1985). The first was large factories using machinery, with farm girls sent to work in cotton-spinning mills being the main example. The second was manufactures, in which women were delivered to silk-reeling and other mills. The third is work in cottage industries located in rural villages under a system run by wholesalers or agents to make such products as fabric, straw plait, braided cord and flower mats. The fourth category was a labor force procured from among the poorest classes to work in industries such as cigarette-making. The fifth was a labor force procured from among the urban poor used in a system of home industries organized by wholesalers for such hand manufactures as matches. Finally, the sixth category was heavy manual labor in industries such as coal mining performed by a labor force recruited among peasants who left their villages for good. The types of production indicated in Table 3.1 accounted for a significant portion of all industrial activity for that period, with approximately 400,000 out of the total of 450,000 women and girls working in factories with ten or more workers, employed in the spinning and weaving and tobacco-related industries. These figures, which leave out those in the private sector who were self-employed or employed as maids or housekeepers, include female wage labor. This pattern also shows that coal mining was one of the few industries that depended on workers who had left the rural villages for good. The other key industries driving Japan’s industrialization, cotton spinning and silk-reeling, depended on labor provided by unmarried women and girls who left their village homes to work, but expected to return. In Britain, married women from the poorer urban classes often worked in industry. They were also an important source of women who were to become modern housewives. In contrast to this pattern, the modern Japanese housewife did not emerge from among the females who left home for industrial work. The source was to be found elsewhere.

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Table 3.1. Ratios of Male/Female workers in key industries (1909).

Spinning and weaving Food and beverage Total, all industries (excluding mining, government work)

Industry

No. in factories with ten or more workers (%) percentage accounted for by women

Silk Cotton Textiles Cigarettes Others

184,397 (95%) 102,986 (79%) 127,441 (86%) 17,418 (82%) 65,283 (33%) 692,000 (65%) Approximately 450,000 women

Source: Takenaka(1983:48)

1.3. An Expansion of Workers’ Incomes As shown above, not many married women in urban areas engaged in wage labor. This meant that, rather than factory legislation that encouraged married women to leave work, it was a moderate rise in the standard of living for workers that made the emergence of the Japanese modern housewife possible. A look at the situation among the various classes will help us trace how the process unfolded. (1) Urban Lower Classes (Including the Destitute) After the turn of the century, the majority of the population was still working in primary industries: 66.7% in 1906, 64.3% in 1910, and 52.9% in 1920. Nevertheless, a population shift toward urban areas had begun. Although relatively few peasant families completely gave up their village homes, a class of urban poor was formed by destitute peasants who had lost their rural livelihood and second- and third-born sons forced to leave home because of lack of employment. These men and women eked out a living in factory work, day labor, or collecting scrap. In particular, many women survived by working in large spinning mills centered in the big cities. Kanegafuchi Boseki, the company that was to become Kanebo, Japan’s second leading cosmetics company, was one example of a mill operating company in Tokyo. Other women did piece work at home, or labored making matches in small workhouses near the slums. (Matches were an important export product at the time.) The combined income of a couple



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engaging in this type of low-wage work was barely sufficient for a family to live on. It was common enough for children to have to work. However, a turning point was reached when a boom generated by World War I demand enabled an increasing number of laborers, primarily factory workers, to increase their incomes. If the index for real wages in manufacturing in 1910 is set at 100, the same index had risen to at 137 by 1922. Correspondingly, among the urban poor, the percentage of wives working fell from 72% in 1912 to 44% in 1921 (Nakagawa 1985). This development tells the story of housewives coming into existence even among the urban poor. (2) Skilled Workers Partly due to tightening restrictions to entry into certain labor markets during the same period, from 1919 to 1921, some industrial workers, primarily skilled workers in large plants, were able to gain higher wages, particularly in comparison to unskilled laborers and those working in smaller shops or tiny workhouses. These relatively privileged workers were able to escape from the ranks of the destitute. Moreover, standards for wages determined according to experience and performance corresponded to increased spending for marriage, childbirth and child-raising—to a level that compared favorably with that of owners of small factories. According to an analysis of a survey of household budgets conducted by Kiyoshi Nakagawa (1985: 370–401), actual consumption by factory workers’ households reached a pre-war peak in 1921, with little or no change through the early 1930s. In other words, a class of indispensable manufacturing workers emerged during this period, workers whose wives did not have to work outside the home to help support their families. (3) A New Middle Class In addition, in Tokyo another class of workers, the salarymen, emerged. These were salaried employees comprising a white collar work force handling paperwork rather than physical work. They came on the scene as the scale of corporations and the public sector expanded, and as retail and sales enterprises grew. These men with a relatively high level of education became the core staff in enterprise management. They enjoyed a relatively fixed income and stable employment. It was then that the Japanese corporate system based on lifetime employment and promotion according to seniority became standardized.

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According to a 1920 national census, this urban middle class accounted for five to seven percent of total employment. The same figure for Tokyo was 21.4%. A 1919 survey conducted by a team headed by Yasunosuke Gonda found that 35.0% of wives in workers’ families were employed, as opposed to 18.6% of the wives in the families of salaried employees. These families were by no means rich. The lower class of white collar workers were often referred to as “poor people wearing suits” or “petty clerks,” and many were hard-pressed to earn a living. Having said this, however, it cannot be denied that a new class with a fairly fixed level of family spending had emerged. These families lived a new lifestyle in what were then suburban areas, including areas then called Toyotama-gun and Ebara-gun, which roughly correspond to present-day Tokyo’s Nakano, Shinjuku, and Shibuya wards and the Meguro, Setagaya, Shinagawa and Ota wards, respectively. We will later provide more details on this new lifestyle which became the standard for the modern housewife. In the historical process outlined above, the incomes of most social strata had increased in the first several decades of the 20th century to the point at which the earnings of one breadwinner could generally sustain a family. This set the stage for a modern form of patriarchy with the housewife as a key element. 2. Background for Emergence of Japan’s Modern Patriarchy— Confucianism and the Ideal of the Good Wife and Wise Mother Married women in Japanese rural villages customarily engaged in farm work. So, even if it were possible for families to live on the earnings of one breadwinner, the role of housewife could not have emerged there. We can also assume that the feudal idea of the “foolish woman” generally prevailed as the view of women, which means that the modern housewife with the mentality and role of “mother as educator,” which we will discuss later, could not emerge. Even if, as the modern era began, capitalist development created the economic conditions needed for the formation of the modern housewife, these conditions had to be supported by specific social norms. Here we are talking about the then “new” model of the “good wife and wise mother (ryosai kenbo良妻賢母),” which today is considered representative of an extremely old-fashioned ideology. It cannot be characterized as a model that naturally emerged. The state made a conscious effort to promote it as a nationwide reinterpretation of traditional norms. The inculcation of this concept was planned.



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I will take a bit of a roundabout approach to offer a better understanding of the process of development of the ideology of the good wife and wise mother. We will examine its origin and characteristics after briefly touching upon Confucian norms for women.2 This will include a look at the situations in China and the Korean peninsula to clarify the relationship between Confucianism and women’s roles. I want to take a close look at the specifically Japanese features of the use of the model of the good wife and wise mother in the context of Confucian culture in order to disprove the superficial view accepted as common knowledge. Along with suggesting ways to view the status of women in regions where Confucian culture prevailed, we will focus on the origins of contemporary Japanese patriarchy and gender inequality. When the ideology of the good wife and wise mother is mentioned, people tend to think it was some type of old-fashioned Confucian women’s education. It appears that this incorrect image persists in Japan. Since this ideology is no longer much discussed, it remains misunderstood, and this is a source of confusion about key issues. Detailed analyses of the formation and content of Japan’s model of the good wife and wise mother and of the process of transformation it underwent can be found in the works of writers such as Masashi Fukaya (1981), Shizuko Koyama (1991), and Seiichi Katayama (1984). Their work, which we rely on, has clarified the important point that this ideology was not simply derived from Confucian education. Although refracted by ancient restrictions derived from Confucian norms, it was developed historically in Japan against a background of intense nationalism and as Western ideas on women’s education were absorbed. The “good wife and wise mother” ideology was promoted to serve a combination of purposes: to reinforce ideas on women’s virtues that were accepted from antiquity; to broaden women’s views of the nation state; and to promote a type of education for women that would give them the knowledge needed to raise a new generation of excellent citizens. Most analyses of Japan have already covered this ground, and in this sense it is nothing new. But it is worth noting that the Chinese and Korean languages have very similar terms (賢妻良母 and 賢母良妻) to express the ideal of a good wife and wise mother, terms that have a strong Confucian tone when used to describe the aims of women’s education. (Of course, 2 Our examination of the ideology of the good wife and wise mother relies on some of the materials on China gathered by Kihara and is based on the work of Sechiyama and Kihara (1989). I would like to express my gratitude to Kihara for the help I have received.

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the terms to some extent might also reflect a traditional approach to women’s education.) How can we explain this phenomenon? What was the source of this ideology? And how was it put into practice in East Asia? In the following pages, we will examine the transitions in the concept of a “wise wife and good mother” (including variations with the Chinese characters reversed) as it affected the content of modern women’s education. As we do this, we will clarify the relationship of this ideology with Confucianism and the role it played in East Asian societies. 2.1. Premodern East Asian Concepts of Women’s Education Generally, it can be said that Confucianism served as the guiding philosophy for women’s education in the premodern societies of Japan, China and Korea. Rather than dwell on variations in the applications of this philosophy among social classes or in different historical periods and locations, we will seek the general features that formed the greatest common denominator among these variations to clarify how conditions changed from the early modern period on. Standards for women’s behavior were based on the ideal of propriety (li,禮), which had an important meaning in Confucianism, a philosophy of ancestor worship and a social order in which the young were expected to give precedence to the old. At the core of these standards were the wellknown “Three Obediences” (三從之義),3 which prescribed norms of conduct for women that firmly placed them in a subordinate position. Used as instructional material to promote a stable continuation of clan and family lines, Four Books for Women,4 clearly carried on this tradition in later generations. As seen in “Bending in Submission” (qucong),5 they taught 3 In from Etiquette and Ceremonials (儀禮), the “Obediences” are: “When she is young she obeys her father, when she is married she obeys her husband; and when she is widowed, she obeys her son.” 4 Admonitions for Women (Nü Jie 女誡) was written by the Han Dynasty scholar Ban Zhao, in the Wang Xiang compilation and published in 1624 in the edition of Four Books for Women (Nü Sishu女四書). The other three of these four instructional works were: Analects for Women (Nü Lunyu 女論語) attributed by some to the Tang Dynasty female scholar Song Ruozhao near the end of the eighth century (Kakei 1982); Domestic Lessons (Nei Xun 内訓) written by Empress Xu, wife of the Ming Emperor Chengzu in 1404 (永樂 4); and Concise Selection of Model Women (Nüfan Jielu 女範捷録) written by the compiler Wang Xiang’s widowed mother Liu near the end of the Ming dynasty. A Japanese translation by Mototsuke Tsujihara appeared just 32 years later, in 1656, which adopted Nüxiao Jing (女孝 經) instead of Nüfan Jielu. 5 For example, the sixth chapter of Admonitions for Women (Nü Jie ), “Bending in Submission (曲從)” includes the following teaching: “What should you do to please your



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women to bend to the will of their parents-in-law. The dual cosmic principles of yin and yang were apportioned between male and female according to ideas derived from divination. Women were taught that they could not be separate from their husbands—from their lord,6 to whom they owed the highest degree of faithfulness and loyalty. Although the idea that a good wife would admonish or remonstrate with her husband can be seen in the Han Dynasty work Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan, 列女傳),7 according to Chen Dongyuan (1927), a leading specialist in women’s history, the idea that it was a woman’s virtue to be ignorant (女子無才 便是德) had become widespread and strongly entrenched by the early 17th century, when the Ming Dynasty was coming to an end. People were taught to think of women as ignorant. A woman’s greatest virtue was thought to lie in blind obedience to men. An obedient and faithful wife was the image of the virtuous woman fostered by Confucianism before China came into contact with modern Western thought. The education of children could not be entrusted to women living a “life of ignorance.” Certainly, parts of certain books such as “Training Sons and Daughters” (訓男女) in the “Women’s Analects (女論語)” or “Matronly Models (母儀)” in “Managing the House (内訓)” call on mothers to take responsibility for the training and education of children. However, they focused on strict adherence to norms of behavior, moral education, etiquette and rites. It was assumed that they did not pertain to intellectual education. “Mencius’ Mother, Three Moves” (孟母三遷) in Biographies of Exemplary Women, a tale in which the mother moved three times before finding an ideal spot for her son next to a school, might be an exception to this pattern, but this is a tale of a very ancient time. At most it talks of providing an educational environment and fostering a desire to acquire learning. It isn’t about the mother giving Mencius an education in the intellectual sense. Of course, the moral education and learning of rites and etiquette at the core of the Confucian system was meant to be a path to knowledge. However, we husband’s parents? Nothing is better than to submit to the wishes of your husband’s parents.” 6 The fifth chapter of Admonitions for Women (Nü Jie ), “Undivided Attention (Zhuanxin)” includes the following: “Just as one cannot go against the way of heaven, a wife can never be separated from her husband.” 7 This work compiled by Liu Xiang provides examples of wives remonstrating with their husbands. In one, which took place in the time of Chunqiu (春秋), Qiijiang (齊姜), the wife of Wen Gong (文公), strongly admonished her husband when he was in exile in Qi (齊), and convinced him to return to Jin, his homeland, where she helped him take the throne.

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must remember that this approach existed alongside the idea that an ignorant woman was a virtuous woman. Without a doubt, the prevailing attitude must have been that it didn’t matter much if women were incapable of giving children an education. Incidentally, Fukaya (1981), Kakei (1982) and others have pointed out that even instructional material written for women such as Onna-Daigaku (Greater Learning for Women) in Japan’s Edo period showed little expectation that women would engage in teaching. While there is room for debate on the question of whether or not the expectations of women in this Japanese context were higher or lower than they were in China,8 the role of the mother was not emphasized that much, and educational content often focused on training women to be submissive. It appears that the basic way of thinking was exemplified by such sayings as “A woman’s stomach is one to be borrowed,” and “Even if a woman’s responsibility is to give birth to a better child, it isn’t to do a better job of raising a child (Koyama, 1986).” Confucian thought clearly had a more powerful and extensive social influence in Korea than it did in China and Japan. The development of the Hangul writing system in the 15th century was accompanied by a project to give colloquial explanations of the Chinese classics. This led to the writing of many types of instructions for women that had a significant effect on upper-class (yangban) women. Korean Confucianism’s attitude toward the role of women is exemplified by the following remarks made by the noted eighteenth-century philosopher of the Realist School (實學), Yi Ik (李瀷), who said, “It is sufficient if wives obey the Three Admoni­ tions of being frugal and diligent and observing the difference with men (男女有別). Reading and studying are for men. If women devote themselves to such pursuits, there is no end to the harm that might be done.”9 We can see the continuity with Chinese thought in this statement.

8 Fukaya (1981), Kakei (1982) and others say that, only a few examples can be found in Japanese Edo-period instructional materials written for women where, compared to Chinese materials of the same type, greater emphasis is placed on the proper role of mothers. They say that the main focus of the Japanese materials was on women’s duty to be subservient. On the other hand, in a comparison of different compilations of Women Martyrs (Lienü Zhuan, )—stories of women who committed suicide after their husband’s death rather than remarry—one by Wang Xian (汪憲) in the Qian Long (乾隆) years of the Qing Dynasty and the other by Shin Azumi (安積信) in the late Edo period, Yamazaki (1964) states that the Japanese writing placed greater emphasis on the virtues of motherhood and intelligence. 9 See Yi Ik, Seongho Saseol (星湖僿說) (巻之三上 婦女之教條).



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The Confucian influence on folk culture can be found in such sayings as “If you put your woman or your dishes outside you can’t use them,” an indication of how women were meant to be confined to the home. Another saying is an admonition against allowing women to get the upper hand in a power relationship: “If the hen crows, the house will come to ruin.” Here the crowing hen is an allusion to hen-pecking. Another saying closely resembles the basic Confucian idea that ignorant women are more virtuous: “A woman who cannot count more than ten bowls will enjoy good fortune.” In other words, in pre-modern East Asia, the Confucian portrait of a good woman (or at least a tolerable woman) was simply that of one who was unquestioningly obedient and witless or dull. Certainly, such a woman would not be expected to take charge of her children’s education. Here we can see the gulf between what Confucianism expected of a wife and mother and what today is generally expected of a Japanese wife and mother, which is to be almost exclusively responsible for arranging and guiding her children’s education. 2.2. Origin of the Idea of the Good Wife and Wise Mother (or Wise Wife and Good Mother) in China and Korea We will discuss in detail the social context for the concept of the good wife and wise mother later. For now, it is important to recognize that the thinking underlying this need, felt by the nation state, for good wives and wise mothers who had to be educated and capable of overseeing their children’s education represented a very big departure from the old standard, which valued a wife who was blindly obedient and didn’t know anything. One would never dream of entrusting children’s education to an “ignorant woman.” We can see a clear line of demarcation appearing between the traditional Confucian ideal and society’s need for the good wife and wise mother. This is a dramatic shift in viewpoint—a breakthrough in thought. In this section, we will attempt to go back as far as we can to find the earliest uses of “good wife and wise mother” in China and Korea and to trace the transformations in the applications of this idea. We will also try to clarify the relationship between Confucianism and this concept. (1) China A careful examination of the largest dictionary of Chinese classics (大漢和 辞典, edited by Tetsuji Morohashi) and other references indicates that, while the two-character words for “good wife,” “wise wife,” “wise mother,”

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and “good mother” (良妻、賢妻、賢母、良母) all existed, the use of fourcharacter phrases as idioms or sayings was a relatively recent development. Chen Dong-Yuan cites a section, “Discussions of Women’s Education” (Lun Nüxue), in Liang Qichao’s Comprehensive Discussions on Reform (Bianfa Tongyi) as the first exposition of the view that a woman should be a good wife and wise mother (1928: 323). As far as my research goes, this seems to be the only reference to the beginning of the use of the concept in China. That would make 1896, the year Comprehensive Discussions on Reform was published, as the starting point for the concept in China. However, a perusal of this work shows that things are not quite that simple. First of all, the important thing from our perspective is that Liang Qichao was not using the four-character phrase “good wife and wise mother” himself. Liang had strong criticism of the idea that “Women who are ignorant are more virtuous.” In that criticism he did not use the phrase “good wife and wise mother” or “wise wife and good mother,” and the primary reason he gave for promoting women’s education was that women not being used in occupations to produce wealth was a cause of China’s weakness. He also said that the wealth produced by men was squandered by those who did not produce it. Liang later advanced such reasons for women’s educational reform as the need to eradicate the lack of abilities among the people, the need to educate children and to preserve excellent species (or potential talent). These reasons are very closely related to the idea of a good wife and wise mother. However, Liang’s primary reason for advocating women’s educational reform was to promote vocational training. This is quite different from a focus on the need for good wives and wise mothers. Kazuko Ono (1969) has commented that the concern expressed about the harm done by wasting wealth produced by others (分利之害) was a reflection of economic theory introduced by British missionaries. By the early 1900s, four-character phrases advancing the concept of the “good wife and wise mother,” mainly in the form of the “wise mother and good wife,” had begun to appear. One of the first appearances of the phrase was in an essay entitled “Women’s Education for a Strong National Foundation” (論女子教育為興國之本) published in 1905 in the Shuntian Shibao newspaper.10 It stated, “Women’s education has existed . . . since

10 See Shuntian Shibao (順天時報) July 13, 1905. Later I was informed that “wise mother good wife” was used in 1904 in Women’s World (女子世界) Period 4 (Yao Yi 1999).



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the Chin and Han Dynasties, but up until now it has not been widely practiced among the middle classes. For the sake of our country we should spread this practice and seek to develop wise mothers and good wives who will be responsible for raising our citizens.”11 The writer was calling for the development of good wives and wise mothers to build a foundation for a strong nation. In the following year, the paper carried an article in which the writer said he was in agreement with a speech touching on women’s education made by the, then, Japanese Minister of Education, Nobuaki Makino. The article advocated applying Makino’s ideas in China, saying “The aim of women’s education should be to create wise mothers and good wives.”12 The writer’s position was that women’s education should conform to women’s special characteristics and that many of the features of Japan’s educational program for women were sorely needed in China. It is important to note that the Shuntian Shibao had been established by Japanese interests, an external group with ties to Japan’s diplomatic corps. The fact that the first mention of the goal of developing good wives and wise mothers was in a Japanese-backed newspaper is very interesting in that it suggests where the idea came from. Discussion of the good-wife, wise-mother concept in Chinese circles appeared soon after it was raised in the newspaper essays. In 1907, an essay on the purpose of women’s education (Lun Nüxue Yi Xian Ding Jiaoke Zongzhi) appearing in the magazine Dongfang Zazhi put forward the ideas of a faction in favor of the “wise mother and good wife” concept and called for a special women’s education program. This was a position in opposition to a faction advocating men and women receiving the same education. Along with “wise mother and good wife,” which was used in the Shuntian Shibao, words such as “wise mother and wise wife” (賢母賢妻) or “wise mother and wise woman” (賢母賢婦) were sometimes used, which shows the four-character expression “wise mother and good wife” was not firmly established. But the essay in 1907 shows that “wise mother and good wife” had become well-established as a set expression. A study of the literature of the period shows that the four-character expression for “wise mother, good wife” (賢母良妻) was the form in which the concept was mainly presented. The fact that this was the form used in Japan up until the early part of the first decade of the 20th century leads us to believe that the expression was exported to China.

11 See Shuntian Shibao April 22, 1906. 12 See Dongfang Zazhi, Year 4, Period 7.

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The essay cited above also pointed out that the trend in women’s education in 19th century America and Europe was also to develop programs to create wise mothers and good wives, but that, subsequently, the concept of male-female equality gained wide acceptance, and that the prevailing contemporary trend, particularly in the U.S., was against the idea of programs aimed at developing wise mothers and good wives. It said that, in Japan, the faction against the wise-mother, good-wife concept was small, and that female education with the goal of creating wise mothers and good wives was being undertaken nationwide. The 1907 essay said that China should start with programs like Japan’s. The references to the wisemother, good-wife concept did not stop with the Japanese example. They also touched on modern women’s education in Europe and America. The usages centering on the concept of the wise mother and good wife in that period were widely accepted as a positive principle in place of the old adage that “ignorant women are more virtuous.” In 1916, an essay entitled “The Idea of the Wise Mother and the Good Wife in Nation Building (賢母良妻主義與救國問題)” in a magazine on women’s issues (Funü Shibao) provides a typical example of how the usage of the wise-mother and goodwife concept continued to be the main trend over the next few years. We can see how people involved in the drive to build a modern nation truly felt the need for the concept. A strong connection between the wise-mother, good-wife concept and Japan was seen in other literature on the question of women’s education, which showed the influence of such writers as Utako Shimoda and Jinzo Naruse.13 Shimoda, who was particularly known as a proponent of the concept of the good wife and wise mother, was also active as a principal of a girl’s school. Her extensive influence on women’s education in China is indicated by reports that, for 14 years from 1901, well over 200 students from China, including Qiu Jin, the famous fighter for women’s rights, studied at her school. In addition, it was frequently reported in Dongfang Zazhi that Chinese women’s schools were using copies of courses used in Japanese women’s schools for their curriculum and that Chinese teachers often were sent to Japan for training.14 As Suetsugu (1973) has pointed out,

13 Among others, see Kazuko Ono (1974) and Yamazaki (1970), which introduce the “Ideas on Women’s Instruction (女學議)” in the Education Reports (學報彙編) published by the Beiyang Government Reports Bureau (Beiyang Guanbaoju) established by Yuan Shikai. 14 See the ample reproduction of reports in “The General Situation Regarding Women’s Instructions in Government Agencies from 1904 to 1909” prepared by Li Youning and Zhang



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all these moves were part of Japan’s push to expand its interests in Chinese women’s education, and the introduction of the wise mother and good wife approach and the reactions to it in the early 1900s can easily be seen in this context. We also find references to the concept of the wise-mother, good-wife in “A Big Step in the Solution to the Woman Question (女子問題之大解 決),” an article published in 1917 in the journal New Youth, which we will examine in more detail shortly. The article includes the following sentence: “Developing good wives and wise mothers is strongly advocated in Japan, and we see this trend becoming influential in our country.” From all this it is quite clear that Japan was the main source of the concept, and that it was being introduced in a way that fit in with Chinese traditions.15 The modern mainland Chinese usage of the term “wise mother and good wife” shifted over time, from one with an initially positive tone to “wise wife and good mother”, one with a negative nuance. Changes in writers’ attitudes began to appear in the middle of the second decade of the 1900s. These were reflected in changes in the uses of terminology in theoretical debates on women’s education. One can see a debate unfolding in the journal New Youth. The first issue of New Youth appeared in 1915, and the journal published a series of essays on “The Woman Question,” which began in 1917. The first, “Women’s Education,” which appeared in March 1917 (Vol. 3, No. 1), was by Liang Hualan. Her essay included such statements as, “Women’s education should be based on the idea of the wise mother and good wife.” This was a continuation of the usage seen in the previous decade. It shows how the term still had a positive connotation at that time.

Yufa (1975: 1052–1085). Judging only from these records, one can see that the Japanese influence was particularly strong in the first half of this period, through 1907. 15 See the inaugural edition (January 1915) of Chinese Women’s World (中華婦人界), which includes “The Women We Want in Our Country (所望於吾国女者)” an article by Liang Ling-Xian published by the Chinese National Records and Publications Bureau. Advocating an educational system that would meet the need for “good wives and wise mothers,” she pointed out that China had a tradition of “Respect husband, educate children (相夫教子)” that could serve as the foundation for this approach. Cheng Zhefan (1936: 81) stated that “Training a good wife and wise mother was part of Chinese traditional thinking on female education. This was clearly an aim in the movement to develop women’s education in the late Qing period.” It seems that some of the confusion about the source of the model of the good wife and wise mother is the result of these types of appeals to tradition, which were made to promote the model.

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An article in response, “A Big Step toward a Solution to the Woman Question,” by Gao Susu was published in May of the same year (Vol. 3, No. 3). This was followed by “A Discussion of Women’s Rights (女權評議)” by Wu Cenglan in June (Vol. 3, No. 4); “The Woman Question (女子問題)” by Tao Lügong in January of the following year (Vol. 4, No.1); “Nangui Zagan” by Liu Bannong (Vol. 5, No. 2); and “American Women” by Hu Shi in September (Vol. 5, No. 3). In each of these and other essays, the phrase “good wife and wise mother” was used, and it took on a negative tone because it was regarded as a concept interfering with women’s personal development. Then the term “wise wife and good mother,” which is the term used in contemporary Chinese, appeared with the same negative connotation in another essay in the same journal, “The Question of Women’s Liberation and Society (社會與婦女解放問題)” by Hua Lin in August 1918 (Vol. 5, No. 3). How can we explain these significant changes in the tone of the debate and the usage of terminology that appear in the flow of the theoretical discussions? The shift in the tone began in 1917. In the same year, with Duan Qirui serving as Premier of the Republic of China, the “good wife and wise mother” was cited as being praiseworthy along with the “chaste wife,” “heroic women” and “women who remain chaste before marriage, even if their prospective husband dies,” in the “Revised Regulations on Virtues to be Awarded (修正褒揚条例)” promulgated at the instigation of the country’s conservative leaders. All the other examples were closely related to traditional Chinese standards for women. This shows that it was natural enough for the concept of the good wife and wise mother to be lumped together with other conservative ideas on women, and we can understand why progressive intellectuals such as those writing for New Youth would subject it to criticism. The regulations were promulgated in October 1917, a year that became a dividing line after which the connotation of the term “good wife and wise mother” was only negative when used in theoretical debates. This is surely an indication that the negative nuance was linked to the reaction against the regulations. As was the case with “wise wife and good mother (賢妻良 母),” which we will discuss later, “good wife and wise mother (良妻賢母)” quickly came to be negatively regarded as being tied to feudalistic standards.16 These regulations can be seen as among the factors in the shift in

16 For example, in 1917 in the journal New Youth, Vol. 5, No. 2, we see an opinion such as the following expressed by Liu Bannong in his article “Various Thoughts on Returning



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word usage—from “wise mother and good wife (賢母良妻),” to “good wife and wise mother (良妻賢母).” While we cannot specify the process involved in the change in the fourcharacter set phrase from “good wife and wise mother (良妻賢母)” to the contemporary form of “wise wife and good mother (賢妻良母),” in view of the fact that both Chen Dongyuan (1927) and Cheng Zhefan (1936) were using “good wife and wise mother,” we can probably assume that the form used now was established fairly recently. The earliest critical reference to “wise wife and good mother (賢妻良 母)” appeared in New Youth, in an article entitled “The Question of Women’s Liberation and Society (社會與婦女解放問題),” which included the statement, “Models such as the ‘loyal subject,’ ‘the dutiful son,’ or the ‘wise wife and good mother’ have no place in a modern educational institution.” This is an example of how the term was criticized in tandem with the feudalistic ideal of the “loyal subject and dutiful son (Zhongchen Xiaozi).” In addition, we find the following usage in contemporary mainland Chinese writing—this from a book presenting a general summary of women’s issues: “[Under the feudal system] a woman was expected to be obedient and faithful to her husband, to preserve the family lineage to ensure that family property was left to the proper heirs, and to serve her husband and mother-in-law. Adages for women such as ‘Prefer what your husband prefers, dislike what he dislikes’; ‘The husband urges, the wife follows’; and ‘Wise wife and good mother’ were all models of behavior established and used by feudal rulers to suppress women and to exploit them. (Luo Qiong 1986: 13)” In this way, tying the model “wise wife and good mother” to Confucianism and referring to it as feudalistic and therefore something to be opposed led to its usage as a political label rather than as a term related to “good wife and wise mother” on the basis of an historical understanding. Contemporary Chinese usage of the term, which is similar to the usage today in Japan, can be considered to be related to this established negative labeling. This overview of the transitions in the conceptions and usages of the model in China, from “wise mother and good wife” to “good wife and wise mother,” then to the currently used “wise wife and good mother” indicates that the origins of the terms were not directly connected to older Chinese South:” “Repeated talk about such things as the Four Virtues (四德), Virtuous and Intelligent Women (賢慧), and The Good Wife and Wise Mother is nothing more than skillfully coaxing women into long-term prostitution.”

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social traditions—despite the fact that we see instances of writers promoting its introduction by claiming that the model is in accord with traditional models. Conversely we find other writers opposing it politically and claiming that it is a continuation of feudal norms. However, the historical inaccuracy involved in this line of thinking can be clearly seen in the fact that Liang Qichao and other early theoreticians resolutely attacked the old adage that “Women who are ignorant are more virtuous,” and worked to promote, first of all, the spread of women’s education. Furthermore, a study of the historical situation and documents in the early 20th century suggests that the introduction of the model was influenced by its origin in Japan. The model of the good wife and wise mother was not rooted in Chinese tradition. It was an import from Japan. (2) Korea Before moving on to Japan, we would like to briefly examine historical trends on the Korean Peninsula. We cannot engage in a truly complete discussion of Korea due to limited materials, but the fact that very little literature exists in Japan on this subject shows there is a value in going through what we have. As was the case elsewhere in East Asia, in Korea, women’s education was introduced when the country was opened to the outside world. This work was first engaged in by people associated with missions and the effort to spread Christian beliefs. The first school, built in 1886, was Ewha Hakdang or “Pear Blossom School,” a mission school for girls that was the forerunner of today’s Ewha Women’s University. However, in a Korean society where Confucian norms were strongly accepted and the spatial separation of males and females strictly required, education for females outside the home was not readily accepted, and it was extremely small in scale. In the previous section we discussed the traditional folk sayings warning that women with knowledge should be shunned. One can clearly see that this was not a society that would readily accept the idea of developing mothers capable of educating children or the model of a good wife and wise mother. A modernization movement in opposition to preserving the old ways and insisting that modern education for females be developed began to appear in the 1890s. These views, including a call for women’s education, were expressed in The Independent (Tongnip Sinmun) and other journals.17 17 Examples can be seen in Tongnip Sinmun, editorials, in the paper’s May 12 and September 5 editions in 1896.



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A movement for the establishment of government-run girls’ schools was under way by the second half of the decade, and in 1899 an ordinance (女學校官制十三条) providing for public girls’ schools was approved by the government—but not enforced. It was not until 1908 that the first public high schools for girls were established as a result of strong Japanese influence in Korea’s internal affairs after the enforcement of treaties between the two countries. The first public school for women was called Hanseong Women’s High School. Its current name is Kyunggi Women’s High School. “Productive citizens raised by wise mothers,” was the creed expressed by Eo Yunjeok, the principal, and Sinsa Imdang (1504–51) was frequently presented as a model (Kyunggi Middle School and High School (1958:3). Sinsa Imdang was noted for being deeply versed in Buddhist scripture and won fame as a painter, but she is also known to this day for having raised the eminent Confucian scholar, Yi Yulgok. We also find the following in an essay explaining the need for women’s education in the Hwangseong Sinmun, a newspaper of this period: “Educating women is nothing less than establishing a model for the education of boys. For a woman might become a boy’s mother, and if a mother’s conduct is incorrect, then that boy could lose his chance to fully develop his spirit.”18 One can easily see the influence of Japan on these educational policies. However, even though the content of certain ideas expressed in this period were close to the ideal of the good wife and wise mother, we are unable to find usage of the four-character terms, “good wife and wise mother” or “wise mother and good wife” in the first decade of the twentieth century. Usage of “good wife and wise mother” as an established four-character expression did not develop until a bit later. Since we have already seen many examples of the usage of “wise mother and good wife (賢母良妻)” in the case of China by the middle of the first decade and on into the second decade of the 1900s, it is natural to expect to find the same thing in Korea during those years. In addition, as we will see later, the term “wise mother and good wife” was already regularly being used in Japan by the first years of the 20th century. This would lead us to believe that it would have been introduced in some form on the Korean Peninsula during the same period, and its use most likely gradually spread there in the second decade of the century. Unfortunately, publication of

18 See editorial “On Female Education” in the February 6, 1908 edition of the Hwangseong Sinmun.

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journals for Koreans such as the Hwangsong Sinmun and the Taehan Maeil Sinbo was discontinued on the Korean Peninsula after Japan’s annexation of Korea. This greatly reduces ways to determine what type of discussion was taking place in Korean society during that period. A blank spot exists in the record of internal Korean exchanges of views in the middle of the second decade of the 1900s. The Taehan Maeil Sinbo paper was taken over by the GovernmentGeneral of Korea and reestablished as an Imperial government organ under the name Maeil Sinbo (Daily Messenger). In the July 14, 1918 issue, in an article submitted by a Korean, we find what very well could be one of the first uses on the Korean Peninsula of “good wife and wise mother (良 妻賢母)” as a four-character expression. The article called for promoting modern education for women and made positive reference to the model of the “good wife and wise mother.” The situation had changed somewhat by 1920, after the March First (Samil) Independence Movement of 1919. The Government-General shifted from military rule to a “cultural policy” of control, and the ban on Korean peoples’ newspapers was temporarily lifted. This resulted in the publication of a series of journals in the Korean vernacular such as the Choson Ilbo and Tonga Ilbo. The term “wise mother and good wife (賢母良 妻)” appeared in the first issue of the Tonga Ilbo in April 1920. It continued to appear everywhere in Korean publications as a four-character phrase, indicating how the model of the wise mother and good wife was discussed. We will now take a look at how this model was received on the Korean Peninsula by studying its usage in the pages of the Tonga Ilbo in the early 1920s. The paper carried a talk with Madame Yi Iljeong in its April 3, 1920 edition. Commenting on the model of the wise mother and good wife, she began by saying, “This is a rather abstract idea that is somewhat behind the times.” But she went on to say “[Developing wise mothers and good wives] who will be responsible for the education of children, the next generation of the citizenry, is the key to our country’s future.” She saw this model as a forward-looking ideal, and, while saying that both men and women should be responsible for children’s education, earning a living, and contributing spiritually and materially to the maintenance of a peaceful household, she viewed the wise mother and good wife as one who would be a helpful partner, raise children, and manage family affairs wisely. Women’s work should never be considered slavish or vile, and women had an important social role to play, she said, as she positioned the model of the wise mother and good wife in a very positive light.



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During this same period, a different type of opinion appeared in the Tonga Ilbo. “We should abandon the conventional ideology promoting the model of the wise wife and good mother—the ideology that women’s work should be menial, unpaid labor. This should be replaced by an ideology of full personal development for the complete liberation of women.”19 Here, in this rejection, we see a move away from seeing a progressive aspect of the ideal of the good wife and wise mother. The above criticism also included the following: “If women become free as women, our peninsula will also become free in a way in keeping with life on the peninsula.” This latter comment is an example of an effort to tie women’s liberation to the struggle for self-determination of the Korean people. In a 1922 edition we find the following view: “When we talk of women’s education, we mean promoting the concept of the wise mother and good wife. This education is designed to train women to become wise, good mothers and wives. This is the type of education being carried out and promoted in Japan and Korea.”20 This type of commentary indicated that women’s education was related to Japanese policy. While referring to Nora, the main character in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and the need for human awakening and self-realization, a widely discussed topic in China and other parts of the region, the writer criticizes the model of the wise mother and good wife as meaning an education aimed at stuffing women into the role of mother and wife. What can be seen in the transitions in the usage of the “wise mother and good wife” discussed above is that the idea if not the set phrase was extensively used in the early 1900s. The appearance of comments describing it as “conventional” or “behind the times” indicates that it had become fairly well established as a four-character phrase during the second decade of the century. The fact that the words were frequently arranged as “wise mother and good wife,” as currently used in Korean, shows us that the usage had, to some extent, become stabilized. Secondly, the remark about the educational policy being “. . . carried out and promoted in Japan and Korea,” suggests that the phrase “wise mother and good wife” used on the Korean Peninsula was a reflection of Japanese influence.21 With the introduction of middle schools for girls at the end of 19 See “The Significance of Women’s Liberation (女性解放의 意義) by Kim Yeosang in the Tonga Ilbo August 17, 1920. 20 See the front-page essay “Reform of Women’s Education (女子教育을 改良하라)” by Yang Judong in the Tonga Ilbo November 13, 1922. 21 Research such as that done by Han Myonghi (1991) takes the view that the educational policy of Ewha Girls’ School (梨花學堂) in its early stage and elsewhere was based

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the first decade of the 1900s and the subsequent move to establish the Japanese system of girls’ education that accompanied Japan’s annexation of Korea, we can assume that the model of the good wife and wise mother had already been introduced on the Korean Peninsula by the second decade. The fact that the idea of the “wise mother and good wife” was frequently criticized in the pages of vernacular newspapers such as the Tonga Ilbo in the 1920s is further evidence that this was the case. We have also described how one article seemed to make an analogy between “freedom on the Korean Peninsula” and the idea that criticizing “wise mother and good wife” was equivalent to advocating women’s liberation. This shows the existence of a schema making “good wife and wise mother” equivalent to Japan. What may seem contradictory to this is the important point that “wise mother and good wife,” was rejected because Confucianism was already read into the concept. This can be seen in expressions charging that the ideal of the wise wife and good mother was “behind the times” and equivalent to the idea that “women’s work should be menial, unpaid labor” and in the way it was lined up with the Three Obediences and other Confucian ideas for criticism. Although it was true that the concept represented a break with Confucianism in one respect—to the extent that educating mothers was emphasized—as we have seen in the case of China, “wise mother and good wife” was criticized as being linked to Confucianism. In other words, even though one point of view in those days was that the concept was something brought into society in the course of modernization, the image of the concept being something old and Confucian was also very strong. While we were unable to specifically say much about the process in which the concept of the good wife and wise mother was directly introduced to Korea, we have at least shown how, as was the case in China, this introduction was to some extent a break with the Confucian past and that the concept was formed under the influence of Japan. In the following section we will examine how the concept of the good wife and wise mother emerged in Japan.

on the model of the “wise mother and good wife (賢母良妻).” After publication of my paper in Japanese, there was a criticism in South Korea that I was ignoring the point that “wise mother and good wife” was an idea forced on the Koreans by the Japanese imperial rule (Hong 2001). I did not ignore the fact at all, rather I wanted to verify that it originated in Japan and was “exported” and forced upon society in Korea or China. So I am happy to know that my argument was taken seriously in South Korea.



the japanese housewife and patriarchy77 2.3. The Formation of the Ideology of the Good Wife and Wise Mother in Japan

Looking for the origins of the phrase, we find “wise mother and good wife” used by Masanao Nakamura in Meiroku Zasshi. (Known as the magazine of the Japanese enlightenment (“Meiroku” refers to the sixth year of the reign of Meiji, or 1873). This was the first usage of the term, and it was used as a symbol of civilization opening up (Fukuya 1981:56). Next we find an article by Arinori Mori, founder of the Meiroku publishing company and a leader in the early development of Japan’s modern educational system, who used the formulation “wise mother and good wife” to insist that women’s role would be to take responsibility for raising the next generation of the nation’s citizens. The order of the words, in the four-character expression used to express the concept, was not fixed at that time. For example, Minister of Education Sukenori Kabayama, the father of the law on women’s secondary education, used the phrase “wise mother and good wife” when the law was established in 1899. The idea became the core principle of women’s secondary education from that time on. In view of the fact that either form of the concept was commonly used in those days, we are probably correct in thinking that the initial usage of “wise mother and good wife” in China and Korea was due its being imported from Japan. His successor, Dairoku Kikuchi, was the first among a series of education ministers to consciously use the “good wife and wise mother” formulation, which from then on became the mainstream usage in Japan. What were the characteristics of the ideology of the good wife and wise mother? Japan’s modern education for women begins when the Meiji leaders perceive that women with knowledge and culture are an absolute necessity for the nation. This was a Japan that had just experienced the Sino-Japanese War, a modern conflict that had required a general mobilization of the country’s power. The perception was that women’s enlightenment was essential to stabilizing the home front. In addition, the revision of the unequal treaties also gave foreigners the right to travel and live among Japanese citizens. This reinforced the feeling of a need to unify the country. It was against this background, that the Meiji views on women’s education evolved—from an acceptance of Western ideas, which lasted until the Rokumeikan Era; a recovery and then a weakening of Confucian ideas on women’s education in the late 1880s and early 1890s; and then the emergence of the ideology of the good wife and wise mother, which had a strong nationalistic coloring. The view of women’s education based on the concept of the good wife and wise mother was developed with the goal of positively including

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women in the drive to strengthen the country’s unification. The thinking was that women had to be given an opportunity to serve the country and that it was in the national interest to treat men and women as equally important. Today we might describe this as thinking that social roles to be played by men and women are equally important, but that they have different roles to play because they are, after all, qualitatively different. Seeking to avoid saying that men and women should have the same rights, education ministers such as Kikuchi drew a line of distinction between their views and Western views in favor of gender equality. They preferred the formulation “Men and women are equal.” What they meant was spelled out in a statement made by Kikuchi in 1903: “We should not hold a person in high esteem simply because he is a man, nor should we hold a person in low esteem simply because she is woman.”22 This national stress on the importance of women was linked to the role of mothers in stabilizing the household, which was viewed as a unit of the state, and to their important role in the education of future citizens. This was an acceptance of a modern view of motherhood emphasizing special qualities of women. This way of thinking was obviously a big step away from the old Confucian ideas that “An ignorant woman is virtuous” and that women should blindly obey their husbands. This point is made even clearer when one considers how women’s instructional materials in the Edo period strongly reflected old traditions. In this sense, the ideology of the good wife and wise mother was based on modern concepts and represented a denial of the norms of the pre-modern period that were supported by Confucian ideology. At the same time, however, proponents of the new ideology also used a reinterpretation of Confucian norms to advocate a modern sexual division of labor. The concept of the good wife and wise mother was not a frontal attack on Confucianism. It was always presented as being based on Confucian tradition—as a modern re-reading and application. Developed by Tetsujiro Inoue, and, with the Imperial Rescript on Education as its starting point, the systematization of the concept of the nation as a family proceeded on virtually the same track as the beginning of higher education for women. The ideology of the good wife and wise mother was

22 This quotation is from Fukaya (1981: 170). The original source was “Ninety-Nine Speeches by Former Education Minister Kikuchi”; Dainihon Tosho, 1903, page 199.



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developed as one form of the Japanese method of adopting Confucianism, just as, ideologically, the modeling of the nation-state as a great family was a unification of the Confucian virtues of loyal service to one’s lord or superior (忠) and being a loyal, dutiful child (孝). The Meiji nationalists strengthened this unification of Confucian virtues that made loyalty to the Emperor or state analogous to being a dutiful child. The feudal samurai had already reversed the order of the two virtues traditional in China and Korea. They placed loyalty to one’s lord ahead of duty to one’s parents. This was institutionalized during the country’s sengoku jidai (Warring States period), a time of political intrigue and almost constant warfare between samurai leaders from the middle of the 14th to the beginning of the 17th centuries. Meiji leaders built on this feudal reinterpretation and used the household, or ie, as the foundation for their vision of the nation-state. Their concept of the role women should play was a key element supporting this idea of the household. Women were asked to play a new type of subordinate role. While recognizing male-female equality from the nationalist standpoint, the state allocated social roles on the basis of gender, an allocation based on what were regarded as natural differences between the sexes. Women were not expected to surpass men in any way, but they were made responsible for household management. Their role in establishing a stable, orderly household was treated with respect. This duty was worked into the meaning of “Cultivate women’s virtues,” an exhortation to develop Confucian virtues that was often repeated in those days. These values, which strongly reflected the views on the household held by the ruling class of the Edo period, amounted to something quite different from the Western ideal of a household system based on a love relationship between a husband and a wife. The modern concept of the good wife and wise mother we have described was meant to be incorporated into a framework of Confucian norms. It was a case of revising these norms, replacing the old image of the submissive and ignorant woman with an image of a woman who, as a wife, would be responsible for the household, and, as a mother, would be responsible for her children’s education. Although the old praiseworthy virtues of faithfulness and moderation would remain unchanged, blind obedience would no longer fit a situation in which the wife was responsible for household management. And ignorance could no longer be considered a virtue when women were being called on to serve as the initial educators of the next generation.

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In this way, education guided by the ideology of the good wife and wise mother could never simply be feudal. While Confucian virtues still carried weight, Western views on women’s education had to be introduced if the goal was to prepare mothers to play an important role in the reproduction of high-quality citizens. In addition, the education provided had to be excellent because women were being asked to expand their vision to include the interests of a nation-state striving for greater national unity. We also have to ask why the mistaken idea arose that the concept of the good wife and wise mother equals feudalism. Furthermore, why is it that this “mistake” occurred not only in Japan, but also in China and the Korean Peninsula? One explanation is based on the continuity that the ideology of the good wife and wise mother had with Confucianism. This seems convincing when one remembers that the ideology was often presented with a strong Confucian coloring at the actual educational site where it was taught. It has been pointed out that the teachers had a tendency to present the ideas as being the same as Confucianism (Fukaya 1981). And we have seen how in China and elsewhere those introducing the concept would emphasize its continuity with traditional norms to soften resistance to it. Nevertheless, the ideology of the good wife and wise mother was a product of modernization just as the modern household, or ie, was a discovery of the modern period. Critics of the gender-based allocation of roles and power in the modern era sought to lump the ideology of the good wife and wise mother together with the feudal norms of the Edo period. In the same way, the idea of the “household,” or ie, was also criticized and labeled “feudalistic” during the effort to establish democratic family relations in the post-war period. In other words, rather than being the result of a scholarly attempt to examine the origins of the concept of the good wife and wise mother, the use of the “feudalistic” label was primarily a sophisticated form of political branding. 2.4. The Aim of the Ideological Campaign Who were the primary targets of the campaign to promote the development of the good wife and wise mother? What class was expected to respond to this ideology with the complicated characteristics we have been describing? We have already described how the 1899 ordinance on women’s higher education set the stage for the development of middle schools and high schools for girls and how the concept of the good wife and wise mother was used as a guiding principle. Minister of Education Sukenori Kabayama, who was credited with inspiring the 1899 law,



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described the aim of establishing the system as follows: “We cannot expect the development of a society with a healthy middle class to be based on the education of only men. We will be able to increase our social wealth by having the educated man work as a partner with a wise mother and good wife to, first of all, form a proper household.”23 This was an indication that the high school education system for girls was being designed to foster the growth of a “healthy middle class.” Rather than the upper strata, the system was meant for a level of society slightly higher than average wage-earners. Thirty percent of the girls graduating from elementary school in Tokyo during the Taisho period (1912-1926) applied for the next level of girl’s education, the combined middle and high school (koto jogakko, 高等女学校) in Tokyo, and 15% of these graduates were accepted. Also, 17.2% of the girls in the 12–16 age group in Tokyo were attending school at this level in 1920. By 1925, this had increased to 24.9%. These figures help describe the characteristics and the scale of middle-class society. The ideology of the good wife and wise mother served as a norm for mainly this class of young women when they set about creating a household. Actually, one of the background factors in the Education Ministry’s vigorous push for middle-school education for girls was the fact that facilities were being established to help the boys of that period advance in their education to the level of completing middle school and thereby become qualified for work. According to Amano (1986), a look at the school records of the wives of Tokyo Imperial University and Waseda University graduates shows that 70% this cohort for the 1881–1885 period only had an elementary school education. However, over half of the 1891–1895 cohort had completed middle school or high school. This figure rose to approximately 80% for the 1901–1905 cohort. In the Taisho period, level of education had become a sign of status considered by men and women in the process of selecting a marriage partner. Another part of the program designed to support the growth of a broader middle class was the adage, “Men work outside, women inside” which was taught to elementary school girls in ethics and culture classes. The rather unique nature of this practice can be understood when one considers the fact that vast numbers of women in Japan’s farming villages worked outside. Further evidence of this middle-class bias in the system 23 This quotation is from Fukaya (1981: 155 ). The original source was “Speeches to the Conference of Regional School Inspectors by Education Minister Kabayama”; Current Education; July 25, 1899, page 199.

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was the fact that the authorities, in the mid-1890s, saw the need to introduce sewing classes to raise the percentage of girls attending school. This was a move taken in response to complaints from average citizens that the education was too far removed from daily life. We can see that norms needed to create housewives were being imparted in the school system. 2.5. The Japanese Form of Modern Patriarchy A modern type of patriarchy was being formed in Japan, with the concept of the good wife and wise mother as a core ideological element. The basic functional framework for this system was “Men handle productive labor, and women handle reproductive labor.” In this, the system did not differ from those in the West. There can be no doubt that the concept of the good wife and wise mother was precisely what was needed in laying the ideological groundwork for modern patriarchy. Uniquely Japanese features were also part of the ideology targeted at wives and mothers. Housewives learned to positively accept these features to cope with the conditions they were placed in. The situation in the household, the center of Japanese married women’s existence, was markedly different from that in the West. A key example of this, discussed by Yamamura (1971) was the extremely heavy importance placed on a direct male line of inheritance of family property. With such an atmosphere prevailing in the Japanese household, the reason for the wife’s existence in the family was only to give birth to children. This harsh outlook was expressed in the saying, “A woman’s stomach is a stomach to be borrowed (女の腹は借り腹).” This situation was somewhat different in farming families where women’s labor was considered important, but in households functioning as enterprises firmly established above a certain level of income and class, a new wife could only keep her position secure by bearing a child. This was reflected in another saying, “If no children after three years, the bride goes. (嫁して三年子なきは去る).” In these households the wife had no choice but to obey her husband and her mother-in-law. What kept these women going was the relief found in devotion to their children. On top of this, love between the husband and wife that might have served as a bond keeping the family together was not particularly emphasized. This was a marked difference from families in the West, where a couple’s love was an important characteristic of the modern family. Up until the mid-1960s in Japan when finding marriage partners began to become much less formal, when it came to selecting a spouse, the higher the class position of the family, the more likely it was



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that marriages would be arranged by the families. Although referred to as a “couple” after marriage, husbands and wives were often hesitant or even somewhat ashamed to give expression to feelings of affection in front of others. This type of repression was also present in the home, to the point where it was considered a virtue to eat meals in silence. The lack of emotional communication or display of affection between husband and wife has been the subject of commentary (Ueno and Masuda 1981). Only a few decades ago in Japan, the silent husband, whose household talk consisted of calling for “Meals, bath and bed,” was not unusual at all. Generally in modern societies, the more such elements as economic necessity, social status and family background disappear as marriage considerations, the more a transition to love-marriage will occur. In other words, the practice of marrying for love will become increasingly common the freer marriages are from such requirements as maintaining a family line or family business. As was the case with pre-modern chivalry in Western Europe, among the upper classes, love was frequently outside marriage in Japan. The “revolutionary act” of “marrying the person I love” only becomes possible once marriage is liberated from business-like considerations. This type of freedom was difficult to attain in Japan—in a society with stem families as the norm, structured to maintain a direct line of descent from father to son, and where young people commonly continued living with their parents after reaching adulthood or after marrying. Such a situation impeded the spread of love marriages and made it difficult for marriage to become a relationship based on love. The weakness of the affection between husband and wife had the effect of turning only the children into objects of affection for married women. Put another way, the weakness of the axis of feelings of love between husband and wife resulted in a strengthening of the love between mother and child as the axis reinforcing the modern family structure. The existence of the children became the only thing supporting the lonely existence of the wife in the patrilineal system. This situation gave rise to obsessive feelings of maternal love. In this environment, the paradigm requiring the mother to take care of the children became something the “housewives” found easy to accept. In other words, the role allocation taking the form “Woman = Reproductive labor” gave these women a particularly important prerogative. Adhering to the norm of being a good wife and wise mother meant they would have  the key job of educator, and at their own request, they also were given  and positively accepted the responsibility of being mothers.

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The “motherhood” norm had no old, traditional qualities. It was a role that was born to meet the needs of the times. Prior to the emergence of the modern housewife, it was not necessarily the case that the biological mother would shoulder most of the task of raising her own children. Mothers frequently had important work responsibilities in the family enterprise, and children ended up in the care of grandparents, older siblings or another household where they often were put to work as servants. This custom was shown in detail by an analysis of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun’s “My Personal History” series by Mikako Sawayama (1984). She extracted data on who raised the people presenting their histories. She reported that, “Childbirth and child-rearing were quite uncertain among those born in the mid- and late-Meiji period. Those providing stability in the lives of children were not only their biological parents but very often various types of temporary parents who were somehow found or designated. The stories indicated that the persons serving to raise and protect children were often found within the confines of regional communities.” (Sawayama 1984:125) In contrast, the stories of those raised in nuclear families during the Taisho period (1912–1926) emphasized that only their parents raised them. Child-raising diaries were kept, with such entries as “My Child’s Future,” which suggested that only this future gave the mothers a purpose in life. “Child-raising filled these women’s consciousness, as traditional work other than childcare was eliminated from their lives and to the extent that child-raising was no longer tied to relationships intertwined with regional community life.” (Sawayama 1984:129) This was a time when the labor market had begun to be broken up into clear categories based on the educational records of job-seekers. Parents in the emerging middle class saw investment in education as the key to their children’s futures. This can be seen in many of the women’s magazines of that period which carried stories focusing on thrift and home economics with recommended household budgets that included education expenses. By the 1920s, childbirth and child mortality rates had dropped significantly, which meant that family life had transitioned from a pattern of many births and many children dying, to a pattern of fewer children being born and fewer dying. No longer viewed as a source of household labor, the child became an object of love, and his or her education became an object of investment. These changes in family life led to the situation we see today in which the mother has sole responsibility for child-raising and a deep emotional relationship is formed between mother and child.



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As symbolized by the introduction, in the Taisho period, of “bosei” and “boseiai” into the Japanese language as translations of the English words “motherhood” and “maternal love,” this situation was not at all based on ancient custom. It was a modern development along with the birth of the modern housewife. In addition, the fact that the inferior conditions working women face took shape during this same period has led to women looking upon not having to work and being able to stay home to devote one’s time to household management and childcare as a type of status symbol. The new words “motherhood” and “maternal love” serve as an indication that married women of a certain class were taking on their relatively new role with a sense of pride in their social position. The uniquely Japanese form of modern patriarchy has evolved into a system characterized by relatively weak feelings of love between husband and wife and extremely strong feelings of maternal love, a situation which supports the system’s allocation of roles. In the following pages we will see how the emphasis on the role of the mother was intensely praised by the nation during the war, and that the influence of this experience continues to be felt to this day. 3. The Advent of the Modern Housewife The birth of the modern housewife in Japan came in the Taisho period (1912–1926) as family incomes expanded and the new norms for women we have described were established. A class of families that could live on the income of one person had emerged, and the new norms led to a system in which men supplied productive labor and women reproductive labor. Women’s positive acceptance of this arrangement resulted in the creation of the housewife as a new special role. However, unlike the industrial revolution in Britain where most farming villages were broken up, about half of the working population of Japan was still employed in the extensive farming villages that remained. This limited the spread of the modern housewife to the cities. Unlike Britain where housewives were a mass presence across society, in Japan their appearance on a mass scale would have to wait for the next stage of social development, in which the contemporary housewife emerged. These regional and class limitations meant that housewives in Taisho Japan should only be viewed as part of the middle class living in large cities. They represented a mode of living with a new attitude toward

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household management. A new culture was being formed in response to the emergence of this lifestyle. 3.1. The Modern Housewife and a New View of the Family Specific emotional ties among the members are characteristic of the modern family. Japan was no exception, as new ideas came into play along with the emergence of the modern housewife. One of these was the idea of a “home” based on a modern view of romantic love. According to Takeshi Ishida (1975), the Japanese word “katei (家庭)” a translation of the English word “home,” came into regular use in the early 1890s. This can be seen in the names of magazines. In 1892 for example, Katei Zasshi (Home Magazine) was launched to help readers “create a harmonious and bright home.” Another started around the same time (1885) was Jogaku Zasshi (Women’s Education Magazine). Its editor, Zenji Iwamoto, a Christian educator, introduced his readers to the idea of a modern marriage system based on the ideal of romantic love between husband and wife. This concept of a home with human warmth and a life built around romantic love was for the most part unfamiliar to the Japanese. The Japanese household was first and foremost an economic unit and family ties were functional— based on a distribution of roles. Love was only rarely a consideration. The new views on the home and love had spread rather widely along with the emergence of the housewife by the beginning of the Taisho period. Kunio Yanagida, one of the most famous folklorists in Japan, offered commentary typical of observers of the day: “Home life includes little attention paid to a proper order between husband and wife, parents and children, and young and old.”24 A letter to a women’s magazine even remarked, “With no mother-in-law, no sister-in-law, it’s a city home shared by a couple of sweethearts.”25 The situation so described was not an impossibility. This type of description, of course, seems to contradict the description of home life as lacking in feelings of love between between husband and wife, but it is a case of comparing two entirely different things. Unlike earlier traditional family life, the urban middle-class home in the Taisho period seemed to be characterized by strong emotional ties between husband and wife. Compared to Western families of the same period, 24 This quotation was from Tamaki (1973). The original source was “Kunio Yanagida and Tokihiko Ofuji”; Sesoushi, Toyo Kezai Shinpo, 1943. 25 This is from a letter to the editor appearing in the 1907 May issue of Women’s World (Fujin Sekai) on the subject, “Ideals before Marriage and the Reality after Marriage.”



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however, these ties would appear to be quite weak. Either comparison would be fairly correct. Nevertheless, the ideal of romantic love (renai 恋愛) advocated by Zenji Iwamoto or the critic and poet Tokoku Kitamura and the type of household that was the aim of socialist thinker Toshihiko Sakai were essentially ideas of a world independent of and in conflict with the modern nationstate, which positioned the family as the basic unit and a society not inclined toward free or open manifestations of romantic love.26 However, this sense of being in conflict with the established order was not evident in the home life becoming commonplace along with the advent of the modern housewife. What developed was an emphasis on a “my home” or a “my-family-first” attitude that differed in a mostly passive way from the ideology of the nation-state as a family promoted by the ruling class.27 Resistance to the system amounted to no more than a bit of tension with the established order seen in certain articles by political journalists appearing in journals such as Fujin Koron (Women’s Views). We can think of this “my-home” point of view as an independent position supported by women who had accepted the idea of the good wife and wise mother. This outlook differed from the concept of the good wife and wise mother designed by the Education Ministry to be the ideological foundation for idea of the nation-state as family. We can perhaps point to it as an alternative source of the ideology of the good wife and wise mother. Actually, this tendency was strongly expressed in the ideas on the good wife and wise mother that were part of the private education for girls advocated by Jinzo Naruse.28 We can certainly say that this image of the home represented something new and was a source of ideas differing from the nationalist ideas being promoted. On the other hand, this opposition to government ideas remained passive. At its core it lacked any resistance

26 Toshihiko Sakai emphasized the reform of the household, which he saw as the most basic social unit, as the key to realizing socialism. In 1903 he founded Katei Zasshi (the same name as that of the earlier magazine cited above), in which he rejected both the view of the nation-state as a family under the imperial system and the negative philosophy of the home as a castle in which to enclose the family. Instead he advocated an open home facing toward society. 27 An article entitled “Home-First Rather Than Family-First” by Nagae Ikuta in the Fujin Koron in 1917 (Vol. 2, No. 11) explained that family life was moving away from being centered on the father as head of household and that smaller families centered on couples acting as citizens were emerging. 28 For example, Naruse famously posited three goals for women’s development: “As human beings, as women, and as members of the community.” (Of interest is an interview with Naruse appearing in the New York Times on November 11, 1912.).

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to national policy during the war, and it was easily co-opted. As we will later discuss, in the 1930s, very widely read women’s magazines such as Shufu no Tomo (Housewife’s Friend) and Fujin Kurabu (Women’s Club) became fervently nationalist in tone. 3.2. Duties of the Modern Housewife—Rational Household Management and Housework as Women’s Natural Occupation While reproductive labor would always be linked to work in farming families or families operating their own business, it became a separate field for the first time with the emergence of the modern housewife who lived in the city and did not have to work outside the home. It was at this time that reproductive labor itself clearly became an independent job. We have seen how the government-sponsored ideology of the good wife and wise mother included the idea that men should engage in production and women in reproduction, and, that among the masses, this allocation of roles was also accepted with little doubt or resistance by those accepting the my-home point of view (the idea that women should devote themselves to homemaking). Reproductive labor was positively accepted as women’s natural role. Of course there were those who rejected this—socialists, for example, and activists campaigning for women’s suffrage. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the number of such dissenters never grew significantly in those days. Accordingly, the idea that housekeeping was women’s natural occupation became embedded in the minds of the vast majority of women who became housewives. This idea found expression in such statements as the following, which were not at all unusual at the time: “As housewives, women should be ashamed of seeking ideas to help them reduce the labor involved in housework.” (Watanabe et al. 1984:150) The modern housewife felt that she should devote all her energy to reproductive labor, and that there was no other place where she should seek fulfillment. Rather than feeling that devotion to home and family was a means of self-fulfillment, it is probably more correct to say that they felt driven by necessity, the need to spend the great part of their lives on reproductive labor. Actually, a study conducted in the 1940s showed that housewives were spending more than ten hours a day on housework (Osaka City Life Science Research Institute (1944:83). In other words, it seemed perfectly natural that the modern housewife’s role was to be responsible for reproduction. It goes without saying that housework was different in those days. The day would start with building a fire for cooking; then water had to be



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fetched from an outside well. A dark, cold place was used for the kitchen to preserve foodstuffs. All of this meant constant bending down and standing back up. This toil could not have been very satisfying, from the standpoint of health or of spending time economically. In dealing with these conditions, modern housewives, in Japan as well as in other countries, were not bound by tradition. They took a new look at how housework could be handled. Housewives in Britain and America had long been involved in studies on streamlining housework, and their Japanese counterparts followed suit. A translation of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management had already been published early in the Meiji period, in 1876. In her translator’s introduction, Seiken Hozumi emphasized the merits of the wife helping her husband as a partner and the importance of dividing roles between men and women in civil society. The fact that the book was not widely distributed can be taken as an indication that modern housewives who would have read it had yet to emerge.29 Comparing this with the way streamlining housework thrived in the Taisho period helps us envision the types of changes that took place along with modernization. It was Motoko Hani who took the lead in promoting rationalization of housework (Saito 1978). Her literary efforts in this area began with Katei no Tomo (Friend of the Home) a women’s magazine she started in 1903. She continued this work in her later publication, Fujin no Tomo (Women’s Friend), launched in 1908. In the pages of these journals, which were aimed at housewives in families of the petit-bourgeois or salaried-employee class, she insisted that housework and home economics should be streamlined. Her ideal was a housewife able to lead a “wholesome life.” She described this vision as “a housewife living as an average citizen, owning a comfortable home, with resources set aside for financial security should her husband temporarily lose his job, able to provide an education for her children suited to their temperament and abilities, and with the means for a bit of spending on cultural pursuits. It would be best if housework could be handled without having to hire any help.”30 For Hani, a Christian, the Protestant virtues of diligence and frugality were the keys to “living as an average citizen.” As for home economics, she urged her readers to practice careful bookkeeping to eliminate waste and offered examples of budgets 29 Along with the Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, which was written for women, was another bestseller in Britain for men, Samuel Smiles’ Self Help. Publication of a translation (西国立志篇) in 1871 by Masanao Nakamura inspired the youth of that age to be strong advocates of social reform. 30 “A Healthy Life as an Average Citizen”; Fujin no Tomo, Vol. 3, No. 7 in 1910.

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with criteria for sensible spending for the middle-class families that had only recently come into existence. She advocated strict budgeting of time for each task, conducted surveys of time spent on domestic chores, and proposed keeping household diaries to ensure that time was rationally spent. Hani told her readers that it was best not to use a maid, but if one were hired, to establish a modern employer-employee relationship in which the helper was regarded as a professional rather than as a personal servant at the beck and call of the master. In that period, a temporary upsurge in the hiring of general domestic servants accompanied the arrival of the modern housewife and middle-class families with fixed incomes. An analysis of census data conducted by Kiyomi Morioka (1981) shows that in 1920 an ordinary Tokyo household of two or more included an average of 0.23 persons working as domestic help (national average was 0.06 persons). Combined with household employees in other professions, this brought the total to an average of 0.96 persons (national average was 0.23). In 1930, women engaged in domestic work accounted for nearly 10% of all working women. Also, a survey of graduates of girls’ high schools showed that 84.1% came from homes that had a maid (Omori 1981). It was also found that, although the maid’s social status was lower than the family’s, she was treated like a family member and provided with such benefits as a room, household goods and sewing and etiquette lessons. This data indicates that domestic employees were considered a necessity in the middle-class homes of the period. We can see that Motoko Hani was truly a pioneer in her advocacy of modern employment conditions for these workers. The advent of the modern housewife in Britain and the United States was accompanied by a move from live-in domestic help to employment of domestic workers who would commute from their own homes. Hani’s call for reform surely coincided with that trend, which was part of a broader change in family structures. There was a move away from the traditional household (ie) made up of various members, which was formed through an expansion of fictitious blood ties with household employees, to a new middle-class home centered on a married couple seeking a space that to a high degree would be shut off from the outside world. This latter type of home was another expression of the new mindset of the modern housewife. Another new development was the emergence of home economics as a field of study. Popular women’s magazines provided readers with a wide range of practical information on housework and related subjects. As nuclear families increasingly became the norm and as lifestyles became



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more westernized, modern housewives saw the need to shift from traditional practices and manners to new housework technologies and to apply new information. This stimulated a greater diffusion of ideas on streamlining housework. 3.3. The Culture Surrounding the Modern Housewife A unique culture arose around the modern housewife along with a new market for cultural goods. For the first time in history, women became the driving force for a fairly substantial part of mass culture. Knowledgeable modern housewives held up one wing of the cultural life of average citizens during the Taisho democracy. Women’s magazines in the Taisho period played a key role in this trend due to the scale of their readership which gave them great influence. A succession of magazines launched from the 1890s on included the above-mentioned Katei Zasshi, Nihon no Katei (Japanese Home) in 1895, Nihon Fujin (Japanese Women) in 1898, Jogaku Sekai (Women’s Education World) in 1901, and Fujin Kai (Women’s Circle) in 1902. As seen in the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun’s creation of a column on the home in 1900, the development of middle-school education for girls had led to housewives receiving a wide range of cultural information in print media. The circulation of these early magazines remained small, however, and with the exception of Motoko Hani’s Fujin no Tomo and Fujin Gaho (Ladies’ Illustrated News) (1905), most did not last very long. Circulation of those that survived increased dramatically, from tens of thousands to as high as a million readers, in the Taisho period. This gave the women’s magazines a truly mass character. Shufu no Tomo and Fujin Kurabu, launched in 1917 and 1920, respectively, were completely unlike Fujin Koron, which was launched in 1916 to provide political writing taking up causes favored by progressive intellectuals, socialists and activists for women’s rights. Fujin Koron took positions that were not bound by the patriarchal norms of the period. Shufu no Tomo and Fujin Kurabu, on the other hand, were designed to appeal to a broad readership by providing everyday, practical material. A newspaper ad for the first number of Shufu no Tomo listed feature stories extolling the role of the mother and the efficient, diligent housewife such as “A Mother of Three Doctors’—The Struggle of Mrs. Terao, a Widow, who Raised Three Children to Become PhDs”; “Easy, Economical Cooking”; “Five Secrets of Spending Money Wisely”; “How to Use Cosmetics as a Housewife Should”; “Economical Uses of Kindling and Charcoal”; and

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other “how-to” articles on cooking and household chores. Noteworthy in the magazine’s second number were articles such as “What I Admire about the Attitude of German Housewives” and “What I Admire about the Attitude of American Housewives.” These stories in praise of the “can-do spirit” of housewives in advanced countries were crafted with a sense of mission to enlighten Japanese housewives and encourage them to catch up. Other articles in this issue were aimed at urban families facing increasingly tight budgets that limited what they could do with their homes. Articles such as “How a Family of Six Can Live on 65 yen a Month” and “An Elementary School Teacher’s Household Budget of 26 yen” explained how families could make ends meet in tough times. Fujin Kurabu and Shufu no Tomo also came out with glittering New Year supplements, complete with diaries, proposed budgets and account books for economically efficient housekeeping, that won the “supplement contest” among magazines. These magazines left competitors in the dust, achieving nearly monopolistic market positions. Interestingly, the supplement competition continued throughout the post-war period. Rooted in the “my-home” philosophy, these popular journals for practical housewives briefly opposed ruling-class opinions on more than a few issues. In 1922, Shufu no Tomo used a visit to Japan by Margaret Sanger, leader of America’s birth control movement, as an occasion to aggressively advocate birth control. This was in direct opposition to the government’s militaristic policy exhorting women to “Give birth, and multiply (Umeyo Fuyaseyo).” Subsequently, pressure from the far right caused the magazine to alter its stance, and by the 1930s it had discontinued espousing birth control. This process was an indication of the rising concern about birth control among the housewives of the period. The magazine provides very  interesting examples of the fact that mothers wanted to focus on educating the children they were raising.31 In any event, the “my-home” trend supporting the philosophy of the good wife and wise mother failed to take any long-term, steadfast positions that ran counter to government policies. In addition, the influence of this new urban culture began to be seen in farming villages, where the standard living was falling further behind 31 In the field of demography, various points have been raised about changes in Japan’s fertility, but the writer feels that the fertility of Japanese families basically has been on a continuous downward trend since the Taisho period. Within this period we have seen two counter examples of birth rate increases—one during the 15 years of war, when the government pushed its “Give birth, multiply” policy, and the other during the post-war baby boom.



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that of the cities, and concern was rising about improving rural life. It was against this background that the first issue of Ie no Hikari (Brightness of Home) in 1925 was published. It gained a wide readership as a magazine  to be enjoyed by all members of the family. Naturally enough, many of its articles were aimed at housewives leading the way in home improvement. The 1930s were a period of economic devastation in rural communities. An effort was made to promote recovery by raising housewives’ awareness of the need for economical home management, and the magazine provided articles with proposals for eliminating wasteful, outmoded practices (Itagaki 1978). The provision of this kind of information led to a cultural shift and a stream of products that contributed to rationalization in the rural villages as well as in the large cities. Other changes included more leisure activities as an urban culture was formed. The opening of Mitsukoshi Department Store in 1904 marked the start of an era in which “Today the Imperial Theatre, tomorrow Mitsukoshi” became a common catch phrase reflecting the atmosphere of the times. An analysis of Tokyo’s bustling Asakusa and Ginza districts shows how modern housewives played a key role in the development of a thriving urban culture (Yoshimi 1987). 3.4. Salarymen and Professional Women The forms of work slowly began to change as the country headed into the 1920s. The salaryman appeared as the backbone of the white collar workforce employed by government agencies and large corporations. He was accompanied by women in an expanding range of occupations, from factory work to new professions. There was a boom in construction of railways needed to carry them to work, often from suburbs developed by railroad companies, and the rush hour was born.32 The following quotations richly evoke the social environment of the salaryman in those days: The salarymen have a typical daily routine that starts with the rush-hour commute, followed by morning tasks, a short lunch break at noon, leaving the office at four p.m., and a rush-hour return trip home. This is their unvarying program. The rush hour is like a symphony giving one a portrait of the throngs of people in our large modern metropolises. . . . Bunzo Enami, a teacher in Tokyo’s Middle School No. 1, transferred from Aikawa Middle

32 The basic railroad network of contemporary Tokyo was constructed in this period before the arrival of motorization.

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chapter three School on Sado, an isolated island in the Japan Sea. The most trying part of his day is the rush hour. He fully expresses this to the writer. One can barely breathe in the packed trolley cars, he says. The air is filled with every imaginable smell—worst of all is the odor of pickled radish. The stuffiness and foul air make the commute unbearable. Getting to work is the most trying part of the day before actual work even starts, and getting home is a struggle leaving them exhausted when they return after eight hours of work. They are expected to read technical literature or high-class magazines in the evenings. This is a grueling routine, and they don’t want any program outside their regular one. Most of them manage to relax with low-class entertainment magazines or everyday amusements (Nii 1929). Intellectually and emotionally, salarymen are in a graver situation than those engaged in physical work—the traditional proletariat—but I am yet to hear of any move on their part toward solidarity or organizing. I might have heard of some sort of small salaryman league, but basically one never hears of government employees, bank clerks, or even newspaper journalists, who are in the most desperate straits, uniting to storm the bourgeois headquarters. Relatively speaking, salarymen get smaller raises when the cost of living rises. And when times get really bad, you don’t see their salary adjusted. Instead, their allowances dwindle, and many face losing their jobs.  That being said, when it comes to low wages, the conditions faced by the traditional proletariat are incomparably worse. At least salarymen receive a monthly salary. The laborer gets paid by the day. Of course, some whitecollar workers such as post office or railway clerks get paid even less than laborers. . . . But the upper tier of salarymen rise almost to the level of the small business class. . . . Carpenters, who have long been paid the highest wages, currently receive a daily wage of about 3 yen 70 sen (3.70 yen). A gardener gets much less, 2.50 yen per day. . . . If carpenters, who are in the vanguard among the workers, work all month without a day off, they are lucky to make 100 yen. And they will face days when there is no work and therefore no pay. There is no pay if they get sick. If he has one, the carpenter will have to support his family on the income he can expect each month. Unskilled laborers live a life in which they are not sure they will be able to eat every day. Last spring, a newspaper reported that the daily pay for unemployed laborers sweeping snow off the train tracks in Tomikawa-cho at three o’clock in the morning was 1.20 yen. That is a miserable way to have to live. The life of a salaryman is not like that. He wears a suit and looks a bit stylish. He knows what good food tastes like. Once in a while he can take a little trip. With the exception of those trying to support large families on low pay, salarymen cannot say they have difficulty surviving. If they are careful, they can even save a little money, and with just a little ambition they can find a way to eke out an existence. But, that being said, a slave of the bourgeoisie is still a slave (Toshiro Ubukata, 1923).

This was what the new lifestyle of the salaryman, the typical partner of the modern housewife, was like.



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What about employed, working women? They began appearing in the large cities in the Taisho and early Showa period. Census data shows that women accounted for 36.6% of the labor force in 1920, and a lower 33.0% by 1930. By industry, during the same period, the percentage of female workers in agriculture and forestry slipped from 62.4 to 60.4% (although the absolute number increased from 6.38 to 6.40 million); and the percentage of women in industrial work dropped from 15.5 to 13.5%. These changes showed a slight downward trend (percentage-wise) away from women’s traditional employment in factories and farms. A slight shift toward urban work could also be seen, as the percentage engaged in commerce increased from 10.1 to 13.8%. The percentage employed in household domestic work rose from 5.2 to 6.6% (533,000 to 697,000); and the percentage in public work or that were self-employed edged upward from 3.0 to 3.3%. In the cities, a clear trend away from employment occurred in the 1930s, however, as 21.0% of the women living in cities were in the labor force, compared to 36.0% of the women in rural or suburban districts, where 77% of the population lived. The types of jobs most sought-after in those days were office work, telephone operator, bus or streetcar conductor, department store clerks, and typists—all jobs mainly open to younger women. Women with a higher level of education entered such professions as elementary school teaching, magazine journalism, nursing, or medicine. Generally these women came from families headed by salaried workers with higher levels of education. However, the number of years women in professions continued working tended to be very short. Many would work for a while to supplement their family’s budget before they left to get married. Surveys of large numbers of professional women conducted by the Tokyo and Osaka city governments in the early Showa period show rising concern about conditions working women faced (Tokyo city government (1931), Central Employment Office (1927)). Looking at the sources of dissatisfaction of survey participants, we find the following complaints: “We are unfairly punished after rejecting unwanted advances”; and “The egoism of the men in the company is very irritating. Instead of ability, the men loudly praise good looks and give the pretty women more work and promotions. The men’s subjective attitude based on likes and dislikes is very hard to take.” (Central Employment Office (1927:55) “The bank employees make suggestive remarks and behave badly” (Tokyo city government (1931:270). These complaints tell us that sexual harassment was part of the work environment in modern offices right from the start.

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4. The Modern Housewife in Wartime Conditions—Motherhood Emphasized Once Again We have discussed how motherhood tends to be emphasized in Japan’s modern patriarchy. The government stressed the need for motherhood more strongly than ever in the 1930s as the country turned to a system designed for war. Following Kano (1983), we will present an overview of how this unfolded. Rural villages were devastated by the hardships of the great depression of the Showa period, resulting in the destruction of the material base for the traditional household (ie). It was with a keen sense of crisis that the government stepped up efforts to preserve the traditional household. The “affectionate mother (慈母)” was extolled rather than the “stern father (厳父)” in a great propaganda campaign launched to promote motherhood in 1931. In March 6 of that year, the traditional Empress’ Birthday holiday was changed to Mother’s Day. The Japan Federation of Women’s Associations was established on the same day. The birth of the Crown Prince in December of the following year provided another excellent opportunity for the government to celebrate motherhood. The thinking of Raicho Hiratsuka was central to the first debate focusing on the question of protecting motherhood in Japan. Pointing out that motherhood should be linked to women’s rights since it was key to the overall growth of humanity, she strongly criticized a society that only valued the production of things. By the early 1930s, the government was promoting the ideal of motherhood as “a mother for the military nation.” This was not motherhood for humanity as a whole; it was presented as a uniquely Japanese custom. It was not advocated as an extension of human rights, but as a call to women to dedicate themselves to the nation-state. The government dispatched large numbers of women, most of them young and unmarried, to work in industry to meet the country’s need to mobilize labor power. Protecting motherhood became a special priority when mothers went to work.33 However, the state promoted motherhood—producing more soldiers—as the priority task. If there were a choice, women were urged to bear children rather than work. As represented by the work of the Women’s National Defense Association, women were expected to give their full devotion to the troops sent to the front and 33 It was at this time that women’s associations, having met defeat in efforts to win women’s right to vote, switched the target of their activity to protection of motherhood. Legislation was passed to protect mothers and children, and in 1931, the Senju Food



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to defend the home front as workers or as parents and caregivers of an increasing number of children. Each of these tasks was part of service as “a mother for the military nation”—an extension of the required role of mothers. In this way an image of mothers was clearly formed and strengthened by the state. The broad base of housewives actively serving in the Women’s National Defense Association became a symbol of this role (Fujii 1985). It was an image of a special role for women that would be accepted by modern housewives. Going through the processes traced above, the modern housewife became the foundation for the Japanese form of modern patriarchy, a system based on the role of the mother in a very close relationship with her children rather than a relationship of love between man and wife. The reproductive labor undertaken by housewives in today’s society first took on an independent existence in the period we have described. The contemporary housewife was formed in the mold of the early modern housewife, and we can see that the Japanese form of patriarchy also took shape in the modern period. Although this system had a close connection to the Confucian past, the old philosophy was reinterpreted to meet the needs of the modern age, and it was this reinterpretation that led to the construction of the current system. Again, the relatively weak love between husband and wife and the importance placed on the special responsibilities comprising the role of the mother are the special features of Japanese modern patriarchy that set it apart from the forms of patriarchy seen in the West. Yamamura (1971) has given us a splendid description of the virtually religious significance Japanese society gives to “the mother.” We must remember that this way of thinking has not existed since ancient times. It came into being along with the norms of modern Japanese patriarchy, and it gained wide acceptance as part of the mode of life adopted by the modern housewife. The development of this mentality not only accompanied the development of the modern housewife, it also became a mechanism controlling the actions of the housewives of today. Products Research Institute became the first entity under Japan’s special motherhood protection system to grant women workers menstrual leave (Takenaka 1983:77). One can describe the protection of motherhood in this period as an effort undertaken by the state to resolve the contradiction between industry’s need for labor power, on the one hand, and the need for a patriarchal system that would ensure the existence of households and the reproduction of a new generation of imperial subjects, on the other. The expansion of the gap between women’s and men’s wages during the Showa depression (Takenaka 1983:76) should be viewed as a strengthening of the system of gender-based role allocation, in which men represented productive labor and women reproductive labor, rather than an indication that gender discrimination itself intensified as Takenaka contends.

CHAPTER FOUR

CONTEMPORARY PATRIARCHY AND THE HOUSEWIFE IN JAPAN Following our discussion of the birth of the modern housewife in Chapter 3, this chapter will examine the birth of the contemporary housewife in postwar Japanese society and the transitions in her situation, including the great changes that took place during the country’s period of high economic growth. We will examine from various angles the problems housewives face today and attempt a coherent explanation of the nature of these problems. To project the course that Japanese housewives can be expected to travel, we will also look at conditions in other capitalist societies in East Asia—a subject taken up in detail in the following two chapters. The factors leading to the development of the contemporary housewife were industrialization, the transformation of patriarchy, and changes in the meaning housewives attached to their household duties, which has led to new contradictions. The meaning that the agent, the housewife  herself, attaches to her role is a factor because her consciousness in the process of social change is a key element. How the agent responds to the paradigm she is given within the social framework becomes an independent and significant variable. Married women’s participation in the labor force has frequently been explained only in terms of economic variables such as labor market conditions and household economic needs. Even though Marxist feminists bring patriarchy into the mix of variables, all too often they assume an agent envisioned as a dependent factor. 1. Postwar Economic Growth and New Forms of Industrialization A vast amount of work, primarily in economics, has been produced on the entirety of Japan’s period of high economic growth, and a survey of this literature is beyond the scope of this book. Instead, we will confine our discussion to factors directly related to the contemporary housewife. Among the forces contributing to the emergence of the contemporary housewife are “push” factors, such as the conversion of household needs into a giant market, represented by the diffusion of electrical household

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goods, and “pull” factors enabling housewives to work outside the home such as labor policies and transitions in the makeup of the labor force. We will also discuss the development of a new urban lifestyle that led to a huge expansion of expenses housewives had to meet. 1.1. The Spread of a Contemporary Lifestyle A giant market supplying household goods was created during the period of postwar industrialization. This was the basic condition that generated the birth of the contemporary housewife. In 1963, a government commission took up the subject of “Optimum Use of Women’s Labor Power (Fujin rodoryoku no katsuyo).” The following points were raised in one member’s remarks during an interpellation session: “A striking rise has occurred in the level of education and in women’s desire to work; at the same time home life has become modernized and the birthrate is dropping. This, in turn, has lightened housewives’ burdens related to housework and rearing children.” This was a good description of how new conditions were already in place for the birth of the contemporary housewife. We will turn to a simple examination of these conditions. (1) The Marketization of Housework Wide acceptance of electrical household appliances was an important indicator of the birth of the contemporary housewife. A wealth of statistics illustrates the diffusion of these goods. Using a diffusion rate of 60–70% as a standard, we can see that, as shown in Figure 4.1, the diffusion rate for washing machines and refrigerators had reached this level by the mid-1960s. The 1963 national White Paper on the People’s Livelihoods (Kokumin Seikatsu Hakusho) pointed to a survey of household budgets indicating that expenditures on furniture and fixtures appeared to be reaching an equalized level, even among different income groups. The emerging new lifestyle included: public water supply systems replacing the well and the pump; the traditional kitchen, a dimly lit room with an earthen floor, being superseded by a bright electronic system kitchen; processed and frozen foods replacing seasonal foods; the old kitchen stove and kerosene lamp giving way to gas and electrical appliances; and readymade garments were replacing made-to-order clothes. It was as though consumers were guided by the slogan “Shopping is a virtue.” People were burying their homes in an avalanche of goods. Middle-class households that once employed maids to do housework were now relying on electrical



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan101 Washing machine

100 90

Black-andwhite TV

Rate of diffusion (%)

80 70 60 50

Refrigerator

40 30

Vacuum cleaner

20 10 0

Color TV 1957

59

61 63 65 67 69 71 73 75 Study Group on High Economic Growth ed. (1985a:67)

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79 Year

Figure 4.1. Rate of diffusion of household appliances.

Source: Commission to Study Period of High Economic Growth [1985a: 67].

appliances. Consumer goods had become the “housewife’s servants.”1 The housewives of that period were becoming the targets for sales of goods being mass-produced in a new wave of industrialization. A vast market was created for electrical appliances and consumer goods. The combined effects of capitalist industrialization and national policy led to the development of another market to meet household needs. This was the establishment of facilities for early childhood education. In response to a movement calling for their development, the numbers of nursery schools and kindergartens began to sharply rise in the 1960s. The number of children in these facilities roughly tripled from 1960 to 1980. The percentage of children aged five enrolled in kindergarten rose from not more than 31% in 1960 to 64.4% in 1976, a year in which another 25.4% were going to nursery schools. This means that, combined, approximately 90% of all five-year-olds were attending one or the other of this type of school. 1 Census data indicates that, in 1930, 780,000 men or women were employed as domestic helpers. By 1955 this number had fallen to 350,000. By 1960 it was 310,000, and by 1965, it

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These markets provided alternatives to traditional housework and child-rearing, and as a new urban lifestyle was formed, the number of persons making up the family was greatly reduced as birthrates dropped and nuclear families became the norm. All this added up to a great lessening of the burden of housework for married women.2, 3 (2) Urban Life and Its Costs The growth of an urban lifestyle set the stage for the emergence of the contemporary housewife. One key element in this was that big-city life gave housewives opportunities to enter another labor market, which enabled them to move away from only engaging in reproductive  labor. In Chapter 3 we traced how industrialization in the early modern period brought workers’ families to the cities. In the period of high economic growth, the urban lifestyle that had developed expanded  throughout society. People, who up until then had lived in smaller communities where local organizations or extended family ties were the basis for various mutual assistance networks, learned to depend solely on their wages to make ends meet. On top of this, household appliances and various other goods became essential to maintaining the new lifestyle. For middle-class families, educational expenses typified the urban lifestyle. The growth of this cost made boosting the family’s cash income that much more important. Even though real wages of workers in key industries had increased, they were not sufficient to cover all the costs of this sought-after lifestyle. The need to supplement family incomes would help drive housewives into the labor market.

had plunged all the way to 190,000. The numbers of live-in maids also fell dramatically during the same period. Their numbers for each of the same years were 670,000, 310,000, 240,000, and 120,000, respectively. This can be viewed as a transition in the character of the Japanese household, from the traditional ie system in which the household was an economic unit, including members that were not blood relatives, to a more intimate and exclusive organization. 2 We used the total fertility rate (TFR) used in population statistics, an index based on the number of children one woman has in her lifetime. In 1950, the birthrate calculated this way was 3.65 births per women. By 1960, this index had fallen to 2.0; in 1975 it was 1.91. 3 The national census began counting members in each household in 1920. Until 1955 this number averaged nearly five members per household, and it dropped sharply thereafter. In 1960 it was 4.54; in 1965, 4.05; and in 1970, 3.69. By 1975, it had plunged to 3.44.



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan103 1.2. Labor Policies and Transitions in the Workforce

What were the forces within the industrialization process drawing housewives into industrial employment—activity outside the scope of their specialized role in reproductive labor? Against a background in which annual output from the nation’s mining and manufacturing industries had reached a level approximately double that of the prewar peak, the government’s White Paper on the Economy in 1955 was able to declare, “This is no longer a postwar period.” Indeed it wasn’t. The early 1950s were the start of Japan’s period of high economic growth. From 1955 to 1973, real GNP rose by a factor of 5.4, and the country’s mining and manufacturing production index was 10.3 times higher at the end of this eighteen-year period than it was at the start. This was an example of rapid growth unseen anywhere else in the world. To study the conditions the contemporary housewife was facing, it is convenient to describe the latter half of the 1950s through the first half of the 1960s as the “early period” of high economic growth and the subsequent years up until the first Oil Shock as the “latter period.” The data on diffusion of household electronic goods shown in the graph in Figure 4.1 reflect the fact that the basic conditions for the emergence of the contemporary housewife were being created in the early period of high economic growth. Hints of the contemporary lifestyle were taking shape during this early period, but an important feature of the housewife’s lifestyle, her entry into the labor market, had yet to fully appear. Female labor was of course extensively used in farming villages, and the percentage of women working on family farms was high. However, women accounted for a very low percentage of the nation’s workers, and it was primarily young unmarried women making up the female component of the workforce. The national census of 1955 reported that only 16.5% of women aged fifteen and over were employed outside the home or family farm.4 Within this group, married women, who had accounted for 9% in 1950, accounted for a mere 15% in 1955. A graph of the growth of employment of female urban workers during this period does not trace the “M” pattern we see today. Instead it shows an early-age peak. 4 Subsequently, in 1984, for the first time, the number of employed women outnumbered the number of women working exclusively in the household by 20,000. By 1993, the percentage of women aged fifteen and over employed outside the home was 36.3%, much higher than the 29.9% working exclusively in the household.

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The extremely high demand for labor during the initial rapid expansion of manufacturing was mainly for young people who had just finished school, and this need was mainly met by a flow of workers from primary industries. Middle-school graduates were looked upon as the “Golden Eggs” of this early period. This kind of talk reflected the expectation that young workers would swell the ranks of the unskilled laborers required in the ongoing industrial expansion. By the mid-1960s, important changes had occurred in the way the labor force was being formed, including a tightening of the supply side of the labor market for younger workers. A primary cause was a sharp drop in the birthrate, which had continued through the mid-1950s. Also, the fact that large corporations were seeking high school graduates as their core workers helped spur a rise in the level of education being attained by the nation’s youth. With potential workers staying in school longer, the pool of those available to meet the demand for unskilled labor had begun to shrink. A basic Education Ministry study on the nation’s schools (Gakko Kihon Chosa) showed that, combined, the supply of labor accounted for by middle-school and high school graduates peaked at 1.43 million in 1966 and began to fall thereafter. In 1968 this figure dropped to 1.33 million. By 1970 it had plunged to 1.09 million. This entirely new situation prompted the government to seek a new labor policy. Policy development, which was based on a series of income-doubling plans, included the deliberations of an Economic Council that, in 1963, formally addressed the issue of “Developing Individual Capabilities in the Process of Economic Development.” The Council projected that the country would need the full use of middle-aged and older workers, and that a mobile workforce was required, one that could be shifted from area to area and from industry to industry. It also proposed an aggressive utilization of women workers. The gist of the proposal related to this point was that women with a high school education should be utilized, that labor should be managed without distinction between men and women employees, and that future legislation should be enacted to guarantee this type of equality. In the event, what actually transpired in the course of the period of high economic growth was the utilization of married women as unskilled labor in place of younger workers. This was made possible by mechanization. The expansion of labor-market demand for women workers was also driven by large growth in service-sector industries. From the latter half of the 1960s on, industry’s need for labor was the key factor pulling women into the workforce.



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan105 2. Formation of New Patriarchal Norms

New patriarchal norms gradually began to appear in response to the changes brought about by industrialization. The modern form of patriarchy that underpinned the emergence of the modern housewife was based on a system of gender role allocation in which men were expected to engage in productive labor and women were to exclusively engage in reproductive labor. In terms of basic structure, contemporary Japanese patriarchy does not greatly differ from the early modern form. How­ ever, the allowances made to enable housewives to enter the labor force constitute an important difference. The demand for labor surged as the economy expanded, and changes in household life had an impact on patriarchy. Despite the important influence of economic forces on patriarchy, we can say that the patriarchal system in Japanese society acted as an independent force in determining which of the wife’s particular roles in reproductive labor were to be preserved and the ways in which women were to be allowed to participate in productive labor. New economic forces and primitive labor relations in the first stage of industrialization led to severe exploitation and the lowest possible wages. On the other hand, patriarchy was a force demanding the maintenance of existing gender-based distributions of power and allocations of roles, one manifested in efforts to protect specific forms of the family. State policy became a form of mediation resolving the contradiction between these two forces, one for a particular form of family life and the other for a particular form of labor. 2.1. Japan’s Contemporary Patriarchy (1) Allowing Housewives to Enter the Workforce The allocation of gender roles in which men perform productive labor and women reproductive labor corresponds to a separation of the physical places, the workplace and the home, where production and reproduction take place, respectively. This suggests a potential division of domains, one for men and one for women. In the next chapter we will see how strict norms are applied to implement such a division of spheres in South Korea. In Japan, this division is not as strict, even in urban households. In South Korea one sees conduct that indicates that urbanization has led to traditional norms being applied—norms that are in line with those applied to upper-class (yangban) women. One can liken this to traditional norms of Japanese farming

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families surviving to a certain extent in the cities when it comes to allowing women to work outside the home. In Japan, the marketization of housework has led to a shortening of reproductive labor time that has allowed women to enter the workforce— to the extent that it does not interfere with their role in reproduction. This situation is reflected in the fact that, frequently, husbands give their wives permission to work outside the home only with the provision that it will not mean housework will be neglected. While this type of condition might be seen by some as a sign that no real change of the patriarchal norm has taken place, the fact that housewives have been allowed to advance into the sphere of productive labor is a significant change. When we study the example of South Korea it will become clear that it is not the case that women will automatically become a source of labor power as industrialization progresses. Simply put, industrialization itself is not the sole determining factor in women’s economic role. Patriarchy also functions as an independent variable. (2) Emphasis on the Mother’s Role In the previous chapter we discussed how, within women’s role in reproduction, the role of the mother was particularly emphasized in the course of Japan’s modernization. This characteristic of modern patriarchy continues to this day. Japanese fathers’ lives were all but completely tied up with their work during the period of high economic growth. The men who passionately devoted their lives to their companies were labeled “intense employees” (moretsu shain) or “company human beings.” For their families, the existence of the working father seemed to have only one purpose—to bring home the pay envelope to help raise the family to a higher standard of living. As a family member actually interacting with his wife and children, the father’s presence tended to be very weak. This reinforced the importance of the mother in the household, particularly her childraising role. In 1964, a government-established Council on Issues Pertaining to Women and Youth (Fujin Shonen Shingikai) released a statement that included the following remark: In making the most effective use of women’s labor … the nation must give careful consideration to women’s special characteristics and take pains to ensure that their family role as mothers and their other household functions are not harmed by employment outside the home (Roudoushou Shokugyou Antei Kyoku, Ministry of Labor, Employment Stabilization Bureau, 1966: 166).



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The government carefully studied recommendations suggesting parttime employment and then having women return to the workforce after they had reached middle age. Here we see a clear example of the state’s concern about the reproduction of the next generation of workers. The government sought to ensure that a stable supply of mainstay male workers would be provided. The goal was to assure that the role of women in reproduction, particularly their role as mothers be safeguarded. When it came to shouldering the costs entailed in caring for its sources of labor, including children and the elderly, the government was passive at best during the period of high economic growth. The approach adopted was to have family members make every effort to help one another as they traditionally had done. It goes without saying that mothers were placed at the core of such a system of family dependence. Although the policy toward women was not placed in an ideological framework the way it was during the war years, the norms applied promoted patriarchal values. It is noteworthy that, in 1958, the government stipulated in its Middle School Instructional Guideline (Chugakko Gakushu Shidou Youryou) that the content of home economics courses be different for boys and girls. In subsequent years, home economics courses were only offered to girls.5 As seen in the discussions of the labor policies described above, the state was aggressively promoting its vision of norms to govern family life. These norms were strongly reinforced by popular culture and mass media such

5 In 1946, immediately after the end of the war, the GHQ Civil Information and Education Bureau (CIE) directed that three conditions be met for the home economics curriculum: that home arts and sewing courses be separate, that these courses would not be considered technical courses, and that they would not be courses only for girls. The policy was that these courses would be required for fifth-grade and sixth-grade male and female elementary students together, and that in high school, technical courses, home economics, and work-related courses would be electives freely chosen by the students, and that, officially at least, they would be open to both boys and girls. At that time this curriculum was called “Technology and Home Economics,” with science and technology being emphasized for boys and housewife training being emphasized for girls. By 1960, four units of “General Home Economics” were, as a rule, required for girls. By 1970, all girls were required to complete four units. In those days the model image of the home and the housewife presented was of a woman who would utilize her free time working outside the home while managing the household. However, when her children were still very young, she would stay at home to care for them. This model mother would then return to work after the children were raised. This was an accurate portrait of the lifestyle of women during the period of high economic growth (Miyoko Watanabe 1984: 172–7). Much later, in 1989, the Ministry of Education made Home Economics a required course for both boys and girls, which means that separate gender roles were an assumption guiding education policies for a period of forty years.

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as magazines and television, which created an “artificial environment” used to convince women to accept the values being pushed.6 3. How the Agent Has Responded How did the housewives of the period react to the updated, contemporary form of patriarchy? Compared to the housewife of the earlier modern period, the contemporary housewife found herself being given more decision-making power in regard to her surroundings. This means housewives’ actions in response to the adjusted norms cannot be explained without examining the meaning they attached to them. Unlike their counterparts in the early part of the century, contemporary housewives were able to make meaningful lifestyle choices. Here we will attempt to explain how the development of the contemporary housewife took place and how her entry into the labor market unfolded. The responses of these agents to the new paradigms provide us with a key to understanding the process. 3.1. Reduction of Time Needed for Housework We have described how the progress of industrialization led to the creation of a giant market supplying products to meet household needs. Contemporary housewives began to realize that money, other people, and devices could be used to reduce the housework that had taken up most of the day of the housewives of the previous generation. As they became fully aware of the new possibilities, they also saw a substantial increase in employment opportunities for women. It was only natural that they would calculate what earnings from work outside the home would mean financially. A certain amount of work would bring them a certain amount of money. At the same time, the rise in the educational level being attained by women opened up opportunities to engage in work other than the simple jobs on production lines that had once been the only type of choice available. Women learned that self-realization was possible in career paths other than that of a full-time housewife. It was possible to substitute 6 A striking example of this effort to push the image of marriage and home life as warm and loving was the “Michi” boom created by the mass media in the late 1950s. “Michi,” a term of endearment, referred to Princess Michiko, Michiko Shoda, an attractive woman from a non-royal, bourgeois family who married the Crown Prince in 1959. Another example was the broadcasting on Japanese TV of lighthearted American programs (sitcoms) that portrayed happy middle-class housewives and warm family life.



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money for housework. Housewives also saw many other women earning an income from outside work. They began to recognize that the work they were doing in the home was a form of labor, but it was labor they were not being compensated for. This realization was accompanied by a feeling of being deprived. The complaint that no value was attached to the work they were devoting their lives to, that the work of a housewife was nothing more than a secondary occupation, began to be heard. 7 These perceptions are the basis for the various forms of dissatisfaction with the life of a housewife, which we will discuss later. The development of housework into a market does not automatically mean an immediate reduction of time spent on homemaking chores. This process is mediated by the reaction of the agent—her recognition that housework is labor and her decision to reduce the labor time involved are necessary. As described in Chapter 2, this is how the housework market is linked to the reduction of labor time used for housework. A study by the Women and Youth Bureau of the Ministry of Labor, “Study of the Labor Time Spent on Housework,” conducted in 1949 found that housewives spent 186 minutes per day on cooking and 146 minutes on sewing. Altogether they were spending 10 hours and 16 minutes a day on household chores. A 1955 Bureau study indicated a reduction to 9 hours and 2 minutes. Then an NHK study, “Citizens’ Time and Daily Life,” indicated that the amount of labor time housewives were spending on housework had already been reduced to 7 hours and 12 minutes in 1960. Subsequently the trend was 6 hours and 59 minutes in 1965; 7 hours and 57 minutes in 1970; and 7 hours and 47 minutes in 1973. We will later discuss the reasons for the rising tendency around 1970. A breakdown of how the housework time was spent shows that, after 1970, the time spent on cooking remained at nearly the same level, a bit less than three hours. However, the diffusion of ready-made garments greatly reduced the need for sewing and knitting because the need to spend hours on painstaking unfastening, then sewing and knitting, to wash old-style clothing was eliminated. Today, sewing and knitting is more of a hobby than a chore. In 1985, the percentage of women engaged in this activity was 18%, and on average, housewives were spending only about nineteen minutes a day on it. 7 In addition to Ayako Ishigaki’s “Concept of Housewife, as a Secondary Occupation (主婦という第二職業論),” another article in Ueno, ed. 1982), “Let’s Pay Wages for Housework (家事労働に賃金を),” also reflects the period when it was being insisted that housework was labor.

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The typical pattern accompanying the marketization of housework has been a reduction of labor time used for household chores. Unlike the housewives of the modern period, contemporary housewives no longer find their days completely absorbed by housework and child-raising. To a certain extent they now have free time in their daily lives. Combined with the trend toward having less children and a longer life expectancy, this leeway in terms of time has led to a transition in women’s life cycle. The margin of free time gained each day has become a measure of freedom in their lives. 3.2. Tendency for Role of Housewife in Reproduction to Persist Although the dissatisfaction felt by housewives was fairly widespread, strong sentiment persisted, even among housewives themselves, in favor of keeping the patriarchal norms. A 1987 public opinion poll on women’s issues conducted by the Prime Minister’s Office found that 37% of the women surveyed were in agreement, and 32% were opposed to the opinion that “Men should work and women should be homemakers.” Results vary somewhat from survey to survey. It is noteworthy that in a 1984 survey, 43.3% of the respondents aged twenty to twenty-four and 52.1% of those aged twenty-five to twenty-nine were against the above opinion.  In the 1987 survey the percentage of women in their twenties who were opposed fell to 39.8%. This was an indication that future surveys would not necessarily find an increase in the percentage opposed to this idea. In 1992, the Prime Minister’s Office conducted another survey of men and women aged twenty and above, on the question of “Male-Female Equality.” The opinion was worded a bit differently: “Husbands should work outside the home, and wives should take care of the household.” Overall, 60.1% were in agreement, including 55.6% of the women respondents. The percentage of women opposed was only 38.3%. It was striking that a high 66.0% of the housewives who were not working were in agreement with the opinion, while 52.8% of the women who were working were opposed. In recent surveys, the percentage of respondents opposing this type of opinion has topped the percentage in agreement. In a 2007 public opinion poll on gender equality conducted by the Cabinet Office (男女共同参画に 関する世論調査), 39.9% of the women respondents agreed and 56.9% disagreed. Among the men, 50.7% were in agreement, and 46.2% disagreed. Among the housewives, 46.8% were in agreement, and 49.6%



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disagreed. These results may be indicative of a change in public opinion. However, while studies have found that housework is considered to be labor, childcare by itself, rather than being seen as labor, continues to be regarded as a “service of love.” Of course no one wants to regard childcare as merely labor. On the other hand, baby-sitting has become an occupation in the U.S., where, to some extent, it is possible to use money as a substitute for handling childcare oneself. The marketization of childcare is conceivable. In Japan, the thinking tends to be that being removed from the immediate presence of the child amounts to a lack of affection. An international comparative study of the family and children conducted in 1994 found that, in response to the opinion that “Couples should not divorce if they have children,” a much higher percentage of Japanese respondents were in agreement than were American respondents. And while not as high as Korean respondents at that time, 70% of Japanese respondents agreed with the feeling that “Even if I wanted a separation, when I think of my children, I could not do it.” This percentage was much higher than that of the Western respondents. These results can be considered a reflection of the feeling in Japan that the parent-child relationship takes precedence over the relationship between husband and wife. This situation in Japan in which the mother cannot bear to be separated from her child, even for a short period, can be cited as a reflection of very strong acceptance of the importance placed on the role of the mother. This tendency is not unrelated to the tilt toward stressing the importance of motherhood frequently seen among feminists in Japan. In Chapter 3 we discussed how concerns about family finances and the family line interfered with a full expression of love between husband and wife in Japan, but strong feelings for one’s children developed very easily. It is true that, unlike the period of the modern housewife, the large migration to the cities that took place during the period of high economic growth and the resulting physical separation of young adults from their parents led Japan into a new age of marriage based on romantic love. However, the form of role allocation in which “men equal productive labor and women equal reproductive labor” was preserved, and within the confines of this system, exchanges of deep feelings between husbands and wives were rare. This unchanging characteristic of husband-wife relations is symbolized by a popular advertising phrase, “It is good if your husband is robust and out of the house (亭主元気で留守がいい).” This situation explains why mothers will often make their children the object of deep emotional feelings and will seek self-fulfillment in raising them.

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This tendency toward close attachments between mothers and their children is only strengthened by the absence of the fathers from the home. This was shown in a 1979 public opinion survey of women’s issues, in which 56% of the women respondents said “My children or my grandchildren” in response to a question asking what gave their lives meaning. Children tend to become the object of almost all expressions of emotional feelings on the part of housewives. Signs that this psychology becomes a type of social pathology can be found in expressions such as “education mamas” used to describe over-zealous mothers. “Boys with a mother complex” is used to describe neurotic boys; in extreme cases it is a reference to incestuous behavior. The account presented in the previous two sections shows the contradictory meanings contemporary Japanese housewives attach to their own reproductive labor. We first described the emergence of the feeling that housework is “labor” and an outward-looking attitude similar to that of contemporary American housewives. Then we saw how these attitudes conflict with their still strong acceptance of reproductive labor as, above all, their work—just as the previous generations of modern housewives did. We can describe the feelings filling the hearts of contemporary Japanese housewives as now being a roughly fifty-fifty mixture of both attitudes. These contradictory tendencies will have to be resolved by choices made by the agents of this drama—by how they decide to respond to the conditions they face in their lives. Conflicting emotions are not readily apparent when it comes to childcare. Although opinions may be divided on the question of whether or not housework is “labor,” a significant number of Japanese housewives do not feel that the work of raising or caring for their children is “labor.” The meaning they attach to childcare is determined by very strong emotions. Japanese housewives’ feelings seem to differ markedly from those of their American and Taiwanese counterparts on the question of whether or not the biological parents should exclusively take care of their own children. Also, in view of examples of new forms of family life such as the increase in childless couples in Germany, one can see that the idea that childcare is not labor is far from being a self-evident truth. In the preceding paragraphs we looked at two sides of Japanese patriarchy: one was the set of norms being applied and the other was the actions and feelings of the agents in response to those norms. We saw how the strong emphasis on the role of motherhood exists as a norm, which, as described in Chapter 3, took shape during the period of the modern housewife, and we saw how positively it has been accepted. It is in this respect



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that the Japanese model of patriarchy differs from models seen in the U.S. and elsewhere. It is this characteristic of patriarchy that greatly influences the personality of the contemporary Japanese housewife. 4. The Contemporary Housewife in Japan In Section 3 we saw how the contemporary housewife came on the scene as an independent factor, as an active agent in the process of industrialization and further development of patriarchy. With the marketization of housework, a weaker tendency for spatial separation based on gender under patriarchy emerged—as compared to Korean society, for example. Also, with housework becoming another form of social labor, the contemporary housewife became a person whose life was no longer completely filled by reproductive labor. Industry’s need for their labor power made housewives a factor in industrialization, and patriarchy was updated to allow their participation in the domain of production. This overlapped with a tendency on the part of housewives to seek meaning in their lives in work outside the home. As a result, large numbers have joined the ranks of the employed. This contemporary lifestyle became widespread during the first half of the 1960s. Being a housewife is a type of lifestyle, and the birth of the contemporary housewife was the birth of a new lifestyle. Modern housewives were at the center of part of the new middle class that came into existence in the cities, a class whose growth was necessarily limited. The earliest country in Western Europe to see the emergence of the modern housewife was England, where the percentage of the labor force working in primary industries had already dropped to 13% by 1881, and by 1901 had fallen below 10 percent. Unlike Japan, all the conditions for the development of the modern housewife across all sectors of society were in place in that country. In Japan, roughly 50% of the labor force was still employed in primary industry as late as 1950. The form of existence of the housewife had little or no connection to the lives of the majority of the population in the early modern period. The emergence of the housewife depends on a spatial separation of production and reproduction (a separation of work from the home). When this form of life spreads throughout society, the housewife can become a mass phenomenon. It wasn’t until about 1960 that the majority of Japan’s working people were employees of some kind. In other words, employed workers outnumbered all those in other categories or positions such as employers, self-employed small businessmen, or those working in a family

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business. The birth of the contemporary housewife coincides with this transition. The advent of the contemporary housewife represents the generalization of the housewife in Japanese society—the lifestyle of the housewife had taken on a mass character. However, saying that masses of women had become housewives does not mean that the emergence of the contemporary housewife was merely the result of a numerical expansion of the class of modern housewives. The key difference between the contemporary housewife and her predecessor is her half-way entry into the domain of production—with one foot in the home and the other in the workplace. Housewives could now work outside the home, while remaining a housewife. This meant that it was no longer simply a matter of married women working. What occurred was the birth of the “housewife as worker.” In this section we will present the characteristics of the contemporary housewife. After discussing her lifestyle and the nature of her entry into the labor market, we will offer further explanations of the background facts in her existence, from such vantage points as women’s liberation and the aging of Japan’s population. In doing so we will attempt to clarify the issues contemporary patriarchy in Japan entails. 4.1. Home Life of the Japanese Contemporary Housewife (1) Changes in Family Functions and the Emotionalization of the Family It is well known that, in the past, more than merely a base for reproduction, the family was a production unit and a place where education and entertainment took place. The process of industrialization led to these functions being shifted outside the home, with production moving to the factory, education to the schools, and entertainment to amusement facilities. The family has been left with the responsibility of sustaining the daily lives of its members and giving direction to their personality-related functions. When we discuss these changes, which family sociologists are well aware of, we are not talking about the “destruction of the family.” However, one can say with Mitterauer that, historically, the family has always been subject to a continuous process of destruction (Mitterauer 1990). The early modern Japanese housewife was placed in a situation of great transformation, but the shift in family functions became a mass phenomenon in the period in which the contemporary housewife was born. Parsons says the essential functions of the contemporary family are to provide the basic socialization of children and to sustain the stability of the personalities of adults (Parsons, et al. 1955). To use the terminology of



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this book, these functions, as part of the reproductive process, are reproducing the next generation of labor power and reproducing labor power on a daily basis—particularly by utilizing the emotional component involved in each task. The contemporary housewife accepts this idea, and her family function is to help achieve the formation and stabilization of the members’ personalities, then based on this, to help sustain their lives— provide material stability (Sodei 1987). Even though not to the extent it is in Korea, providing support for family members’ livelihood tends to be the function emphasized in Japanese families, more so than in Western families. This is clearly shown in the results of a study in the early nineties of couples in six countries: Japan, South Korea, the U.S., Britain, Germany and France. In response to the question “What is most important for couples?” the answer “Economic stability” was given by less than 10% of the Western respondents, much less than the 27.9% of the Japanese respondents who gave that answer. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that, compared to the previous situation in Japanese families, the emotional component of the family functions, which is related to the members’ personalities, is now being given greater weight. While “Having the same view of life” was the most common answer given in response to the question just cited by Western respondents, significantly, 38.1% of the Japanese also chose this answer. For now, we will call this tendency “the emotionalization of the family.”8 In many respects, this change can be viewed as a reflection of a rising tendency among contemporary housewives, who now have more free time and a higher level of education, to seek greater meaning in their lives and to turn this desire into family-oriented activity. (2) The Contemporary Housewife and Housework In Section 3 we described a tendency for the emotional meaning attached to housework to be lost when it is seen as simply household labor. Nevertheless, we are also describing the development of a key family function as “emotionalization” of the family. During the period when the contemporary housewife was born, the amount of time the average housewife spent on housework fell sharply, from 10 hours in 1949 to 6 hours and 59 minutes in 1965. After this, a decline in the time spent on housework is no longer readily apparent. Subsequent data shows an average of 7 hours and 57 minutes spent on housework in 1970, and 7 hours and 36 minutes in 8 See Yamada (1994) for a detailed look at this issue.

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1980. This can be seen as the result of wives, primarily those who are exclusively housewives, attaching an emotional meaning to their housework and making it more of a hobby. The level of demand (perhaps to some extent padded) has risen, which in turn means a greater diversity and intensity of work is being done. Tadao Umesao calls this “disguised labor,” a characterization which applies to one aspect of the truth. (See Ueno, ed. 1982.) Survey results indicate that, when asked to describe how she felt about housework, the lower the subject’s level of education, the higher the chance she would choose the comment, “I find a great deal of enjoyment in it.” This can be taken as an indication that, in cases in which the subject sees little possibility of finding meaning or enjoyment outside the home, an emotional feeling toward housework comes into play, leading to the emotionalization of housework (Sodei 1987). Table 4.1 shows how average household labor time in Japan compares with that of other countries or regions in East Asia. The time spent in Japan seems quite long even in this comparison. Depending on the survey, the data on South Korean wives may oddly show a discrepancy with this pattern. However, a survey conducted by the NHK Broadcasting Cultural Research Institute, Public Opinion Research Division (1995) shows South Korean wives spending relatively less time caring for children and related tasks as a result of their living with parents. Table 4.1. International comparison of weekday household labor time. (hours:minutes) South Korea South Taiwan Japan Sichuan Tianjin Beijing 1990 Korea 1990 1990 1984 1987 1991 1990 Women 3:26 Employed 1:34*3 women Men 0:22

5:10*1 3:13 4:31 2:09

4:45 3:24

3:08

3:40

*2 2:41

0:37

0:33

2:00

2:54

1:37

0:22

Notes: * 1. For South Korea, this refers to women with spouses. (The data in this row is from the Korean Women’s Development Institute, for 1991.) *2. Beijing data for women includes 7% “without a job” *3. This column for South Korea means “working women”; (Data in this row is from a KBS Survey as quoted by the NHK Broadcasting Cultural Research Institute, Public Opinion Research Division.) Sources: South Korea: Korean Women’s Development Institute, 1991, and NHK Broadcasting Cultural Research Institute, Public Opinion Research Division, 1995; Taiwan: Republic of China, Taiwan Region “Report on Study of Uses of Time (時間運用調査報告)” 行政院主計 処編; Japan: NHK Public Opinion Research Division, 1992; China: People’s Republic of China National Women’s Survey Association 1991, (冯立天, 1995).



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Also, as shown in the comparison among Western countries and Japan in Table 4.2, we clearly see how lopsided the allocation of household labor is between men and women in Japan and how this makes Japan rather unique among the world’s nations. The more recent data provided in Table 4.3 shows the unbalanced allocation of housework between Japanese men and women is showing no sign of changing. In addition, data by region in Japan shows women in Kanagawa Prefecture, in the Tokyo metropolitan area, spending the most time, 5 hours and 33 minutes, on housework on weekdays. This is 1 hour and 31 minutes more than the 4 hours and 2 minutes spent in Kochi Prefecture (NHK Broadcasting Cultural Research Institute, Public Opinion Research Division, 1995). This gap mainly reflects different rates of participation in the labor force. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that a difference as great as an hour and half in the average daily amount of time appears among women in the same country. In Kanagawa the amount of time men spent on housework on Sundays ranks fourth among all prefectures. The time spent on Sundays by men in Kochi is the least nationwide. In other words, there are societies in Japan where the level of demand for household labor is high and societies where it is low. Studying the data to see if there is some characteristic activity in which the people of Kochi spend a great deal of time that would account for this difference in housework time, we find

Table 4.2. Comparison of weekly amount of time spent on housework by men and women. (hours:minutes)

Women Men

Japan 1990 U.S. 1985 Britain 1987 Denmark 1987

Finland 1987

32:47 3:37

25:19 13:39

30:06 14:28

31:37 14:49

22:17 11:26

Table 4.3. Daily time spent on housework by men and women (hours). Japan Men 1.1 Women 4.3

South Korea

U.S.A.

Sweden

England Italy

0.5 3.2

2.4 4.0

2.6 3.7

2.1 3.8

Data covers period from 2000 to 2004. Source: http://www.stat.go.jp/data/shakai/2006/guide/pdf/h18g-06.pdf

1.5 5.3

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that, along with Akita Prefecture, Kochi is one of the only two prefectures where the daily average sleeping time is 8 hours. The amount of sleeping time for women in Kochi was 7 hours and 41 minutes, the third longest nationwide. In Kanagawa this figure is 30 minutes shorter. Kanagawa women are ranked second nationwide for sleeping the least amount of time (data edited by NHK Public Opinion Research Division 1992). 4.2. Entry of Contemporary Housewives into Production (1) Overall Tendency and Determining Factors Labor force data show a fairly consistent downward trend in the postwar period in the rate of women’s participation in the labor force. In 1955, the rate was 56.7%. By 1975 it had dropped to 45.7%. After bottoming out around that year, the rate gradually began to rise, reaching 48.7% by 1985 (see Figure 4.2). These trends reflected a shift in the process of (%) 56

54

52

50

48

46

44

42 1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Figure 4.2. Rate of female participation in the labor force in postwar Japan. Source: Labor Force Survey.

2010 Year



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan119

industrialization, which led to a restructuring of the agricultural sector, releasing women from work in that sector, where the rate of their participation had been high. We see a steady increase in the percentage of the women aged fifteen and over employed in sectors other than agriculture and forestry. The subjects of this book came almost entirely from the portion of the female population that accounted for this increase. It is well known that the increase in women’s employment has mainly been due to middle-aged married women going to work after raising their children. We see a rise in the rate of participation in the labor force by women in this group. In 1965, married women accounted for only 38.6% of the women employed in sectors other than agriculture, fishing and forestry. By 1985, this figure had jumped to 59.2%. In 1982, the rate of employment among married women once again reached the 50% mark, as employed housewives began to outnumber women solely working as homemakers. Consequently, graphs of the rate of women’s participation in the labor force plotted along with age groups have shifted to a very clear M-shaped pattern. Census data showing changes in the rate of women’s participation in the labor force trace an M-pattern with a very deep low point for the period from 1955 to 1975. The low point becomes significantly shallower for the 1975–1990 period, a clear indication that the rate of participation in the labor force by middle-aged and older women has increased (see Figure 4.3). Most recently, a trend toward later marriage and less children has appeared. This has caused the bottom portion of the M-pattern to become shallower and shift to the right, as women in their thirties now account for it. (See Figure 4.4.) The primary factor in the increase in the rate of women’s participation in the labor force is the trend for contemporary housewives to work both as homemakers and outside the home. As discussed in Section 3, this increase can certainly be explained by the actions taken by the agents in response both to industrialization and to patriarchy. In the early stage of industrialization younger workers were brought into industrial labor. When the flow of workers from the agricultural sector stopped from about 1975 on, industry responded by turning to the low-wage labor with great elasticity that could be supplied by women.9 9 According to the Labor Force Survey in 1970, the percentage of those employed accounted for by those working less than thirty-five hours per week was no more than 12.2%. Later this percentage rapidly increased to 16.1% in 1975 and to 22.7% in 1986. As for the reason for hiring part-time workers, a 1965 report, “Survey of Women’s Part-Time Work (女 子パートタイム調査),” issued by the Women and Youth Bureau of the Ministry of Labor cited the fact that industry was unable to procure the labor of young workers as the most

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(%) 80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

15-19 20-24

25-29 30-34

35-39 40-44

45-49 50-54

1975

1980

1985

55-59 60-64

65+ Age

1990

Figure 4.3. Rate of female participation in the labor force (1975–90) (Census).

Advances in industrialization also led to large-scale growth in the service sector of the economy, a development that created new fields of work and greatly expanded employment opportunities for women. The shortening of labor time needed for housework (assuming an unchanging level of demand) due to life-cycle transitions and the marketization of housework created the latent conditions for employment, and the sharp increase in common reason. In contrast, in the “Employment Management Survey Koyou Kanri Chosa,” conducted in 1983 by the same ministry, “lower personnel cost,” “adjustment of employment level according to production amount,” “for seasonal busy periods,” and “for busy periods during the day” were cited as the most common reasons for the same practice. This was a clear indication that elasticity of labor supply was a goal often cited by many companies.



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan121

(%) 80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

15-19

20-24

25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 1995

2000

45-49

50-54 55-59

2005

60-64

65+ Age

2010

Figure 4.4. Rate of female participation in the labor force (1995–2005) (Census).

the cost of children’s education and other urban-lifestyle expenses made outside work seem necessary. To this point we have offered an ordinary economic type of explanation for the social changes, one that does not fully explain the M-pattern we see in the graphs of women’s employment. Our economic explanation seems sufficient if one assumes that it is natural for women, mainly in their thirties, to want to stay near the children they are raising. However, this mother’s behavior seen in Japan is not necessarily universal, as we will see in our examination of Taiwanese examples in Chapter 6. First of all, we have seen in the interpellations of the government economic council how industry’s demand for full utilization of women’s labor was in a contradictory relationship with stable support for the family (maintenance of stable reproduction of labor power).

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In other words, the application of some sort of paradigm is essential to the formation of the M-pattern we see in women’s employment. The key characteristic of contemporary Japanese patriarchy is that extreme emphasis is placed on the role of the mother, but on the other hand, the mother is readily allowed to work outside the home as long as she can still handle her reproductive role. In addition to the existence of this set of values, on the side of the contemporary housewife, we have a rise in the level of education, which along with other factors has led to a loss of emotional meaning in housework other than child-raising. This situation has caused housewives to seek self-fulfillment outside the home once they have raised their children.10 The employment pattern seen among contemporary housewives is the product of the interaction of the forces we have just described. (2) Patterns of Employment Among Contemporary Housewives Housewives are often discussed as though they can be lumped together as one group. In reality, of course, regional, educational and other differences among them lead to differences in consciousness and patterns of behavior. In the following paragraphs we will attempt to grasp how particular types of housewives are leading their lives, particularly when it comes to their employment situation. (a) An Urban Pattern and a Regional Pattern Not very well known is the fact that significant gaps exist between the rates of women’s participation in the labor force in various regions of the country.11 We will first look at the data on women’s participation in the labor force by prefecture. What we find is somewhat unexpected when it comes to which areas have high rates and which have low rates. The 1990 national census data show that the prefecture with the highest rate was Fukui, at 56.3%. Rates in the following prefectures were Tottori (56.0%), Nagano (55.5%), Iwate (54.6%), Ishikawa (54.4%), Shizuoka (54.0%), Toyama (54.0%), Yamagata (53.4%), Shimane (53.1%), and Fukushima (52.7%). These prefectures are basically in the Hokuriku, San-in and 10 Unlike those classified as unemployed, the majority of those who wanted to work but were not actively seeking employment were women. The percentage of women in their thirties in this category (who wanted to work) was 32% in 1965 and 51% in 1971. The percentage of women aged forty to fifty-four in this same category was, in the same years, 23% and 35%, respectively (Sadao Watanabe 1980). 11 This subject is touched on in Ando (1986) and in a 1987 report, “Women’s Labor Situation (Fujin Rodou no Jitsujo),” compiled by the Ministry of Labor, Women’s Bureau.



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan123

Tohoku districts of Japan where there are very few large cities. Not a single district in these ten prefectures with the highest rates has a city with a population of 1,00,000 or more. In contrast, the lineup of the ten prefectures or districts with the lowest participation rates (with the exception of Nagasaki and Kagoshima) mainly comprises those with the country’s largest cities or urban sprawls. From lower to higher rates, these are: Nara (38.7%), Hyogo (43.2%), Wakayama (44.2%), Osaka (44.8%), Kanagawa (44.9%), Fukuoka (45.1%), Nagasaki (45.5%), Hokkaido (45.7%), Kagoshima (46.1%), and Chiba (46.5%). The fact that Kyoto is ranked eleventh and Saitama thirteenth from the bottom is further evidence that the group of districts with the lowest rates of women’s participation in the labor force is consistently made up of districts with large urban areas in the vicinity of Tokyo and Osaka. A further look at the data shows that areas with higher populations of young, unmarried women tend to have higher rates of female participation in the labor force. To eliminate this influence for the sake of comparison, we used 2005 data to calculate the rate of employment among women in households with working husbands. This is shown in Table 4.4. With the data screened in this way, we see that, with the exception of Okinawa, the prefectures with the lowest percentages of working wives, in other words those with the most women working exclusively as housewives, are areas with very large cities. Conversely, several prefectures with Table 4.4. Percentage of working wives by prefecture (2005). Yamagata Fukui Toyama Shimane Tottori Niigata Ishikawa Kochi Nagano Akita Miyazaki Iwate

71.7 70.9 70.1 69.7 69.5 68.4 68.4 68.0 67.0 66.8 66.6 66.5

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Nara Osaka Kanagawa Hyogo Chiba Tokyo Saitama Hokkaido Okinawa Kyoto Fukuoka Wakayama

47.7 49.0 50.2 51.6 50.2 53.1 53.2 54.2 55.4 55.4 55.6 57.3

Data for 2005: Percentage of working wives in households with working husbands (Census).

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high percentages of both husbands and wives working are located in outlying regions such as the Tohoku, Hokuriku and San-in districts. In other words, women engaged solely as housewives are more apt to be found in the very large cities, and households with both husband and wife working are apt to be found in the outlying regions, or regional prefectures. We will refer to the former as the urban pattern and the latter as the regional pattern. As typical examples of these two patterns we have Nara, representative of the urban pattern, and Fukui, of the regional. Figure 4.5 provides graphs illustrating the rates and patterns of female participation in the labor force by age group. The graphs roughly trace the same M-pattern, with the earlyage peak for Fukui being higher and earlier. We see a sharp decline for the thirty-to-thirty-four age group in Nara, which contrasts with the shallow decline and high plateau for the same age group in Fukui. The differences between participation rates in urban areas in South Korea and Taiwan we will examine in Chapters 5 and 6 will somewhat resemble these patterns. Also of great interest is the fact that, as shown in Table 4.5, the overall birthrate characteristic of the urban districts is low, and the order of the ranking of prefectures by birthrate resembles the ranking seen in (%) 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 15~19 20~24 25~29 30~34 35~39 40~44 45~49 50~54 55~59 60~64 Fukui

65+ Age

Nara

Figure 4.5. Rate of female participation in labor force in Nara and Fukui (1990) (Census).



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan125

Table 4.5. Birthrates in prefecture, ranked lowest to highest (2005). Rank

States, districts or prefecture

Birthrate

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Tokyo Hokkaido Kyoto Kanagawa Nara Osaka Saitama Chiba Miyagi Hyogo Nationwide Fukui

1.00 1.15 1.18 1.19 1.19 1.21 1.22 1.22 1.24 1.25

45

1.50

Survey of vital statistics in 2005.

Table 4.4, which compares percentages of working wives by prefecture. Another similar distribution pattern is seen in the percentages of men and women employed in tertiary industries, which is shown in Table 4.6. Overall, the data show that areas with relatively larger numbers of fulltime housewives have lower birthrates. Okinawa has the highest birthrate in Japan. Leaving that prefecture aside as a special value, we find a very high 0.76 correlation between the rate of employment among wives and the overall birthrate. In addition, we find a very strong reverse correlation of 0.69 between the percentage of working wives and the percentage of the labor force (men and women) in tertiary industries shown in Table 4.6. We also see the latter as the regional pattern. The percentage of the labor force in tertiary industries is related to the degree of urbanization and existence or non-existence of factories, which means that housewives of the urban pattern increase in areas with no factories or similar workplaces and in the suburbs near large cities, and the number of children decreases when the family lives in a city. In other words, there are strong reverse correlations between the birthrate and the percentage of employment accounted for by tertiary industries, and between the latter percentage and the rate of employment among wives. This is because the percentage of the labor force in tertiary industries increases in the large cities. A result

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Table 4.6. Percentage of labor force in tertiary industries by prefecture, ranked highest to lowest (2005). Rank

State, district or prefecture

Percentage

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Tokyo Okinawa Fukuoka Kanagawa Chiba Hokkaido Osaka Nagasaki Kyoto Nara Nationwide Yamagata

77.4 76.3 73.0 72.1 72.0 71.3 70.7 69.7 69.6 69.5 67.2 58.2

46 Census 2005

of this relationship is the appearance of a spurious correlation between birthrates and the rate of employment among wives. Now let us construct an image of the regional and the urban housewives. First, we will conceptualize regional housewives as mainly high school graduates, with few full-time housewives among them; they handle childcare by placing their small children in nurseries or in the care of their mother or mother-in-law who lives with them; and they work at a local factory to contribute to household finances. Since a high percentage of them live in households with three generations living together, childcare is relatively easy to arrange. In contrast, our image of the urban housewives is that their level of education is higher, with a high percentage of either university or junior college graduates among them; their husbands are university graduates  and employed as salaried company employees; these wives have a strong desire to raise their children themselves; and the percentage of full-time housewives among them is high. After their children enter elementary school, many will work part-time at local supermarkets or similar businesses. The urban pattern is exemplified in Nara Prefecture. The population is concentrated in the northern part of the prefecture, where residents live



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan127

in relatively well-to-do areas with newly-built dwellings for corporate white-collar employees who commute to Osaka or Kyoto. Residential neighborhoods with high-end detached homes stand out along the Kintetsu Nara Line. The housewives living in these residential areas typify the urban pattern. The data bear this out. A “Report on a Survey of Annual Household Finances” (for Nara Prefecture) said that the average percentage of working family household income accounted for by the wife’s earnings in 1992 was only 3.2%. This was the lowest level nationwide. On the other hand, it was reported that household earnings from the head of the household’s place of employment ranked sixth nationwide. Along with this, national census data showed that Nara had the highest rate of citizens working outside the prefecture in the country. Nara is also perennially ranked first or second nationally in the rate of high school graduates advancing to junior colleges or universities. Another indicator of the high level of education of its citizens is that Nara prefecture is ranked in first place for average piano ownership. The regional pattern shows an “advanced” aspect when it comes to the question of being free of the norm “women belong at home,” and the employment pattern for large numbers of them is of the “life plan support” type, which has an aspect of not being the type of employment undertaken “for self-fulfillment.” In other words the employment pattern is contradictory in the sense that it is close to being of the type indicative of women ending their housewife status, or similar to that of women before the emergence of the housewife, at the same time, as discussed in Chapter 2. Housewives of the urban pattern also have a strong tendency to seek equality between men and women, and comparatively, they have enough money and free time to seek self-fullfilment. This desire is reflected in various ways. Some, particularly university graduates, have a strong tendency to pursue a career. Others enthusiastically participate in citizens’ movements or other civic activities, and we see them outside the home at culture centers. On the other hand, we also see many giving full emotional meaning to their homemaking and child-raising activity. The types of consumer cooperatives and residents’ movements one sees in Kanagawa Prefecture and elsewhere are inconceivable without the active participation of housewives. Here we can see a vector toward the end of the housewife along with a latent vector toward a strengthening of the basis for the existence of the housewife. What are the sources of the differences among housewives that we outline above? When we look at the prefectures with housewives of the

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regional type, it might be thought that we will find agriculture to be an important factor. However, in Fukui Prefecture we see only 4.7% of the labor force in primary industries, a rate not significantly different from the 3.2% seen in Nara Prefecture in 2005. This slight difference in no way explains the nearly 20% higher rate of female participation in the labor force in Fukui. Moreover, the highest rate of employment in primary indus­tries for any prefecture is only 14%. Therefore, this factor explains very little. While there is a tendency for a higher rate of employment in the urban pattern and a tendency for a lower rate in the regional pattern, again, the difference is not that significant. It is also difficult to think of the labor market in the cities as being narrow or constricted. In other words, the differences we find between the patterns are differences in lifestyles, and in the background we find subtle differences in the norms being applied. This explanation corresponds to the examples we will encounter in Chap­ter 6 when we look at examples in Taiwan. What we see in the regional pattern is the application of the norm of the “working wife” that was formerly applied in farming households, which serves to promote employment among contemporary housewives. In contrast, what we find among the middle-class housewives of the urban pattern is a lifestyle in which the gender role allocation is more strongly governed by the norm that men should engage in productive labor and women in reproductive labor. (b) Employment in Relation to Husband’s Income Does the number of working wives grow as the husband’s income increases? Or does it shrink? If the former is the case, we can think of housewife employment as fitting into a self-fulfillment model. If the latter is the case, we should see a model with an increasing number of housewives going to work to help support the family’s livelihood. Employment Status Survey conducted in 2007 examined the rate of wives’ employment according to the level of husbands’ income. The results are shown in the graph in Figure 4.6. Setting aside the very low annual incomes of approximately 2 million yen, which can be considered to be primarily those of senior citizens, we see that, basically, wives’ employment decreases as husbands’ income increases. The conclusion is that, fundamentally, most married women join the labor force to contribute to their family’s livelihood. (c) Employment in Relation to Level of Education The same 1992 Employment Status Survey found that the percentage of women’s participation in the labor force rose with level of education. This is shown in Table 4.7. However, as seen in Figure 4.7, which provides a



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan129 (%) 70.0

65.0

60.0

55.0

50.0

1000 ~

900 ~ 999

800 ~ 899

700 ~ 799

600 ~ 699

500 ~ 599

400 ~ 499

300 ~ 399

250 ~ 299

200 ~ 249

45.0

Ten thousand yen

Figure 4.6. Percentage of employed wives in relation to husband’s income. Source: Employment Status Survey.

graph of the participation rate according to age and level of education, the rate of high school graduates’ participation in the labor force follows the typical M-pattern. On the other hand, we see an early-age peak for graduates of junior colleges, then after a decline after they enter their thirties, their rate of participation does not rise much as they enter middle age. For university graduates, we see the shallowest dip in the M-pattern, then only a moderate rise as they reach middle age and above. In other words, many high school graduates’ employment is part-time work undertaken to contribute to the family livelihood, which means they are working

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Table 4.7. Percentages of women employed by level of education. (%) Year

Middle school or below

High school graduation

Junior college College graduation graduation or higher

1992 2007

42.9 53.9

59.8 64.8

64.6 69.1

66.0 71.0

(%) 100

90

80 J.H or Lower

70

H. School 60 Jr. College 50

4yr. college or higer

40

4

9 60

-6

4 55

-5

9 50

-5

4 45

-4

9 40

-4

4 35

-3

9

-3

30

-2

25

20

-2

4

30

Age

Figure 4.7. Female labor force participation rate by age and educational level in 2007. Source: Employment Status Survey.

housewives. On the other hand, junior college graduates tend to have husbands who are university graduates, which means their families are more stable economically. As a result they tend to become full-time housewives.



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan131

Among university graduates we see a relatively high number of cases in which the wives continue their work careers, a pattern that fits the “selffulfillment model” for employment. Compared to the graph of employment according to level of education among Taiwanese wives, which we will see in Chapter 6, the decline among Japanese university graduates during the period when they are caring for children is rather striking. And a strong tendency appears among Japanese university graduates not to return to work after they stop working. While they do have the highest rate, compared to the other levels of education, for remaining employed through the period of childbirth and childcare, if they do quit working, they are not likely to return. These tendencies pertain to housewives of both the urban and the regional pattern. While the regional pattern is primarily composed of high school graduates, among housewives in the urban pattern, we see one portion comprising a class of university graduates seeking careers and another portion comprising a class of large numbers of graduates of junior colleges and universities who do not return to work after quitting. We can view these differing patterns within the urban pattern as arising due to conflicting lifestyle tendencies: one in which the housewives’ interests are outside the household, and the other a tendency to pursue interests related to the household. Looking at the cases in this way, we can see junior college graduates as a group with a more consistent pattern than that of university graduates. In the 1990s in Japan, graduation from a junior college put young women in exactly the same position as graduation from high school did in the earlier period when the modern housewife was born. They were a reserve army slated to become full-time housewives. Young men were the majority of the students when junior colleges and technical schools were first launched. Young women became the majority, as they remain today, from the 1960s on. Currently, 90% of the students are women. When they graduate, most do office work or find similar employment, and they leave their jobs when they marry or have children. Not often seen in other countries, the conversion of two-year higher education facilities into virtual women’s schools is well adapted to employment practices and the life-cycle that has emerged for women in Japan. In 1993, similar percentages of high school graduates went on to a junior college or university, 24.4% and 19.0%, respectively. The higher level of education represented by the rising rate of graduation from junior colleges did not necessarily mean that Japanese women moved ahead in status after finding employment. If the junior college graduates have become

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a reserve army destined to serve as full-time housewives, one can say very generally that, for high school graduates, becoming a full-time housewife is a move up on the social scale. However, in many cases, university graduates may see becoming a housewife as being chained down, as a hindrance preventing full realization of their potential. This is because, under the current system in which housewives often find work only to supplement the family income, the range of jobs they are offered is narrow  compared to the opportunities given men. Women’s work is often off to the side. They are often not considered core members of the enterprise. Women are denied the opportunity to fully use their abilities. Indicative of these conditions is the fact that approximately half of all women university graduates were opting not to work after having children. They become a significant part of the population that is not employed. For the other half of the housewives who are university graduates, work becomes simply one more burden on top of housework and childcare. By the turn of the century, the percentage of female high school graduates advancing to junior colleges had begun to fall. In 2008, 11.5% went on to a junior college and 42.6% to a university. We will examine the situation in the 2000s in Chapter 9. As discussed in Chapter 2, the trend toward higher levels of education is a very meaningful factor that will affect the future of the contemporary housewife. Developments in the United States provide examples of women with a high level of education choosing to advance their careers rather than become full-time housewives, whose work is seen as another form of labor. When this happens, the tendency to enter the labor force is strengthened, and we see signs of the disappearance of the housewife. This is not the general tendency in South Korea, but in Taiwan, women with higher levels of education have a strong inclination to pursue a career. In Japan, women with a high level of education tend to try to advance in society. We can say that this is stronger than any similar tendency in South Korea, while South Korea is experiencing a big change into a doubleincome mode. However, the trend toward becoming full-time housewives among Japanese junior college or university graduates is fairly strong, which means we cannot say that we see the kind of tendency toward the elimination of the role of the housewife that is seen in America—even among women with a high level of education. In view of this, we can conclude that, although movement toward the disappearance of the housewife is stronger in Japan than it might be in South Korea, it is not as evident as it is in Taiwan.



contemporary patriarchy and the housewife in japan133 5. Problems in Contemporary Japanese Patriarchy

Our examination of the contemporary housewife has shown us that strong acceptance of the role of mother is a primary characteristic of contemporary patriarchy in Japan. Mothers view raising children as a “service of love”—viewing it as “labor” is intolerable. This attitude remains strong even among women with a high level of education. This significantly limits the supply of labor in Japan. As we continue by comparing this with the situations in South Korea and Taiwan, it will become clear that the form of patriarchy in Japan cannot be explained by the influence of Confucianism. We have also seen how, compared to Western couples, the process of forming the modern family in Japan led to weak feelings of romantic love between husband and wife; that this has led to mothers feeling a strong emotional attachment only for their children; and that this, in turn, has contributed to another special feature of patriarchy in Japan, the heavy emphasis on the role of the mother. The contemporary form of patriarchy in Japan has inherent problems that are a continuing source of dissatisfaction among women. While it is true that they have strongly accepted modern patriarchy’s system of role allocation, the system which created the housewife, the rise in the level of women’s education has generated a desire to work on equal terms with men. A major contradiction will arise if the numbers of women who feel this way increase significantly. Although many women accept the current allocation of roles, we cannot assume that they will continue to accept being restricted by their role as mothers. Another problem is that the aging of the population will place a heavy burden on the women who will be expected to provide nursing care for the elderly. Japan has already become a society, in which, unlike Taiwan, women cannot expect a network of relatives to provide mutual help. If the current trend continues in Japan, housewives will bear an excessive burden. To prevent this, the country will have to develop an extensive welfare system providing help outside the home. This would amount to a great change in the system used for the reproduction of labor. Another inherent problem is the close attachment of mother and child. Emotional disorders and problems in child development occur when too much love and too many expectations are placed on the children because they become the mother’s only means of self-fulfillment. Japanese psychiatrists use terms such as “disease originating from the mother (bogenbyo)” to describe these phenomena. A very large number of reports describe how mothers’ obsessive attachment and expectations become a

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hindrance to the formation of the children’s personality. One aspect of Japanese patriarchy’s emphasis on the mother’s role is the warmth it has brought to raising children. However, the excesses that have emerged with this approach have limited the activities of mothers and have become a heavy burden on children. In light of these developments, it can be said that Japanese patriarchy, the system sustaining the current form of reproducing labor power, is showing signs of having reached a dead end. After comparing it with other forms of patriarchy in East Asia in Part III, our Conclusions at the end of the book will include a discussion of ways in which patriarchy might be overcome as well as ideas on possible solutions to the problems we have discussed.

PART THREE

CHAPTER FIVE

SOUTH KOREAN PATRIARCHY In Chapters 5 through 9 we will discuss the societies of four East Asian countries, South Korea, Taiwan, North Korea and China. As noted in Chapter 3, the East Asian region continues to be culturally unique, even in the age of globalization with great interchange between ethnic groups and countries with different social systems. Comparisons of the internal features of the countries of the region provide us with very meaningful points to discuss. In addition, case studies of issues in Taiwan and South Korea are essential for a reverse-comparison with similar issues in Japan. We will begin with a look at how the housewife was born, first in South Korea, and then in the next chapter, in Taiwan. As we do so, we will clarify the types of patriarchy that developed in the two countries. In Chapters 7 and 8 we will examine examples of patriarchy persisting under socialism. Chapters 5 through 8 mainly cover material up to around 2000. In Chapter 9 we will provide a supplementary discussion of what has occurred since that time. South Korea aimed for and achieved the type of comprehensive economic development that Japan had achieved. The country’s export-driven growth has been dubbed, after the Han River that runs through Seoul, the “Miracle on the Han River.” The similarities between this growth and Japan’s have captured the attention of observers. Nevertheless, it must be said that not so much research has been done on the differences between the ways economic growth took place in the two countries. This tendency to accentuate similarities at the expense of differences is also very strong in studies of the gender issues we will examine. More than a few introductory works have been written on gender issues in Korea, Japan’s nearest neighbor, but these have mainly been piecemeal reports, including those on specific women’s movements. Research undertaken to grasp how the structure of Korean society affects gender issues has been rare. The tendency has been similar in women’s studies and related research in South Korea. We must adopt a somewhat different approach to deal with this problem. In Japan, research on Korea, mainly centered on history and cultural anthropology, has yielded significant results. These have been applied in

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such fields as business administration and political science.1 While relying on this work, we will try to bring into relief the special features of South Korean society that pertain to our subject. 1. Industrialization in South Korea South Korea faced a dire economic situation in the aftermath of three years of devastation from the Korean War. Most of the industrial zones on the Peninsula with abundant electric power and underground resources were located in the northern part of the divided country. Relying on American assistance, South Korea managed to ride out a period of upheaval and misery brought on by the war, from the armistice of July 1953 through 1961. The period of high economic growth, the “Miracle on the Han River,” got under way with the start of the country’s first five-year plan in 1962, which focused on exports. Labor was supplied by large population flows from farming villages. Prior to 1970, this migration primarily took the form of entire families leaving for the city. It subsequently became more common for only individuals to leave their villages. It should be noted that it was not necessarily the case that large numbers within this group of migrants were employed in modern industry. Even when university students are included, only about one out of five males that came to the cities from rural areas was so employed. Others often worked in miscellaneous urban occupations. South Korea’s unemployment rate was relatively high—4.5% in 1970 and 4.1% in 1975. Although unemployment had fallen to 3.2% by 1978, the impact of the second oil crisis led to the unemployment rate rising again, to 5.2% in 1980. This was quite high in comparison to the rates in Japan and Taiwan, which were also in the midst of a period of economic growth. High unemployment among youth frequently led to social unrest. These factors were closely related to the form in which the emergence of the housewife took place. To be sure, high economic growth led to modern, urban working-class families able to live on the earnings of one wage-earner. There are great gaps between wage levels and working conditions among Korean workers. In the early 1980s, one section of the workforce, which still worked long hours for low wages, was unable to break free from primitive labor relations. Men with degrees from institutions of higher learning were able to

1 The work done by Ito, Sekimoto, Funabiki, ed. (1987), Hattori (1988), and Miyajima (1995) is representative of this research.



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earn much higher levels of income in white-collar work. This led to the formation of a new middle class by the latter half of the 1970s. Also, from about 1976 to 1978, a shortage of male workers, particularly those with technical skills, forced companies to raise wages, which meant the distribution of wage levels in the workforce shifted from a pattern centered on a large low-wage bracket to a pattern with higher wages (Mori and Mizuno, ed. 1985: 197). Wages rose dramatically following a wave of serious labor struggles mounted after Roh Tae Woo’s government was pressed by mass demonstrations and the need to prepare for the 1988 Olympics into making a declaration which included a call for a national move to democracy in June 1987. This had the effect of shrinking the various gaps between wage groups, and this has meant that labor reform has reached a certain stage of completion and labor relations have entered into a set pattern. Table 5.1 shows the gap in family incomes between the highest and the lowest 20%. One can see that, compared to Japan and Taiwan, the gap between the two income levels in South Korean society were very large. Nevertheless, it can be seen that the gap did close from 1985 to 1988. As represented by the rows of high-rise apartments on the southern side of the Han River in Seoul, construction of apartments for nuclear families in large cities has steadily continued. Along with this, the diffusion of household electric appliances has expanded. Figure 5.1 shows how the distribution of appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators has grown since the latter half of the 1970s. The levels of industrialization shown were preconditions for the advent of first the modern housewife and then the contemporary housewife. The country’s rural villages were left behind during the rapid growth of the 1960s. However, the large gap in incomes between the countryside and

Table 5.1. Income discrepancy in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan (1985/ 1988). S. Korea Taiwan Japan

1985 6.13 4.50 4.55 (1975)

1988 5.72 4.85 4.48 (1985)

S. Korea: Statistics Bureau Social Indicators of Korea. Taiwan: Council for Economic Planning and Development Taiwan Statistical Data Book. Japan: Statistics Bureau Family Income and Expenditure Survey.

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100

Rate of diffusion (%)

80

60

40

20

0

1970

1975 1980 Source: Korean Consumer Indicators 1991 TV

Refrigerator

1985 Year

Washing machine

Figure 5.1. Rate of diffusion of household electric products.

the city began to shrink by the end of the decade and on into the early 1970s. This was the result of the efforts of the Saemaul or “New Village” Movement in which projects were undertaken to improve the living environment for farmers during periods when farming could not be done, and the introduction of a system of dual rice prices, which led to a rise in producer prices and farmers’ incomes. By the mid-1970s the income gap between urban workers and farmers had significantly diminished. These changes, which were accompanied by reforms leading to changes in villagers’ ways of thinking, spurred consumption by farming families and led to the diffusion of household electric appliances in the countryside. Looking at the roles played by women in the labor force during the period of rapid growth, we find farm work still accounting for 38.9% of the country’s female workers as late as 1980. This was largely the result of a move to shift the burden of farm work onto the elderly and women. Women also increasingly worked in the industrial sector, which followed agricultural labor as the most common type of work. The average annual growth in the number of women engaged in manufacturing work was 11.6% from 1963 to 1980. A breakdown of women’s participation in the labor force in 1980 shows that, following agricultural work, 21.1% of the women in the labor force were engaged in production processes or other non-skilled work. An analysis of population and household census data



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undertaken by Junko Mizuno shows that most women workers in this latter category were employed in textile-related industries such as cottonspinning and garment making (Mori and Mizuno, ed. 1985). These female production workers were young, concentrated in the fifteen-to-twenty-four age group. As for level of education, by 1980, the majority of them had graduated from a middle school. In that year, 71.8% were unmarried. In comparison, 75.9% of the women doing farm work were married, and 67.1% in sales-related work were married. These percentages show that married women tended to be in family enterprises or were self-employed. On the other hand, young unmarried women were a major source of labor in the modern employment sector. In the 1970s, the focus of production shifted from textiles for export to machinery, metals and electronic goods. As exemplified by their strong presence in production in the Masan free-export zone and similar zones, the labor of young, unmarried women played a central role in the industrialization process. This situation meant that the process involved in the emergence of the housewife differed markedly from that of Britain, which took the form of married women leaving the labor market to become housewives. 2. The Background of South Korean Patriarchy One can see from the account in Section 1 that the stage had been set for the birth of the housewife in South Korea by the latter half of the 1970s. The basic conditions in place at that time formed the background for a unique set of gender-based norms, the South Korean model of patriarchy which would determine what the lives of housewives would be like. South Korean patriarchy was greatly influenced by Confucian norms. We will provide an overview of how they permeated South Korean society before discussing their content. 2.1. The Acceptance and Spread of Confucianism The arrival of Confucianism on the Korean Peninsula can be traced back to the Three Kingdoms period (313–676), and by the time of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) it coexisted with Buddhism. Buddhism was the exclusive philosophy expressed in literary work. It was after the establishment of the Yi dynasty (1392–1910) that Confucianism took on decisive importance as the dominant philosophy guiding the establishment of the

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country known as Joseon. Haruhisa Ogawa categorizes and describes the characteristics and functions of Confucian thought used during the Yi Dynasty in the following ways: (1) as the ideology underpinning the strength of the yangban class; (2) as a reflection of the full acceptance of the doctrines of Zhu Xi, the twelth century Chinese philosopher who presented a theory based on a synthesis of physiology (vital force) and ethics (principles); (3) as a philosophy used in political struggle; and (4) as an ideology with an emphasis on studying and performing rites and ceremonies used in enforcing and regulating the strict social hierarchy and family system.2 Tracing the transformations of Confucian thought is beyond the scope of this book. However, categories (1) and (4) above are important issues to discuss in our examination of the South Korean model of patriarchy. Yangban was the general name given to the class of military officials and civil servants in the national bureaucracy that ruled Korea. The tendency for social status to be determined by blood relations had grown strong by the early part of the Yi dynasty, and yangban families become firmly entrenched in their position as the ruling class. Unlike the Chinese class system in which the elite official positions (shidafu 士大夫) were not hereditary, yangban status was fundamentally family-based, with mutual ties among the elite families strengthened by marriage in ways that ensured that their class would be reproduced. The Confucianism of the Yi dynasty included codes of conduct for these families and for family-based associations, called munjung,3 composed of 2 All of the quotations of Haruhisa Ogawa are from the “Confucianism” entry in the Know Korea Dictionary (朝鮮を知る辞典) (Heibonsha, 1986). Ogawa says that “In addition to offering a guide to self-cultivation and management of people, Confucianism as expounded in the doctrines of Zhu Xi had two aspects: one dealing with government, administration and public welfare (治人), and another pertaining to spiritual training (修己).” In the early period of the Yi dynasty, Zhu Xi’s doctrines were applied to the conduct of government and the welfare of the people. Subsequently, with the development of the system of rule under the king, the aspect of self-cultivation and tempering the spirit was deeply respected along with the ethical teachings in order to promote service to the state. Also, from around 1600 until the end of the Yi dynasty—a period of some 300 years— Confucian thought was adhered to and cited by yangban factions engaged in struggles for position and power. 3 The Japanese word dozoku (同族) meaning one’s kind or a consanguine family has been used to refer to the South Korean national-level associations of descendents of a common male ancestor, but to avoid confusion with the normal Japanese meaning, Chie Nakane (1987: 256–79) uses the Korean word munjung (門中).” In addition to the national association, the kin groups are organized into tangnae (堂内), associations of all descendants of a fourth-generation common patrilineal ancestor. The smallest organization within the kin group, the tangnae are made up of several households. The next level of



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patrilineal descendants of a founding ancestor. These norms covered manners in daily activity and prescribed the ways in which coming-of-age ceremonies, marriages, funerals and most importantly the rites to worship ancestors were conducted. Yangban status had originally been very restricted, with the men primarily serving as government officials or candidates for official positions. Nevertheless, starting around the middle years of the Yi dynasty, the numbers of members of this class began to sharply rise because the court often resorted to selling titles and positions, and forged genealogies and family registers were commonly used during periods of social unrest. Many of the existing surveys, which are limited to certain regions, indicate that nearly half the population was in the yangban class by the end of the dynasty (Shikata 1937, Suenari 1987, Hattori, ed. 1987: 133). It appears that it was not that difficult to rise up to yangban status (Miyajima 1995). The samurai class in Japan and the yangban class on the Korean Peninsula differed significantly in two important ways, even though both were influenced by the same Confucian philosophy of Zhu Xi and both adopted norms for family life prescribed by those teachings. One difference was in the degree to which conduct was controlled. In the case of Japan, although the spirit of the Confucian principle of loyalty and moral obligations to one’s master (zhong, 忠) was emphasized (rather than filial piety, xiao 孝), one cannot say that Confucian norms permeated Japanese organization is an association chongjung (宗中) of several dozen households in a single village whose members all claim a common patrilineal ancestor. The next highest, at the provincial level (道) level, is an association (派) consisting of roughly 1,000 households. Then, the associations of the largest type are those made up of more than 100,000 households of families with the same surname and place of origin (such as the Yi lineage group, which marries outside the group). Since the munjung are associations of households claiming descent from a common patrilineal ancestor, they roughly correspond to China’s clans (zongzu 宗族) and Japan’s lineage groups (dozoku 同族), but they are significantly different organizationally and functionally. For example, large families with common ownership of property are not formed as is often the case with Chinese clans (zongzu), and there is a much stronger tendency in South Korea to emphasize direct line of descent. Families within a munjung on the Korean peninsula have much stronger ties than families within Japan’s lineage groups, in which the relationship between the main family and branch families is characterized by a high degree of independence of branch families, to the extent that they are not economically dependent on the main family; the relationship tends to be relatively dry and confrontations between main and branch families are not uncommon. In the Korean case, the relationship between a main family (keun jip) and the branch families (chageun jip) has a stronger centripetal tendency. This is attested by the willingness of the main family to extend aid to a branch family in economic distress and the practice of a branch family giving away a son to the main family to serve as a successor when the main family has no male heir. These strong kinship ties and rituals, however, are vanishing rapidly in contemporary South Korea.

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culture to the level of governing daily life and coming-of-age ceremonies, marriages, funerals, and ancestor worship to the extent they did in Korean culture. The second important difference was the extent to which the Confucian doctrine spread in Japanese society. Some members of the samurai class in Japan partially accepted Confucian values, but their number was very limited. The same could be said of the shidafu of China, whose activity was expected to exemplify Confucian norms. They were also fairly limited in number if they are compared to the yangban of Korea (Niida 1952). On the Korean peninsula it was a different story. Confucian norms were widely disseminated and became deeply entrenched in Korean society to an extent that cannot be compared with any other. Even with the collapse of the Yi dynasty and after the formal end of the yangban, the desire of people to rise to an equivalent status class remained very strong. Large numbers of people chose to see themselves as and declare themselves to be descendants of the yangban. All of this led to yangban ideology permeating the ranks of the common people, and yangban norms widely spreading throughout Korean society. An aspect of the further spread of these norms was the fact that the social hierarchy began to collapse with the downfall of the yangban at the end of the Yi dynasty, when Korea came under colonial rule. The end of the social system propping up their dominance became complete during the dislocations and unrest in the aftermath of the Korean War. This left an opening for the traditional values and norms they once controlled to spread even further to all levels of society. Unlike Japan, where the number of samurai did not exceed a very small percentage of the population, which limited the spread of their Confucian ideas, the collapse of yangban rule paradoxically made it more possible for common people to adopt lifestyle values that approximated those of the old ruling class. Yangban status was defined not only in terms of objective conditions. Another element in yangban existence was whether or not others regarded a person or family in question as having that status. That was why many Koreans yearned for yangban lifestyle. Michio Suenari (1987) uses the term “yangbanization” to describe a process, occurring mainly during the Yi dynasty, in which large numbers, even in groups as large as an entire munjung, would rise in social status. To some extent, the adoption of lifestyles that reflected yangban values that took place in the postwar period can be seen as a continuation of this “becoming yangban.” Perhaps symbolic of this spread of yangban values throughout society is the usage in everyday speech of the honorific expression for a man that takes the form “This yangban is ___” rather than “This gentleman is ___.”



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It is reported that people no longer keep genealogies or care much about them in North Korea. We can presume that this is the result of social upheaval after the Korean War and beyond. The sweeping changes made such records meaningless. On the other hand, the existence of genealogies in South Korea can only be taken as proof that efforts were made in the postwar period to bring back these traditional social connections. It appears that “becoming yangban” never became a thing of the distant past. 2.2. Yangban Confucian Norms and Women How did the spread of yangban mores affect actual gender relations? How did it affect women? Among the common people—in peasant families—women generally worked outside the home. Families in the yangban class, however, were primarily landowners who did not engage in productive labor. Accordingly, their women did not engage in farm work or other work outside the home. As discussed in Chapter 3, women were admonished to adhere to Confucian norms reflected in the “Three Obediences (三從之義)” and “Seven Evils (七去之惡).” They were firmly taught that their position in their husband’s family was an absolutely subordinate one. At the core of Confucianism was the duty of observing the rites required to preserve the male line of succession to family property. The duty of women was to serve her husband’s family according to the established relationships. The traditional Chinese Confucian doctrine of women’s duty (婦道) was received and put into practice on the Korean Peninsula with little or no change. The creation and promulgation of hangul, the native phonemic alphabet (訓民正音), during the reign of King Sejong in 1443, enabled easier reading of the Chinese classics in Korean and paved the way for publishing collections of translations of Confucian teachings deemed necessary for women. Publication of such works as “Managing the House (内訓)” with attached colloquial explanations continued from the fifteenth century on. Confucian norms became firmly established in this way. The introduction and wide dissemination of the teachings of Zhu Xi in the new Joseon realm established by General Yi strongly influenced Yangban women, whose prescribed social role became merely to serve the patrilineal family line. Liberal practices in regard to female inheritance rights and relatively loose customs pertaining to distinctions between legitimate and ille­ gitimate children continued as the country entered the Yi dynasty. By the

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seventeenth century, however, the infusion of the philosophy of Zhu Xi had led to stricter distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate children as the country shifted to the Confucian system in which only male heirs were recognized (Miyajima 1995). Using the terminology introduced earlier, a gender-based unequal allocation of power had become widespread. Helping promote inequality was the Korean proverb discussed in Chapter 3, “A woman who cannot count more than ten bowls will enjoy good fortune,” which worked in concert with the Confucian maxim “Ignorant women are more virtuous (女子無才便是德).” It was not simply the inequality involved in the distribution of power that gave Korean patriarchy its special character. The influence of Confucianism in the allocation of roles also led to the formation of unique norms. As exemplified by the expression “Male and female are separate (男女有別),” gender roles were very thoroughly divided. The concepts underlying these norms were derived from Confucian rites and customs.4 In China, as well, as expressed in the saying, “Males and females should not sit together after they reach the age of seven (男女七歲不同席),” such norms also enforced a strong tendency toward spatial separation of the sexes. More strictly adhered to in Korea than in China, this separation was even reflected in architecture, in the ways gender segregation influenced the division of rooms in the home.5 This way of thinking can also be seen in the Korean language, in the expression “naewe (内外),” or “inside and outside” for “a couple” in the sense of “man and wife.” When “hada” the verb for “doing” is added, “naewe hada” indicates acting in a way that shows proper discernment for the social boundaries between men and women—particularly the idea that females should not be positioned face-to-face with any male who is not a relative. The strongly gender-based separation of social domains as expressed in the traditional saying “Men outside, women inside” led to the creation of a special sphere to which women were consigned. 4 The section of the Book of Rites (禮記) on the Inner and the Outer (Nei Wai 内外) sets forth a strict delineation of the inner and outer spheres of responsibility for men and women in which homes should be divided into inner and an outer sections, with the women staying in the inner part and men in the outer; and that men do not discuss affairs of the inner part, nor women discuss outside affairs—in other words, women should not take part in public affairs. 5 The layout of the yangban home included quarters for males (Saran Che) in a front area reached just after entering the compound from a large main gate. The women’s quarters (An Che) were separated from the Saran Che by a central garden. As part of the strictlyregulated segregation of the sexes, boys were moved from the An Che to the Saran Che after reaching the age of seven (Ito 1986: 138–9).



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There were various manifestations of this separation. On the one hand, it could be seen in the very special respect frequently extended to upperclass yangban women. Other women were responsible for carrying out various native, non-Confucian customs and practices that persisted among the common people, although they were officially denied. The Korean language had a word yeosok, which expressed the idea of women’s mores or folkways. There is no equivalent word in Japanese. The situations derived from the old, native practices have been the subject of academic interest from long ago.6 They show that women on the Korean peninsula were not simply the object of discrimination; they had their own clearlydelineated social domain. It cannot be said that concepts of separation as strong and absolute as these existed among the common people of Japan. Accordingly, policies on early modern education for girls struck a balance between the values of the masses and upper-class views on gender roles in Japan. On the Korean peninsula, traditional norms were preserved and continued to be spread in early modern education for girls. Of course, views on girl’s education shifted from the old idea of “women’s foolish existence” to the concept of “women as educators,” the idea that women would have to become capable of educating their children. This shift, which was driven by the requirements of modernization, took place in the early twentieth century.7 However, the idea that males and females should be separate continued to 6 An older example of such scholarly work is Yi Neunghwa’s (李能和) Treatise on the Mores of Korean Women (朝鮮女俗), which was published in 1927. Today, leading South Korean universities and colleges, particularly women’s colleges, are sure to have women’s studies courses, and numerous textbooks entitled Women’s Studies have been published. Women’s studies courses are far more widespread in South Korea than in Japan. These courses might be looked on as a direct import from the United States spurred by the large numbers of South Korean researchers studying there. However, the earlier research on women’s folkways (女俗) points to a tradition of such study. For example, the first edition of A History of South Korean Women, the major work of the publishing department of Ewha Women’s University, came out in 1972. Western feminism and women’s liberation movement had very little effect if any on this work. 7 Even a prominent scholar like Yi Ik (李瀷) (1681–1763) of the Practical Learning School, who waved the flag of resistance to the repeated campaigns for oppressive imposition of the teachings of Zhu Xi, said in his work Seongho Saseol (星湖僿説) that “It would be sufficient if women would obey the Three Admonitions (三戒) and be diligent and frugal and obey the admonitions on separate spheres for men and women (男女有別). Literature and discourse are for men. If women were to put their energy into such matters, there would be no end to the harm that might be done.” Commenting on such ideas, by around 1896, progressive newspapers such as Tongnip Sinmun (The Independent) were advocating women’s education. The Hwangseong Sinmun also advanced the “wise mother, good wife” concept, saying in one editorial “If the mother is not correct, the son will turn out bad (Cheong Sehwa 1972; Kim Inja 1973).”

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be very strong in early modern education, both in the mission schools for girls and those established under Japanese rule. It is difficult to say that the unique norms for females changed in any fundamental way, even in the normal high schools for girls. In addition, after independence, although the equality of men and women in education was established in the constitution of the Republic of Korea, attempts to do away with traditional views on what constituted laudable women’s behavior were few and far between (Choi 1982). Traditionally, women of the yangban class would employ wet nurses and others to assist with childrearing. It was not the case that they were obligated to handle all of the work in caring for their own children. However, due to the strong segregation of men and women into separate spheres, it was only natural that the mothers took care of their own children in the nuclear families that emerged on a mass scale as the country’s urban populations grew. Traditionally, as was the case in Japan, after their status in their husband’s home had become established with the birth of their first child (especially the birth of a son) married women were not allowed to be active outside the home. Since it was virtually impossible for them to find fulfillment elsewhere, it was a natural tendency for these women, like their counterparts in Japan, to energetically and whole­ heartedly fulfill their roles as mothers. In Korea, it was a case of the “men outside, women inside (内外)” maxim being emphasized, with the role of motherhood being assigned to the women.8 Here we must also discuss, as an additional factor, the scorn that Confucian tradition had for physical labor. By physical labor we are referring to the wide variety of jobs other than mental labor, including administrative work. Contempt for physical work and placing an extremely high value on education for mental work are two sides of the same coin. With a tradition that included the classical examination system to win appointment for government service, Korean society is one in which intellectuals engaged in mental work enjoy a very high ranking on the social scale. The ideal lifestyle sought by the elite was one devoted to enjoyment of the literary arts. “Better to engage in reading than soiling one’s hands in humble labor” was the prevailing attitude. The social norms associated with these values have had a great influence on how labor is supplied. As we will discuss in Chapter 7, in 8 Since the responsibility for educating boys less than seven years old fell mainly to women, it cannot be said that the mother’s role in education did not exist before the modern era. In other words, a foundation was in place for the idea to take hold.



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North Korea, although physical labor was never looked down upon during the period of socialist development, the showing of great respect for intellectuals there was in sharp contrast to the situation in China. The reverence for intellectuals in South Korea can also be seen in terms of an opposite attitude toward skilled manual work and production work, an attitude that finds its expression in the low status of workers. Traditional Korean views on women’s virtue and a special mode of life that the best women should lead continue to have influence up to the present day. There has been no decisive break with the past. With motherhood positioned as the core role for women, the old ways of allocating power and social roles remained strong throughout the period of modernization and remain strong to this day. The persistence of the old values has given birth to the unique model of patriarchy found in contemporary South Korean society. Along with firmly implanted inequality in the distribution of power and authority, this system is characterized by the application of the old idea that men should be assigned productive labor and women reproductive labor, a concept which goes hand-in-hand with the traditional belief in “men outside, women inside.” Assigned to a status conforming to these beliefs, women assiduously fulfill their role as mothers. Their strong acceptance of this results in extremely powerful constraints on their activity. In South Korea, Confucianism was accepted and adopted as a guiding philosophy in daily life and by all social classes to an incomparably greater extent than it was in China and Japan. This served as the foundation for the formation of a unique mode of patriarchy. Undeniably, a drift away from Confucianism has been occurring in recent years, particularly among the younger generation. However, the degree to which this philosophy permeates all corners of society is demonstrated in the results of a variety of studies. We will discuss these findings in the following pages. 3. Forms of South Korean Women’s Employment 3.1. Forms of Employment when Modern and Contemporary Housewives Emerged In this section, we will mainly discuss social conditions in South Korea up to about 2000. Supplementary information on more recent developments will be presented in Chapter 9. A glance at Table 5.2 tells us that the rates of women’s participation in the labor force are about the same in Taiwan

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Table 5.2. Women’s participation in the labor force (1970–2010). 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 South Korea 39.3 40.4 42.8 41.9 47.0 48.4 Taiwan 35.5 38.6 39.3 43.5 44.5 45.3

48.6 46.0

50.0 48.1

49.4 49.9

South Korea: Annual Report on Economically Active Population. Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics.

Table 5.3. Percentage of workers employed in primary industries (1985–2008). South Korea Taiwan

1985 1990

1995

2000

2005

2008

24.9 17.5

11.8 10.9

10.6    7.8

7.9 5.9

7.2 5.1

17.9 12.8

S. Korea: Statistics Bureau Social Indicators of Korea. Taiwan: Council for Economic Planning and Development Taiwan Statistical Data Book.

Table 5.4. Women’s participation in the labor force in South Korea (1965–2010). 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 Overall 37.2 39.3 40.4 42.8 41.9 47.0 48.4 48.6 50.0 49.2 Farm 41.6 49.3 53.4 55.3 52.9 61.8 66.2 68.0 67.8 63.2  families Non-farm 31.6 30.4 31.7 36.9 38.8 44.1 46.1 46.6 48.5 48.2   Families Source: Annual Report on Economically Active Population.

and South Korea, and this could lead to the false conclusion that the women’s employment situation is about the same in these two countries. The truth is that gender-related conditions are quite different. We will attempt to clarify these differences as we examine the data. As seen in Table 5.3, the percentage of South Korean workers employed in primary industries, which even in 1985 was one out of four workers, has steadily declined since then—to 17.9% in 1990, and to 7.2% in 2008. We can see that the rate of decrease, which accelerated from the 1990s on, has been somewhat quicker than that of Taiwan, despite the fact that far more people were employed in agriculture in South Korea than in Taiwan. Now let us look at rates of participation in the labor force among South Korean women in farming and non-farming families. Table 5.4 shows that



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not much change occurred among women in non-farming families from the start of full-fledged industrialization around 1965 through the mid1970s. Then we see a significant increase from the mid-1980s on. In the case of women in farming families, we see that traditionally the rate of women’s participation in the labor force was not necessarily high, but that it has recently shot upward. In other words, at first, the number of employed women workers was not that great when the housewife began to emerge in South Korea. It was growing family incomes that made the contemporary lifestyle possible, creating an environment conducive to the birth of the housewife. The rate of women’s participation in the labor force, which edged upward over the thirty-year period from 1965 to 1995, was only approximately 40% throughout the 1970s. If we consider the fact that, in the first half of the 1970s, the majority of the labor force was employed in primary industries, we can see that the birth of the modern housewife—in the latter half of the 1970s—took place a bit later than it did in Taiwan. Then, looking at the rate of diffusion of household electric goods we see an extremely late diffusion of washing machines, an indication that Korean housewives did not begin to reach the stage of leading the lifestyle of a contemporary housewife until the latter half of the 1980s. To obtain a more accurate understanding of the changes in women’s employment we will study such factors as education levels, wage differentials, and data broken down by urban and rural life. 3.2. Forms of South Korean Women’s Employment Relative to Taiwan, the overall rate of women’s participation in the labor force in South Korea was never that low. However, if we graph this rate by age, we see a completely different situation. Figure 5.2 uses census data and tracks women’s participation in the labor force in the 1980s and 1990s. (Incidentally, the annual report on economically active population counts those engaged in one hour of work per week as in the labor force, while the household population survey counts those working thirty days or more per year, which means the percentage is higher in the former survey). Overall, the graph of Korean women’s participation in the labor force by age traces a decline during child-raising years and shows a typical M-shaped pattern. This is a clear sign that the contemporary-housewife stage had been entered. The graphs for Korean women show an M-shaped pattern at a very early period, a result of a combination of two factors, a

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(%) 60.0

50.0

40.0

30.0

20.0

10.0

0.0

15-19

20-24

25-29

30-34

35-39

40-44

45-49

50-54

55-59

60-64 Age

S. Korea 1980

S. Korea 2000

Seoul 1990

S. Korea 1990

Seoul 1980

Seoul 2000

Figure 5.2. Female labor force participation rates by age in S. Korea and Seoul. Source: Annual Report on Economically Active Population. relatively high rate of participation by those engaged in farm work, and young women leaving their jobs when they get married.9 9 Studies on women’s labor in South Korea, including work done by South Korean researchers, used to be focused on the situation faced by women workers. Of course, the



south korean patriarchy153

On the other hand, comparing the data for urban and rural residents, the data for Seoul residents shows that, until the mid-1990s, the rate of participation in the labor force for women in the middle and higher age brackets did not rise, a typical pattern for modern housewives. In other words, the move to the large city did not bring about a higher rate of participation, which is a sign that the lifestyle of the urban housewife was being created. However, you can also see a big jump in the labor force participation rate after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Many women in their thirties and forties in Seoul started to work, even though this was not customary only few years before. As we will discuss in Chapter 9, this was partly due to economic hardship being experienced and partly because of a sharp decline in the birth rate that accompanied the difficult economic situation. Seoul accounts for about one-fourth of South Korea’s population, which was approximately 45 million in the 1990s and is currently just over 50 million in recent years. Combined with the cities on its periphery, the giant Seoul metropolitan area has a population that is approximately half that of the entire country. Development in the area on the south side of the Han River during the period before and after the 1988 Olympics included clusters of high-rise apartment buildings for people in the upper middleincome range. Data on the lifestyles of residents of these apartments are consistent with the pattern described above. Women with higher levels of education became housewives who devoted their energy to their children. This resulted in fierce competition for high scores in university entrance examinations. One might say that the lifestyle that emerged in the 1990s represented the latest form of “yangbanization,” the social phenomenon discussed earlier. To compare data on women’s participation in the labor force based on of education levels we have to first examine the percentages of females advancing to different levels of education in each country. The ratios used in Japan to do this are rather unique, particularly the one used to indicate college education—the number of females entering college in a given year is divided by the number of middle school graduates three years earlier. The data is not handled this way in other countries. This is why somewhat role of women as a source of cheap labor for the country’s export industries and the harsh working conditions women faced were emphasized by most South Korean researchers, who called attention to this social problem and devoted their energy to the serious practical concerns involved. Studies on trends among housewives and women with higher levels of education began to be undertaken more recently. Rather than focus on specific social problems, for the most part, the research on this subject has been done from the standpoint of examining gender relations across South Korean society and disclosing the structure of South Korean patriarchy.

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different statistics are used in Table 5.5 to compare the percentages of citizens advancing to a college education in each country. As we will discuss in Chapter 9, Taiwan and South Korea have made rapid advances in providing opportunities for higher education. One can see that the percentage of South Koreans attending college is very high. South Korea’s technical colleges are two-year institutions mainly providing technical or occupational education; rather than junior colleges, they are equivalent to the technical schools of Japan. The values are rather skewed for purposes of comparison because statistics on technical schools are not included as a category in Japan. Incidentally, as pointed out in Chapter 4, Japan’s junior colleges, which are two-year institutions, are not set up for technical training. Unique to Japan, they are designed for general liberal arts education and it is worthwhile to analyze their particular characteristics. In terms of percentages of citizens graduating from college, we see that the three East Asian capitalist societies were very much the same in this period. In these societies, college graduation has become a mass phenomenon rather than a special privilege of the elite. The fact that the differences between these percentages are relatively small makes closer comparison possible.

Table 5.5. Rate of citizens advancing to college education (%) (1992). All citizens Men

Women

32.2

41.1

22.9

27.0

33.1

20.4

Taiwan Four-year college (including night school) 18.3 Junior college or technical school 20.1

20.0 17.9

16.5 22.5

Japan Four-year college Junior college

35.2    1.8

17.3 23.5

South Korea Four-year college (excluding radio/TV  correspondence courses) Technical college

Sources: South Korea: Statistical Yearbook of Education. Taiwan: Education Statistics. Japan: School Basic Survey.

26.4 12.4



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Looking at Table 5.6, which is based on South Korea’s Annual Report on the Economically Active Population Survey, we see that a rise in women’s level of education did not necessarily lead to an increase in their participation in the labor force. This tendency is even more conspicuous among married women. The level of participation is higher among unmarried women with higher levels of education because they marry later than women with lower levels of education, and it is possible that this factor leads to a higher overall rate of participation. When we look at the rates for married women, we see that a higher level of education is linked even less to a higher rate of participation in the labor force. This is another indication of a tendency for women to become housewives in South Korean society. Turning to Table 5.7, which shows numbers of working women by level of education when the number of men working at each level is set at 100, we clearly see that women with lower levels of education are the core group among women in the South Korea’s labor force. The difference between the pattern found in Taiwan and that found in South Korea is striking. These patterns are also clearly reflected in the difference between wages earned by men and women. In 1993, South Korean women’s wages were 54.6% of men’s wages, which was somewhat less than the 61.6% of men’s wages earned by Japanese women in the same year. The composition of the labor force affects the overall gap in wages, and the pattern in Japan in which large numbers of women quit working to raise children and then return to work when they are older, is an important factor accounting for a widening of the wage gap.

Table 5.6. Women’s participation in the labor force by level of education in South Korea (%) (1990/2000).

Middle school or below High school Technical college Four year college

All 1990

Married women

All 2000 Married women

45.6 47.5 66.2 53.1

57.3 34.7 44.0 39.6

44.6 50.2 63.5 57.9

Source: South Korea: Annual Report on Economically Active Population Survey.

57.6 46.7 42.6 46.3

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Table 5.7. Numbers of employed women by education level (when number of men working is set at 100) (1990–2010). South South South Taiwan Taiwan Taiwan Japan Korea Korea Korea 1990 2000 2010 1997 1990 2000 2010 Elementary  school or  below Middle school  graduate High school  graduate Above junior  college Junior college  graduate College  graduate  and over

130    71

151    87

142    87

65 44

73 45

77 48

68*

   51

   59

   66

69

73

79

76

   33

   48

   59

56

75

91

67

   55

   77

   80

61

78

88

   27

   37

   51

50

70

93

* For Japan: Middle school graduate or below. Sources: South Korea: Annual Report on Economically Active Population Survey. Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics. Japan: Employment Status Survey.

If we exclude this factor in an examination of the wage gap and only look at the gap in wages for office work in South Korea among male and female college graduates in 1993, we see that entry-level pay for women was 84.4% that of men, and if the college graduates continued working for four years, the pay for women became 82.8% that of men.10 In comparison, the data for Japan for the same year, shows that women doing office work earned 95.1% of the pay earned by men; for college graduates in the twenty-fiveto-twenty-nine age group, the established difference in pay for office work was for women to earn 91.0% of the pay earned by men.11 The size of 10 This data is from a “Report on a Survey of Standard Model Wages” released by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1993 and reprinted in a Labor Department report, “Women’s Employment” published in 1994. 11 Interestingly, in Taiwan, the results of the Manpower Utilization Survey indicated that, in 1992, among employed persons in the twenty-to-twenty-four age bracket whose level of education was college graduate or higher, the number of women employed was 104.2% of the number of men employed; among those aged twenty-five to twenty-nine, the number of women employed dropped to 90.2% of the number of men employed.



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the difference between women’s and men’s pay in South Korea is very conspicuous, even among college graduates. The practice in South Korea of women quitting work after marriage continued to be the general trend until the 1980s. According to a Korean Women’s Development Institute survey, over 80% of the women in their twenties or thirties stopped working after they married (1991: 73). The same report also explains that, despite a tendency for participation in the labor force to rise among women college graduates, approximately 50% of this group stopped working after marriage. As we will discuss in Chapter 9, a tendency for women to continue working after marriage strengthened after the Asian economic crisis that began in 1997. We can also see a tendency among South Korean women toward later marriage and childbirth, becoming more active members of society, and continuing to work and pursue a career. Nevertheless, fewer are doing this than their counterparts in Japan. To some extent, it is true that South Korean women are continuing to advance in society. However, one cannot discern any change that undermines the position of the housewife. In other words, as we said in Chapter 2, South Korean society is one that presents obstacles to mechanisms that would lower the value of being a housewife. It should be noted that the gaps between the social strata have been somewhat greater in South Korea than in Japan or Taiwan. Confucian traditions have played a role in this, and social classes with different lifestyles have been formed. Table 5.8, which sets the pay of high school graduates at 100, shows that the pay for women and men combined differ greatly Table 5.8. Differences in pay for workers with different levels of education (with high school graduates’ pay set at 100) (1985–2005). South Korea 1985

South Korea 1990

South Korea 2000

Taiwan 1990

Taiwan 2005

Middle school or    80.3  below Junior college 129.5  graduate Graduate of 214.7  four-year college

   87.7

   87.8

   89.5

   90.3

116.7

108.7

123.6

121.6

174.6

150.9

160.2

153.6

South Korea: Annual Report on Economically Active Population. Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics.

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according to level of education. One can also see that the gaps have been gradually narrowing since democratization. Table 5.9 compares pay for different categories of work with the average pay for all types of work and with average pay for management. For men, blue collar or blue collar + machine operator are used as a basis for comparison. For women, sales or sales + service are used. In each case, the differentials are greater in South Korea than in Taiwan. Even though the ratios for women in sales or service work are very similar for 2007 in the two countries, we have to keep in mind that the gap between men’s

Table 5.9. Differentials in average pay for different types of work in Taiwan and South Korea (1992/2007). (%) 1992

Blue collar Overall

South Korea 86.6 Taiwan 90.5 2007 Blue collar or machine operator Overall South Korea 75.7 Taiwan 84.2 2007 Sales or service Overall South Korea 69.5 Taiwan 77.0

Blue collar

Blue collar, Sales Sales, men women Management Overall for Overall Overall for men women 37.5 86.9    77.1    97.4 43.6 90.3 102.2 106.1 Blue collar Blue collar or or machine machine operator operator, men Management Overall for men 39.3 73.2 44.1 82.4 Sales or All women service, women Overall for (when men = women 100) 78.4 67.4 77.4 76.8

Sources: South Korea, 1992: Statistical Report on Wage Structure. South Korea, 2007: Survey Report on Labor Conditions by Employment Type. Taiwan: Manpower Utilization Survey.



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pay and women’s pay is significantly greater in South Korea. The differentials reflect the relatively low value placed on physical labor in South Korea. Even though, as indicated in Table 5.10, unemployment rates tended to rise with level of education through 1995, the people of South Korea have been even more enthusiastic about receiving a college education than the Japanese. It is worth noting that labor shortages occurred even when women’s participation in the labor force remained low, which is one indication that, when women college graduates become housewives, they did so for the sake of a lifestyle associated with an established social status. These tendencies began to change due to the impact of the Asian financial crisis. Unemployment rates rose among workers with lower levels of education. The rapid rise in levels of education in South Korea after 2000 is a reflection of this. On the other hand, one must note that Taiwan entered a period of negative economic growth, and unemployment rose sharply after the Great Recession of 2008. The Gender Equal Employment Act enacted in South Korea in 1989 has had definite effects on employment—unlike Japan’s weak Equal Employment Opportunity Law which lacked compulsory provisions (Mizuno 1995). Although the phenomenon of South Korean women continuing to work after marriage quickly appeared after the onset of the Asian financial crisis, we doubt that this will shake the position of the housewife. The rapid pace of social change in the country could lead to a Table 5.10. Unemployment rates and levels of education in Taiwan and South Korea (1985–2009). (%) 1985 1990 1995 1997 1998 2000 2005 2009 South Korea Middle school High school graduate Technical college or  above Taiwan Middle school High school graduate Technical school or  above

4.1 5.9 6.6

1.8 3.4 4.4

1.6 2.5 2.8

2.2 3.3 3.0

7.9 8.3 5.9

4.4 4.8 4.0

3.1 4.3 3.2

3.0 4.1 3.2

3.1 4.8 4.2

1.7 2.5 2.3

1.8 2.3 2.4

3.3 3.0 2.8

3.0 3.1 2.8

3.5 3.3 2.8

4.6 4.5 4.0

6.8 6.2 5.6

South Korea: Annual Report on Economically Active Population. Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics.

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period when this occurs, but patriarchy remains as a crucial factor. If this system is not fundamentally challenged, unlike Taiwanese society, which we will discuss in Chapter 6, the housewife will not disappear from South Korean society. One pattern we see is large numbers of South Korean women being able to graduate from college, find a good partner (a college graduate with a good income), live as housewives in the city with no financial pressure to work, and devote their energy to their children’s education. It is difficult to foresee a rapid disappearance of the housewife in a society where women with a higher education tend to become housewives and adopt a middle-class urban lifestyle. 4. South Korean Patriarchy Although one can talk about the “Miracle on the Han River” and rapid economic growth, in our examination of the patterns of female participation in the labor force we have seen that the economic conditions in South Korea have been characterized by the need to respond to high unemployment. When we study the example of Taiwan, as we will do in the next chapter, we begin to recognize how unique the labor supply situation in South Korea truly has been. We also have to recognize that a high unemployment rate does not have to be accompanied by a corresponding low rate of women’s participation in the labor force. For example, the United States has a higher rate of unemployment than South Korea, but the rate of women’s participation in the labor force there is markedly higher. In addition, in South Korea before the 1997 Asian financial crisis (known as “IMF crisis” in Korea), the rate of women’s participation in the labor force was low when there was a severe shortage of human resources. Such a situation cannot be explained without analyzing the country’s social norms. The question of which persons will become part of the workforce in a given society is not decided merely by economic factors. Social norms also play a key role. In Chapter 7 we will provide a detailed explanation of the way certain phenomena in the Northern part of the Korean peninsula resemble phenomena in the South because of common traditional patriarchal norms. This is an indication of the significance of using the concept of patriarchy in sociology. 4.1. Gender-Based Allocation of Power and Roles A prominent feature of the South Korean model of patriarchy is its firmly-rooted belief that social roles should be based on gender—a way of



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thinking set against the background of a Confucian tradition. This feature, in which women are discriminated against and assigned specific roles simply because they are women, is more pronounced than the feature of contemporary patriarchy in Japan which supports the special role of the housewife as mother. In Japan, if a woman is not a mother, she can reasonably expect to be treated fairly in the labor market, much the same way a man would be treated. In South Korea, before the IMF crisis, it was pretty much the norm for women to quit working after marriage, and women were clearly placed in special work categories because they were women. The pronounced wage gap between men and women college graduates engaged in office work is emblematic of this discrimination. We will now examine South Korean views on women working, using several attitude surveys, including those among the “Social Statistics Surveys” conducted by Statistics Korea. We find a recent increase in positive attitudes toward women, who at once quit work after marrying, returning to work after their children have been raised (see Table 5.11). However, the way the possible answers to the questions were set up reveals an assumption that women will quit work after they marry, rather than after their first child is born in 1991. We should point out that attitudes began to change once the country had ridden out the IMF Crisis that hit South Korea in 1997. For example, a comparison of the 1991, 1998 and 2006 surveys shown in Table 5.11 reveals a sharp increase in the percentage of women agreeing that the question of women working “Should not be related to home life.” The data show that the crisis gave women ample economic incentive to look for work. Despite economic changes and the shift in attitudes, the actual situation has continued to be one in which the “M”-pattern in women’s employment persists. All we can see are signs of change rather than significant actual change. A Gallup poll conducted in South Korea in 1987 asked participants if they approved of the idea that “Men should work and women should stay home”—a notion fundamental to modern patriarchy. Eighty percent of those responding were in agreement with the idea. A 1991 questionnaire used in a study conducted in Seoul by the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI) and the Fukuoka Asian Women’s Exchange and Research Forum (“Seoul Survey”) found about 60% in support of this idea (1992). However, a Japanese government survey of young people’s attitudes published in 1993 (総務庁 第５回世界青年意識調査報告書) found that the rate of approval of the above idea was lower among Korean youth than it was among their Japanese counterparts.

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Table 5.11. Attitudes toward women’s employment (1991/1998/2006)%. 1991

Should stay Should only O.K to home, work work until work after as housewife marriage children are raised

All 21.1 Men 25.7 Women 17.0 1998 Should stay home, work as house­wife

20.2 22.9 17.8

22.4 20.9 20.2

O.K to work until marriage and after children are raised 22.5 20.2 24.6

Should only Should only work until work until marriage children are born

O.K to work after children are raised

All 10.0 Men 11.6 Women  8.5 2006 Should stay home, work as housewife

11.6 13.1 10. 3

14.5 15.0 14.0

Should only Should only work until work until children marriage are born

O.K to work after children are raised

All   8.7 Men 10.9 Women   6.7

5.0 5.9 4.1

13.0 14.3 11.9

7.6 8.4 6.7

7.3 8.8 6.0

Decision to work should not be related to home 13.7 10.3 16.7 O.K to work until marriage and after children are raised 26.4 25.2 27.6

Decision to work should not be related to home life

O.K to work until marriage and after children are raised 27.4 27.6 27.2

Decision to work should not be related to home life

26.8 23.1 30.4

47.3 43.3 50.8

Social Statistics Survey * Percentages do not add up to 100 percent because some respondents answered, “Don’t Know.”

A post-IMF-crisis study conducted by the Cabinet Office, government of Japan, in 2002 on “An International Comparative Survey on Gender Equality” (“Comparative Study”) found that, while simple comparisons could not be made because of differences in the expressions used in various questionnaires, survey participants in South Korea were more critical than Japanese participants of the proposition, “Husbands should go out to work, and wives should take care of the household.” When asked to state whether they agreed or disagreed with it, 16.7% of all respondents agreed



south korean patriarchy163

and 81.1% disagreed; 20.2% of the men agreed and 77.0% disagreed; 13.2% of the women agreed and 85.1% disagreed. These opinions showed much greater criticism of the proposition than the Japanese respondents, 41.1% of whom were in agreement and 52.3% in disagreement. On the other hand, a subsequent survey conducted in 2006 by the East Asian Social Survey (EASS) elicited surprisingly different responses to the same proposition, 40.3% of all respondents agreed and 43.3% disagreed. Others indicated they could not decide (“Cannot say one way or the other”). While it is difficult to account for the big difference in the responses to the same expression used in the two series, it is worth noting that the percentage in disagreement was much higher among younger respondents than it was among middle-aged and elderly respondents. This seems to indicate a turning point in consciousness—a significant generational change. South Korean attitudes also appear to be changing greatly in regard to the unequal allocation of power between husband and wife. In an international comparative study of housewives’ attitudes and lifestyles undertaken by the Japanese Prime Minister’s office in 1984, housewives from six countries South Korea, Japan, the United States, Britain, Germany and Sweden in 1982 (1985 in South Korea) were asked a question on who had decision-making power regarding the purchase of land or a house. Over seventy percent of the subjects from each of the four Western countries said the husband and wife would make such a decision together. For Japan and South Korea, the same answer was given by 59.2% and 41.0% of the subjects, respectively. In the 2002 “Comparative Study” examined earlier, 46.9% of the Japanese subjects said the husband made the decision on such purchases. In South Korea, only 20.1% gave the same answer. The respondents to the 2002 “Comparative Study” were also asked, in regard to family life, who is dominant in the household, the men or the women? Over 40% of the housewives from the four Western countries replied that men and women were “Equal” in the home, and less than 50% chose the answer, “Men are dominant.” As for the Japanese and South Korean subjects, “Equal” was the answer selected by just over 20% and “Men are dominant” was chosen by nearly two-thirds. In the 1991 “Seoul Survey,” when asked whose opinion is followed when husband and wife disagree, 74% of the subjects said that the husband’s opinion was either always or usually followed. In regard to roughly the same point, the “Comparative Study” asked the question, overall, who holds real power in the household? “Husband” was the answer provided by

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53.4% of the Japanese and 31.9% of the South Korean subjects; 17.6% of the Americans and 6.0% of the Swedes gave this answer. While the South Koreans appear relatively conservative when it comes to male-female equality, in the “Comparative Study” they consistently held opinions closer to accepting equality than the Japanese subjects did. The situation was quite the reverse when it came to the question, who holds power in managing household finances? The most common answer given by the Western subjects in the “Seoul Survey” was “Both the husband and the wife.” While roughly 30% of the Westerners answered “The wife,” 79.4% of the Japanese and 67.7% of the South Koreans chose that answer. The tendency was very much the same in the “Comparative Study.” In response to the same question, 85.5% of the Japanese and 70.2% of the South Korean subjects chose “The wife” as their answer. A quick look at the data seems to suggest a rapid advance in malefemale equality in South Korea. However, when asked about how much of the housework was handled by the wife, 91.9% of the respondents in 2008 Panel Survey on Women and Family by KWDI said the wife prepared the family meals “Nearly all of the time.” The percentage rises above 95% when those answers are combined with those who answered “Four to five times a week.” Exactly the same tendency was found in the responses to a question about how often the wife washed dishes. “Nearly all of the time” was the response given by 91.3% of the subjects, and the percentage rose above 95% when that answer was combined with those who said “Four to five times a week.” The same tendency appeared in the EASS Survey, with 84.5% of the respondents saying the wife prepared the meals “Almost every day,” and 9.6% saying, “Several times a week.” This differs significantly from the Taiwanese respondents, 58.6% of whom said “Almost every day” and 20.5% “Several times a week.” We get a glimpse of the heavy burden on South Korean women from the “Comparative Study,” in which 69.8% of the respondents said “My husband does no housework at all.” A comprehensive analysis of these findings shows that the situation in South Korea was once very similar to that of Japan in that it was the husband who held full authority in the household. Although not to the extent that it is in Japan, power is still generally held by the husband in contemporary South Korean families, much as it has been in the past. Roles are strictly allocated, with housework and household-management tasks being the wife’s areas of responsibility. As mentioned in the previous section, the job market for women is mainly restricted to auxiliary roles, work assisting men, as much as if not more than it is in Japan. So, we see many



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similar characteristics in role allocation in Japan and South Korea. Nevertheless, we can say that a rapid change in consciousness has been occurring in South Korea in recent years. 4.2. Views on the Family and Generations We also see very interesting characteristics when it comes to views on divorce and the family. Data from the 1998 Japanese government survey of worldwide attitudes among youth showed that a very high percentage of young people in South Korea felt that couples should not divorce (Figure 5.3). Reflecting the strong role of the mother in their culture, the Japanese respondents mostly felt that the existence of children should be the deciding factor in whether or not an unhappy wife should be allowed to divorce. Their South Korean counterparts were conspicuous among youth from all cultures in their strong feeling that divorce simply should be avoided. In the 2002 “Comparative Study,” when asked to respond to the opinion “Divorce is acceptable if a person is dissatisfied with his or her partner,” 58.4% of the Japanese and 61.0% of the South Koreans said they agreed. As an indication of the rapid change in attitudes among South Koreans, particularly the younger generation, we see 50.0% of those in their fifties and 72.3% of those in their twenties saying they agreed with the opinion. 9.9

Japan

35.8

29.8

S.Korea U.S.A.

37.9 24.0

9.0 9.2

Sweden 1.55.2

44.1

47.2

6.2 15.1

41.0

Germany

6.6 15.9

38.6

20.3

36.3 41.0 64.4

20.2

15.1

38.9

Philippines 0%

20%

32.2

30.3

11.2 4.9 17.5

Thailand

36.4

43.1

Russia 4.1 16.9

13.1 1.2

36.5

France

Brazil

31.9

40.0

U.K. 4.5 14.6

12.8 3.5

40%

24.4 60%

2.0 1.4 6.7 1.6 7.7 2.0

43.4

23.1

5.3

80%

Shouldn’t Get Divorced You Any Reason Shouldn’t Get Divorced If You Have Children Divorced May Be Acceptable Under Certain Circumstances Should Divorce If There Is No Mutual Love DK/NA

1.0 13.4 0.3 100%

Figure 5.3. Attitudes toward divorce (1998). Source: Sixth World Youth Survey http://www8.cao.go.jp/youth/english/world youth6-e/pdf/0-1.html

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When it came to views on the family, South Koreans showed feelings of being strongly bound by formal relationships, among family members and people in general. This has to be understood against the background of a society in which emotional ties are very strong. Rather than feelings of love in the Western sense among members of a closed-off nuclear family, which was formed on the basis of romantic love between husband and wife, emotional ties among South Koreans tend to be based on relationships established by social circumstances rather than choice. As they continue, they are accompanied by very strong feelings of affection. The scope of family feelings expands outward in the form of a concentric circle. South Koreans tend to prefer intimacy and be able to express feelings toward those within the family circle with no reservation or sense of separation. Unlike the Japanese who believe in certain courtesies even among close friends, their feeling tends to be that apologizing to a friend would show a lack of intimacy. The common idea that courtesies among close friends are not needed can be seen as expressing how different this is from the usual sense of distance that South Koreans have toward those they do not have close relations with. When they marry, South Koreans place a considerable amount of importance on their parents’ wishes. Even in the cities where love marriages have become mainstream, marriage is never simply a freely-chosen union of a man and a woman. In the “Seoul Survey,” the respondents were asked about the degree of satisfaction they find in the relationships with each of the members of their families. While the South Korean women indicated a stronger satisfaction with their sons than the Japanese respondents, they showed a level of satisfaction with their spouses that was somewhat lower than the Japanese. Feelings of family ties are extremely strong among South Koreans. At first, it appears that these ties are based more on emotions and are more typical examples of modern family than they are in Japan. However, emotional as they may be, these attachments come from living together as a family; it is not necessarily the case that they came about as a result of a specific marriage partner being chosen on the basis of romantic love. South Korean family life has not led to a society with self-contained nuclear families. Children are not raised only within nuclear families. In the 1991 “Seoul Survey,” when asked about the scope of their family, about 60% of the respondents said they considered brothers and sisters of their spouses to be family members along with the spouses of their own brothers and sisters. Then, as a sign of the persistence of patrilineal family values, 71.3% of the respondents said they felt that the children of a son were



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part of the family, compared to 55.3% who felt the same way about the children of a daughter married into another family. It was also evidence of deep-rooted Confucian attitudes favoring male children which became less prevalent only recently. When asked to choose reasons and goals for raising children, only 29.6% of the respondents cited “Emotional satisfaction”; 22.6% chose “To preserve the family”; 29.6% said “Marriage should, of course, include the obligation of raising children”; and “To help me in my old age” was chosen by 5.5%. One can view these results as an indication that the sense that one was obligated to have children exceeded an emotional desire to have them. In a much earlier comparative survey conducted in 1981 of South Korean, Japanese, U.S., British, West German and French couples with children up to the age of fifteen (“Couples Survey”) were asked “What is the most important thing in a relationship between husband and wife?” “The same view of life” was the answer chosen by 73.0% of the West German respondents, 57.4% of the French, 56.0% of the Americans, 44.5% of the British, and 38.4% of the Japanese; this was the most frequently cited answer by respondents from each of those countries. Only among the South Korean respondents was “Economic stability” the most common answer chosen; 28.6% of them chose that answer, and 26.1% chose “The same view of life,” which was their second most frequently selected answer. The data provided in this section are a realistic indication that relations between husbands and wives in South Korea were first of all based on economic and functional considerations rather than feelings of love. The 2006 EASS survey provides other indications of the continuing strength of traditional values in South Korea. In that survey, 20.4% of the Japanese and 34.5% of the Taiwanese respondents agreed with the opinion, “It is not necessary to have children if you marry.” Only 10.4% of the South Koreans agreed with that opinion, while 54.4% of them agreed with the idea that “Families should have at least one son to continue the family line,” which was significantly more than the 41.3% of the Taiwanese and 38.9% of the Japanese who agreed. Changes must certainly lie ahead in South Korean family life. Given the breadth of relationships among relatives in South Korea’s extended families, it should be possible that relatives outside the nuclear family might be asked to look after infants or little children, particularly if married women begin to advance in the workplace, as is often done in Taiwan. Or children of working mothers could be placed in public childcare facilities.

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Generation and then age form another axis among the variables in South Korean patriarchy. In regard to this, it should be noted that, among families of the Korean peninsula, children usually continue living with their parents after they become adults. The fact that their parents’ authority and influence in their lives remains strong—stronger than it is in Japan—is reflected in the fact that their parents’ approval of marriage partners must generally be received. This way of thinking is linked to the beliefs in respect for the elderly and that children should be expected to take care of aged parents. If we examine a slightly different aspect of family relationships, age rather than generation, we find that South Korea differs greatly from Chinese societies in that the order of the birth of siblings has a great effect on inheritance. While not as extreme as traditional Japanese society, where the eldest son was treated as the primary heir, in most cases in South Korea, the oldest son used to inherit at least half of all of a family’s fields or rice paddies, and the remainder of the property was divided among the children born later (Yi Guanggyu 1975). This unbalanced inheritance system favoring the oldest son came about after a long period of equal distribution of family property among sons and daughters that lasted until around the sixteenth century, after which the system was altered to, first, one of equal distribution among male heirs, and then to the current system (Miyajima 1995). Over time, a social structure was formed in which members were ranked on the basis of age as well as generation. This structure is a characteristic of South Korean patriarchy. In the societies of the Korean peninsula, rank based on age is treated as a very important piece of information that affects how people interact. When persons meet, they first of all try to figure out their ages. This helps clarify social rankings and enables them to adopt proper levels of politeness in their speech. Later, once a certain degree of intimacy is reached in the relationship, the two may adopt a slightly more familiar mode of address. Expressions corresponding to a brother or sister relationship might be used—expressions such as hyeon (elder brother) or onni (elder sister). In other words, terms based on age and rank among blood relatives are also commonly used among people not related by blood. This speech custom is quite different from the usage (outside of small Christian communities) of “brother” or “sister” which is neutral in regard to age in English-speaking cultures. And family terms are generally not used to address persons outside the family in Japan, except in special pseudo-family groups such as yakuza, in which one member might call another “big brother (aniki)”.



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In Chinese society, one sees people showing consciousness of age (or respecting rank according to age) when addressing others, but the custom is nowhere near as striking as it is on the Korean peninsula. What the Chinese do not engage in is the practice seen on the Korean peninsula of people addressing one another with terms such as “Senior (seonbae, 先輩)” or “Junior (hubae 後輩)” on the basis of seniority on the job or in school, etc. It is interesting to note that the Chinese characters used to write “senior” and “junior” are the same in Japanese and Korean, which might be an indication of Japanese influence. These Japanese and Korean words might have originated in China, but in contemporary China, the term “qianbei (前辈)” is only sometimes used by a person addressing another with ample experience. However, this expression is not used the way “senior” or “junior” are used to automatically establish a type of superior-inferior relationship based on the year a person entered school or joined a company. This form of address simply does not exist in China.12 It is very likely that this type of “Senior/Junior” type of usage was exported to Korea from Japan. Be that as it may, the practice is now firmly rooted on the Korean peninsula. Relating to others on the basis of seniority was readily accepted in a culture where consciousness of social rank was already so pronounced. Following Todd (1990), we will point out that the use of information on status or rank lends itself to the formation of bureaucratic organizations with a pyramid power structure. This mode of behavior helps explain why, compared to Taiwanese, the South Koreans have a stronger tendency to build giant corporations with networks of subsidiaries (Sechiyama 1996). These norms on the Korean peninsula were accepted and adopted under the name of Confucianism. The principle that the social order should be established by making careful distinctions between man and woman, parent and child, and brother and sister is one of the primary teachings of Confucianism. The norms rooted in those teachings are more strongly emphasized on the Korean peninsula than they are in China, the cradle of this philosophy. We can see from the above discussion that, despite inklings that big changes lie ahead, the firm division of roles which characterizes South Korean patriarchy is still very much accepted. As discussed in Chapter 4, “motherhood” is a key concept affecting the women’s labor market in 12 In Taiwan, expressions such as xue zhang 學長 (“senior”) and xue mei 學妹 (literally, “little sister”) are used, to address senior male students and younger female students, respectively, but this usage is not systematized as it is in Japan and South Korea.

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Japan. In South Korea, as we have seen in the data on work and level of education, the position of women in the labor market is largely dictated by the simple fact that they are women. Women are generally only given jobs considered to be women’s jobs. This is true of South Korea much more than it is of Japan. It is just one example of the influence of Confucian values in many areas of South Korean society. Resting on this foundation, South Korean patriarchy will continue to influence the way labor is supplied for some time to come. Confucian values continue to have the power to influence many areas of South Korean society. Our analysis, which stresses the importance of traditional norms, will continue to hold true if traditional attitudes are only transformed in a dilatory manner. From this perspective, we can say that, just as much as in Japanese society, if not more so, traditional norms will continue to impede any tendency for the housewife to disappear. On the other hand, South Koreans are experiencing significant social changes due to the sharp trends toward an aging population and less children. We will discuss this situation in more detail in Chapter 9.

CHAPTER SIX

TAIWANESE PATRIARCHY Taiwan is generally only lightly treated in almost every field of Japanese research and media reporting. This is partly because attention is inevitably drawn to the country’s giant mainland neighbor across the strait. There is also much greater Japanese interest in South Korea than in Taiwan, even though Taiwan was once subjected to Japanese colonial rule just as South Korea was. Even after strong economic growth had put Taiwan in a class with other newly-industrialized economies (NIEs), Taiwan was often only superficially examined and described as a region similar to South Korea. This is despite the fact that Taiwan’s economy and society are significantly different from South Korea’s. When it comes to our subject, patriarchy and gender issues, many observers have a preconceived image of China as having made significant advances in women’s liberation. Women’s issues in China are studied in some depth in Japan, and for some reason, advances made by women and women’s issues in Taiwan are almost never discussed. In Chapter 8 we will examine developments on the Chinese mainland, studying such questions as the conversion of women into workers under socialism, and how, under the later policy of “reform and openness,” some women are becoming housewives. An examination of women’s issues in Taiwan should provide us with valuable insights, as we try to determine the extent to which developments in China were the result of socialist policies and the extent to which they were driven by unique cultural factors. 1. Industrialization in Taiwan 1.1. The Process of Industrialization Compared to South Korea, relatively little writing and even less analytical work has been done on the process of industrialization in Taiwan. However, scholarly work done on this subject provides us with a comprehensive history. We will refer to some of it as we examine how the process of industrialization influenced the birth of the housewife.

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In Taiwan, the first steps toward industrialization took place a bit earlier than in South Korea, which saw its land laid to waste by the Korean War. The period from 1949 to about 1952 was one of economic confusion that accompanied misrule resulting from Chinese Nationalist forces crossing over to Taiwan and the Kuomintang (Nationalist party) seizing political control. Despite this hardship, inflation began to abate and a period of economic construction was under way by the latter part of the first half of the 1950s. In the 1950s, the public sector, which had taken over the enterprises that had emerged during the colonial period, took the lead in carrying out industrialization based on an import-substitution strategy. The unemployment rate was high during this period, and the tiny domestic market was quickly saturated with goods that served as substitutes for imports. The need for a shift in economic policy was met by an export-oriented program adopted in the 1960s, under which the government aggressively sought the introduction of foreign capital, and, in 1965, boldly set up a bonded area in Kaohsiung for the processing of American and Japanese goods. In this way foreign capital was put to work to create an export-led economic model, which led to the start of economic growth. Laborintensive industries, which spurred employment, produced high-quality textiles, electrical, electronic and other goods. Shirley Kuo (1983), a professor of economics at Taiwan University, has done extensive research on this transition period, and we rely on her independent calculations for the following statistics on the growth achieved. The unemployment rate which was 6.12% in 1960 fell to 3.01% in 1971, a point at which full employment had been achieved.1 From 1964 to 1973, annual average rates of growth were as follows: exports 29.7%, industrial production 19.4%, and GNP 11.1%. This rapid growth, which put Taiwan at the head of the Asian NIEs, drew a great deal of attention, as did the growth that continued following a certain amount of instability due to the first Oil Shock. With the economy sustained by exports, primarily to the U.S., from 1974 to 1983, annual average growth rates included 20.3% in exports, 9.8% in industrial production, and 7.3% in GNP. Leaving aside a temporary

1 According to Professor Kuo, Taiwanese government statistics on unemployment include stages in which data was not prepared, and that there are five types of statistics, each with their own defects. She made necessary adjustments to independently calculate unemployment rates. Incidentally Taiwan’s Labor Statistics Report (勞動統計年報) for 1971 had the unemployment rate at 1.66%.



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impact from the Oil Shock, the cost of living remained relatively stable during this period. Wages rose extensively at the same time. During the last few years of the 1980s, Taiwan’s economy was boosted by growth in its computer and other high-tech industries, and steady expansion continued. This was in contrast to South Korea, which had lost its comparative advantage of being able to exploit low-wage labor, as democratization spurred a drive for higher wages. South Korea was forced to go through a period of painful economic restructuring. In 1992, Taiwan’s annual per capita GDP broke through the 10,000-dollar mark. Another sign of Taiwanese economic strength was the fact that the country had amassed the largest holding of foreign currency reserves in the world, which in 1994 was $98.27 billion. 1.2. Comparison with South Korea We now must turn to a subject a bit removed from our discussion of patriarchy, a brief account of the differences between the industrialization processes in South Korea and Taiwan. Three main points of difference have been noted (Hattori and Sato 1996). The first difference was the position of agriculture when capitalist development began. With its warm climate, Taiwan’s agriculture was based on rice growing and commodity crops such as sugar and camphor, and the area enjoyed relative abundance when Japanese rule began. In South Korea, such factors as shipments of rice to Japan during the period of Japanese imperial rule (known as the “famine exports”) and the vast destruction caused by the Korean War left the country unable to provide for itself. This meant that postwar economic construction in South Korea had to begin with overcoming famine—a situation very different from that of Taiwan, which was able to use surplus production from its farming villages to feed its population. This meant that income distribution in Taiwan, while not as even as in Japan, was significantly more balanced than it was in South Korea. Also the unipolar concentration of population in the cities was not as severe in Taiwan as it was in South Korea. The second significant difference, one that is often noted, is the fact that industrialization in South Korea did not stop with the development of export-oriented industries. The country moved ahead with what was called the Heavy-Chemical Industry Drive from the 1970s on. This resulted in the development of giant facilities for steel-making, ship-building, and auto production. Taiwan, on the other hand, continued to focus on small- and medium-size enterprises. After the earlier dependence on light

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industry, which produced cheap goods for export and relied on cheap labor, the country began to focus on the production of computers and other electronic goods that required less capital investment than heavy industry. This difference was reflected in a close connection between the government and the giant industrial conglomerates growing in South Korea, and the small- and medium-sized industries in Taiwan whose management was separate from the government. The balance of payments situation in the two countries also contrasted greatly. South Korea had to import production equipment (particularly from Japan) as part of its investment in the development of heavy industry. This led to a structural imbalance in trade with Japan that was difficult to correct. In comparison, Taiwan was able to quickly recover its investments in small-scale industries. This pattern repeated itself continually as the country’s investment strategy fit well with a focus on computers and other products that had to be frequently upgraded. As a result, although Taiwan also had a negative balance of trade with Japan, its overall trade balance was in the black. The third difference, which overlaps with the economic differences to some extent, was the position of the government in the process of industrialization. Taiwan’s government was for a long period dominated by recent migrants from the mainland, and it had the strong character of a foreign regime. This feature has diminished to some extent due to, first, the ascendancy of Lee Teng-hui, a descendant of the Chinese who came to Taiwan centuries earlier, to the country’s presidency and the chairmanship of the Kuomintang in 1988, and then further, with the electoral victory of the Democratic Progressive Party under Chen Shui-bian, which formed a government in 2000. However, the sense of distance between business and government remains. This is a situation strikingly different from the tight government-business relationship seen in South Korea. In Taiwan, the use in business circles of Min Nan Hua (閩南話), the Southern Chinese language of the early settlers, rather than Mandarin, the language of the recent migrants, reflects this feeling of estrangement between government and business. It is not that Taiwan did not try to develop chemical and heavy industries, but efforts in that direction generally ended in failure in a case-by-case fashion. This process was also in sharp contrast to the government-led industrialization in South Korea. This third difference was also reflected in differences in the process of democratization that occurred in the two countries. Both countries went through such a process from the late 1980s and into the 1990s. In South



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Korea, however, the democratization of the political system as reflected in President Roh Tae Woo’s 1987 declaration in which he succumbed to pressures to call for democracy, known as the “6.29 Declaration,” was accompanied by a wave of labor unrest and a resultant sharp rise in wages and fairer distribution of incomes. In contrast, democratization of the political system in Taiwan meant moving away from the legal fiction that the government in Taiwan was the rightful government of China toward a position that the government would become truly representative of the people of Taiwan. No frequent outbursts of labor strife occurred in conjunction with this process, which meant that no major changes in income distribution occurred. In South Korea, the government played a heavy-handed role in oppressing workers during the process of industrialization in order to keep the cost of labor down for big business. This is typical of the pattern seen in dictatorships in developing countries. In the case of Taiwan, political changes and economic changes were relatively separate, and it would be inaccurate to say that Taiwan’s postwar political system was a dictatorship imposed to spur economic development. 1.3. Women’s Labor The post-war standard of living rose more quickly in Taiwan than it did in South Korea. The diffusion of household electric appliances, an important condition for the birth of the modern housewife, grew rapidly in the 1970s and thereafter. As seen in Figure 6.1, 60–70% of all housewives had refrigerators by the mid-1970s, and by 1980, the same percentage had washing machines. This level was reached considerably earlier than it was in South Korea. According to Liu Kezhi (1984), who analyzed women’s participation in the labor force from 1915 to 1980, the percentage of Taiwanese women in the labor force was very high right from the start of industrialization. He reports that, in 1915, over 40% of the females over the age of twelve were working. The rate dropped somewhat in the 1930s when the country was under Japanese rule and population pressure on the land created limits on work opportunities. After liberation from Japanese rule, unemployment rose and and large numbers of potentially unemployed workers were absorbed in rural villages during the period when a policy of import substitution was implemented. This situation led to the rate of women’s participation in the labor force reaching a low in 1956. Of course, it is likely that, in any country, old data such as this cannot completely account

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Rate of diffusion (%)

100 80 60 40 20 0

1970

1975 1980 The Survey of Family Income and Expenditure Black-and-white TV

Color TV

Refrigerator

Washing machine

1985

Figure 6.1. Rate of diffusion of household electric appliances.

for the numbers of persons employed in family enterprises, and it is dangerous to simply accept the figures on face value.2 However, the data can, to a certain extent, serve as a standard for relative time-series comparisons. Women’s employment edged upward as industrial development progressed in the 1960s, particularly in export-oriented industries and as foreign-affiliated companies in electronics and electrical goods hired large numbers of young, unmarried women (Kung 1983). From the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, women’s participation in the labor force rose steadily, particularly among young women. A graph of the rate of participation shows a peak in the early period of employment, and employment rates by age also show that this period was one in which the modern housewife was born. Like South Korea, the pattern of women’s participation in the labor force in Taiwan was not the same as it was in Britain, where the pattern was one in which married women were first employed as workers and 2 Diamond (1973b) also expressed doubts about the 1971 government data.



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later left the labor market. In Taiwan, the percentage of middle-aged and older women that were working rose from the latter half of the 1970s on. A graph of this trend shows a loose “M”-shaped pattern, but the bottom of the “M” showed a rapid upward trend, taking a unique shape that we will discuss in detail later. This series of changes in the women’s employment situation corresponded fairly closely with the fundamental elements in the overall expansion of the Taiwanese economy and the transformation of the industrial structure. Regression analysis conducted by Bian (1985) of the rate of women’s participation in the labor force, from 1965 on, in which GNP, wages, levels of education, and the unemployment rate were used as explanatory variables, indicates that, while the unemployment rate had little explanatory power, the other variables, particularly GNP growth, did. Nevertheless, the fact that the rate of women’s participation in the labor force tended to rise during the period of industrial growth among women in the twenty-five-to-thirty-four age group, during women’s child-bearing and child-raising years, cannot be simply or completely explained by the economic expansion that took place. From the standpoint of labor demand, it is not always the case that rational economic choices are made, and when viewed from the labor supply side, if we compare what happened in Taiwan with what happened in Japan, which we examined in Chapter 4, we will recognize that the behavior of Taiwanese women would not have occurred without the existence of social norms that allowed such behavior. In the next section we will examine this aspect of Taiwanese patriarchy in detail. 2. The Background of Taiwanese Patriarchy 2.1. Taiwan’s Ethnic Makeup Other than the approximately 500,000 aboriginal inhabitants of the island (原住民) who account for about 2% of Taiwan’s population, the majority of the people of Taiwan are the descendants of Han Chinese who migrated there from the seventeenth century on. Those who came in the latter half of the 1940s with the Kuomintang forces that seized political power are referred to as “mainlanders (waishengren, 外省人).” The locals, those whose ancestors were the earlier Han Chinese migrants, are literally referred to as “those from ‘the Province’ (benshengren,本省人).” Approximately 85% of Taiwan’s population, which in 2011 stood at 23 million, are descendents of

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the earlier Han Chinese immigrants. Those who came after World War II account for about 10%. The bulk of those descended from the earlier settlers have roots in Fujian (Fukien) Province. The core members of this group are not of the main language group centered in the northern part of the province; their roots are mainly in the Xiamen, or Amoy area of southern Fujian. The language of this area widely used by the local Taiwanese, is often simply referred to as Taiwanese. The roots of the second largest group among the local Han Chinese, the Hakka people, are in Guangdong Province. However, they are not Cantonese speakers; they traditionally speak their own Hakka language. A census conducted during the period of Japanese rule found that the ancestry of approximately 85% of the local Chinese was from Fujian and that the ancestry of the remaining 15% was from Guangdong. Under the Kuomintang, the local Taiwanese were excluded from the key political, government and military positions, which were long held by mainlanders. With the lifting of martial law in 1987 and the election of Lee Teng-hui, a local Taiwanese, to the country’s presidency and the chairmanship of the Kuomintang in 1988, this division among the people began to diminish. Nevertheless, the gap between the two groups created by the by the Kuomintang takeover, which culminated in mass arrests and killings of protesting locals in the 228 incident of 1947, has yet to be completely filled in. The lingering division is exemplified by the frequent use of local Taiwanese variants of Min Nan Hua, a southern Chinese language, in the course of daily life rather than the official national language, Mandarin, which is a northern Chinese language. As we have mentioned, Min Nan Hua is used extensively in business circles. Mandarin is used in the political world dominated by the mainlanders. Added to this is the fact that large numbers of elderly Taiwanese cannot speak Mandarin. So a situation in which Min Nan Hua is spoken at home and Mandarin at school used to prevail. Given this language situation and ethnic structure, one can say that the fundamental social norms influencing the daily lives of the people of Taiwan can be traced to the folkways of Southern China, particularly Fujian and Guangdong Provinces. 2.2. Modes of Family Life and Work in Southern China We can see from the above that a close examination of the customs of Southern China related to women’s work and the norms and traditions influencing family life there is required if one is to study patriarchy in



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Taiwan. What do the Chinese mean when they refer to “the South (nanfang (南方)”? Geographically, Southern China is is bounded by Sichuan Province to the west and the Huai River to the north. Over 1,000 millimeters of rain fall annually in the region, which is the rice-growing center of China. The productivity of the land is high particularly in the areas along its coast. And the population density of the region is very high. Generally, from antiquity, Chinese women have not done a great deal of outdoor farm work. This is reflected in old sayings such as “Men are in charge of outside, women are in charge of domestic affairs (男主外、女主 内),” or “Men till the fields. Women do the weaving (男耕女織).” Heavy population pressure on the land was a factor in this. The tendency for women to work inside was particularly strong in Northern China, where there was a relatively strong aversion to having women work outside—for one reason because farm animals were commonly put to work. In comparison, it has been reported that the rate of women’s participation in farm work rises in Central and Southern China (Kung 1983: 17–18). A survey conducted by J.L. Buck from 1929 to 1933 found that women accounted for only about 6% of the family farming labor in such parts of Northern China as Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi Provinces where winter wheat and millet were grown; that the rate rose to 21% in Central China, in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces; and yet higher to 30% in the areas we want to study, in the paddy fields of Fujian and Guangdong, where two crops of rice are harvested annually.3 The same type of difference between Central and Southern China on the one hand and Northern China on the other appeared in regard to the practice of foot binding. Okabe Toshiyoshi (1942) found that, the fact that little outdoor work was done by women in the North made the spread of foot binding easier, and that, while foot binding was certainly practiced in Central and Southern China, it was not as extensive in those parts of the country. It has also been reported by Johnson (1975) that, regardless of economic status, almost all women in Hakka households, did farm work and helped care for family livestock, which perhaps explains why foot binding was almost never practiced by the Hakka people. In addition, this difference in the extent to which women engaged in outdoor labor generally paralleled the presence or absence of an aversion to such work. A survey of the percentages of the labor force in China’s spinning mills accounted for by men, women and children around 1933 3 The quotation is from Okabe (1942), and the original text was Buck (1932: 292).

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and 1934 found that the percentages of women in each of the northern provinces did not exceed 20% (Okabe 1942). In central China this figure was nearly 60%, and, in Southern China, women accounted for 67% and 46% of this work force in Guangdong and Fujian, respectively.4 We can see that, in the initial stage of industrialization, the existence of an aversion to outdoor work was a decisive factor in how many women could be brought into the labor force. The men of Northern China very strongly believed that men should be the breadwinners in the family, and they felt that having their wives work outside the home would mean a loss of prestige. It is well known that China’s extended families were characterized by strong tendencies toward unity among siblings and balanced distribution of inheritances. This tendency was very pronounced in Southern China. Families also tended to be larger there. In the 1920s and 1930s the average family nationwide had about five members, but the average was 11.8 members in Fujian during the same period. It is said that this was the general tendency throughout the South (Wong 1981: 97). These extended families were often supported by the efforts and contributions of each of their members, and the labor contributed by women to the family livelihood was very important. This tradition is discussed in the study by Buck referred to above, which found that the rate of participation of women and children in farm work was much higher in Central and Southern China than it was in Northern China. Various theoreticians have pointed out that this situation in Southern China in which women’s aversion to outdoor work was weak and in which their contributions to family incomes was great meant that the status of women in that part of the country was clearly much higher than it was in the North (Kung 1983: 21–2). Studies of Taiwanese villages have reported that the same situation prevailed there (Diamond 1969), which supports our hypothesis that the modes of work and family life in Southern China and norms guiding them are the foundation for the same social elements in Taiwan. As noted in our examination of South Korea, China is the source of various norms based on Confucianism that have deeply affected women’s lives. Although Confucian norms did not penetrate as fully into the details of women’s daily lives and determine their overall position in society as they did in South Korea, discriminatory and oppressive norms were formed—norms which set limits on women’s basic roles in family life. 4 The quotation is from Kung (1983: 23–4), and the original survey was done by Fong (1932). In Fong’s survey the figures for Shandong and Tianjin were 6% and 2.5%, respectively.



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Relative to other regions, however, the tendency in Southern Chinese traditions was clearly toward greater gender equality both in the allocation of authority and in the allocation of roles. 2.3. The Formation of Taiwanese Patriarchy While traditional Southern Chinese norms served as the foundation for patriarchy in Taiwan, its uniquely Taiwanese aspects derived from the fact that island was an area on the periphery of China during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). Chinese leaders’ willingness to cede the island to Japan as part of the settlement of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 reflected Taiwan’s characteristics as a frontier area. The general plan for China’s outlying areas was to use the classical system of national examinations for government service to bring local leaders into the the traditional Confucian hierarchy to facilitate the attachment of the regions to the center. In her splendid history of Taiwanese society before Japanese rule, in which she carefully traces the rise to prominence of a pioneering local family, Johanna Meskill (1979) notes that, in the early part of the nineteenth century, although normally no more than one person from Taiwan would pass the test held across the strait in Fuzhou once every three years to qualify as a provincial or city official, a local elite class was gradually formed on the island. Even though, as schools were established, scholars with the level of learning needed to pass the examinations were slowly but surely developed, usually only a single person would acquire a ticket for the final examination in Beijing. In addition, the trip to Fujian for the provincial test meant crossing the strait. Geographical isolation was clearly an important factor in the growth of a culture separate from that of the mainland. Along with the route of government service examinations, for the Southern Chinese, trade was the other path to advancing in the world. There was little resistance to the idea of working hard to earn money, and if one were to compare these people with their counterparts in South Korea, one could say that Taiwanese men and women were more apt to view a chance to work as an opportunity to be successful and adopt an alternative lifestyle alongside those living in stricter conformity to Confucian ideals. In South Korea, the growth of the yangban class and the spread throughout society of the values and norms of that class, which were thought to represent Confucian values, led to a form of patriarchy that stifled any move toward women engaging in productive labor. Taiwan, on the other hand, was culturally more of an outlying frontier. This impeded

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upper-class norms taking hold, and the practice of inhibiting productive labor on the part of women was not nearly as widespread among families moving up the social ladder. Subsequently, this situation on Taiwan remained fundamentally the same when the island was a colony of Japan for fifty long years, from 1895 to 1945. Although the Japanese did introduce modern education for girls, as was the case in South Korea, it was not as extensively developed, and the norms influencing the daily lives of the people were not greatly affected. The Kuomintang regime had no special program for girls’ education, and traditional Southern Chinese norms pertaining to women persisted. As mentioned earlier, the allocation of authority between men and women was comparatively equal in this culture, and the allocation of roles did not leave women as confined to household duties. Of course, Taiwan was within the sphere of Chinese culture. Foot binding was practiced, and, under Japanese rule, a tendency to resist sending girls to school was evident. Nevertheless, the overall tendency was less confining than it was in Northern China, and as we will discuss in detail later, this comparative equality was to become an important characteristic of patriarchy in Taiwan. These norms would be slightly transformed when modern urban families were formed. However, the positive acceptance of women advancing in society in recent years, which is much like that seen in Western societies, can be viewed as an accentuation of the tendencies that existed in the cultural traditions of previous generations.

3. Forms of Women’s Employment in Taiwan 3.1. Trends when the Modern and Then the Contemporary Housewife Were Born The literature on the women question in Taiwan includes several studies based on interview surveys conducted in the early 1970s. Representative of these is Norma Diamond’s study of married women in the city of Tainan, which was done in 1970 and 1971. She noted that, even though one of the traditional roles for women in Taiwan was to contribute to household finances by engaging in some sort of employment, middle-class women in their twenties and thirties felt that, rather than working outside the home, the ideal situation for them was to create a household with a loving atmosphere (Diamond 1973a, 1973b). She found these women to be devoted to their children’s education and that they tended to think that it was better



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that they did not work after marriage—that the best place for women was in the home. The years just before and just after 1970 were a period when export industries were being developed, and employing only young women was an emphasis at the companies involved. As described above, graphs of female employment showed a peak in employment among young women. These are indications that this was the period in Taiwan when the modern housewife was born. In contrast to the traditional values that encouraged married women to work, norms were emerging among upwardly mobile urban families that supported the lifestyle of the modern housewife— norms that took the form of “men should engage in productive labor and women in reproductive labor.” This was accompanied by a growing psychological acceptance of the lifestyle of the modern housewife. A large-scale migration of people to the cities led to an urban lifestyle that engendered the modern housewife. This included a trend among women to make their children’s education their exclusive occupation. Urbanization also was a factor in a shift toward nuclear families and a decline in the number of family members per household. According to Zhu, who conducted a follow-up survey tracing women’s concepts of the ideal number of children per family, in 1971 about 60% of the subjects favored having three or more children; seven years later a majority of the subjects thought two children was the ideal number (Zhu 1986). This shift in attitude paralleled a sharp drop in the average family size. Until around 1970, the average was about 5.6 members per household; by 1979, it had dropped sharply to 4.86. As we will discuss in Chapter 9, the total fertility rate in Taiwan as of 2010 was 0.895, one of the lowest in the world. The shrinking of family sizes, the diffusion of household electric appliances, and the level of industrialization attained in the latter half of the 1970s set the stage for the birth of the contemporary housewife in Taiwan. As for social norms, we have seen how women working outside the home to supplement household finances was tolerated according to the traditional values underlying the Taiwanese mode of patriarchy. Against this background, the inclination of modern housewives in certain social strata to stay at home did not greatly expand, which meant that women working outside the home was not viewed as a problem. In fact, the additional contribution to family finances was most often welcomed. Turning our attention to the behavior of the agents or married women themselves, we see that women with a high level of education were advancing in society. Along with this, demand for housework was not rising significantly, which meant that, unlike the situation in South Korea,

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the marketization of housework was directly linked to the birth of the contemporary housewife. Women were also responding to an overall expansion of the labor market. The result was that, in contrast to their South Korean counterparts, very large numbers of Taiwanese housewives were entering the labor market. 3.2. Patterns of Women’s Employment in Taiwan As indicated in Table 5.2, the rate of participation in the labor force among Taiwanese women exceeds 50%, which is slightly lower than the rate among Japanese women. It is approximately the same as that of South Korean women. Judging only by this similarity one might think that, when it comes to women working, Taiwan is much the same as South Korea, another newly industrialized country. However, a closer examination of the situation will show that Taiwanese society differs significantly from South Korean society. Up until the 1990s, the percentage of the labor force working outside the cities, particularly in farming areas was high in South Korea, and the percentage working in urban areas was relatively low. In comparison, the weight of employment in primary industries was fairly low in Taiwan. In addition, the overall percentage of women in the labor force in Taiwan was low due to the fact that the rate of employment among middle-aged and older women was low. The pattern of women’s employment in Taiwan is quite interesting, according to level of education and according to place of work, in rural or urban areas. The data for 1988 provided in Table 6.1 shows, even at that stage, the percentage of women among employed persons was much higher than it was in South Korea. We can see from this that the form of employment among Taiwanese women never primarily took the old form of working in one’s own store. The same figures for 2008 provided in Table 6.2 show us that the differences between Taiwan and South Korea are no longer as great as they were twenty years earlier. As noted in Chapter 2, the rates of women’s participation in the labor force for each level of education in a given society are important variables demonstrating how that society views women’s work. With this in mind and with a view to projecting where gender relations are headed, we will examine this type of data for Taiwanese society. First of all, when we look at percentages of women attaining higher levels of education, as was the case with South Korea, a bit of adjustment is needed to bring the figures in line with those of Japan for comparison purposes. This is what was done to



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Table 6.1. Composition of labor force in Taiwan and South Korea by industry and work status (1988) (%). 1988 (%)

Type of industry

Agriculture, forestry and fishery Mining, manufacturing Service Employment Selfstatus employed (including as employer) Working for family enterprise Employee

Men and Women in women South Korea in South = 100 Korea = 100

Men and women in Taiwan = 100

Women in Taiwan = 100

20.7

22.9

13.7

10.8

24.6

30.6

42.6

41.4

44.8 30.2

46.5 21.5

43.7 23.4

47.8 10.3

12.8

27.3

9.5

18.4

57.0

51.2

67.0

71.2

Sources: South Korea: “Annual Report on Economically Active Population Survey”; Taiwan: Based on data used for “Manpower Survey Statistics”. Notes: Percentages for type of industry and employment status were not intended to total 100%. Also, construction was included under “Mining, manufacturing” because, in South Korea’s categorization of industries, construction is not included under “Indirect social capital and other services.”

Table 6.2. Composition of labor force in Taiwan and South Korea by industry and work status (%) (2008). 2008 (%)

Type of industry

Agriculture, forestry and fishery Mining, manufacturing

Men and women in South Korea = 100

Women in South Korea = 100

Men and women in Taiwan = 100

Women in Taiwan = 100

7.2

7.9

4.9

3.6

16.8

12.9

36.8

27.0 (Continued)

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Table 6.2. (Cont.) 2008 (%)

Service Employment Self-employed status (including as employer) Working for family enterprise Employee

Men and women in South Korea = 100

Women in South Korea = 100

Men and women in Taiwan = 100

Women in Taiwan = 100

75.9 25.3

79.2 7.5

58.3 18.1

69.4 9.8

5.9

12.5

6.0

10.3

68.7

69.6

76.0

79.8

create Table 5.5, which presents statistics used to compare the percentages of citizens advancing to a college education in each country. The data there are for the 1990s. New data on this subject will be presented in Chapter 9. In Taiwan, higher education includes two-year technical schools (專科), and certain three-year programs for high school graduates and five-year programs available for middle school graduates. Unlike Japan, institutions offering these programs are mainly for specialized or professional training. As of the early 1990s, the rate of advancement to higher education, defined as entering one of these programs or a college, did not greatly differ from the rate in Japan. The high rate of advancement to a four-year college in South Korea is rather conspicuous. Nevertheless, one can say that, during that period, by itself, graduation from an institution of higher learning did not bring with it any striking privileges in the three capitalist countries of East Asia. The value of a college education was about the same in each. A particularly noteworthy characteristic of Taiwanese society is the fact that the rate of advancement to higher education was nearly the same for males and females. In contrast, the percentage of males advancing to a four-year college was nearly double that of females in the 1990s in both Japan and South Korea. The absence of this type of gap in Taiwan was an indication that parents had roughly the same level of expectation for the education of their daughters as for their sons. This, in turn, is clearly a sign that gender equality was more advanced in Taiwan than it was in Japan or South Korea, at least in that earlier period.



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The rate of women’s participation in the labor force for each level of education is also a noteworthy characteristic of Taiwanese society. The data, which we had to rearrange for analysis, came from the Manpower Survey Statistics, which include a table showing the rate of participation in the labor force for various levels of education. This table uses the population aged fifteen and above as the denominator and counts persons currently studying at a technical school or four-year college, etc. as not in the labor force. This makes the rate of participation in the labor force extremely low for those with higher levels of education. To avoid this, we removed such students from the denominator in our calculation to obtain the rates shown in Table 6.3 and Table 6.4.5 A glance at this data clearly shows how Taiwanese women’s participation in the labor force neatly rises along with their level of education. With approximately 80% of the women with higher levels of education in the labor force, Taiwan is far ahead of Japan, where approximately 60% of the women with a college education or higher are in the labor force. Taiwan’s Table 6.3. Rate of women’s participation in labor force by level of education in Taiwan (1992) (%). Elementary school or lower Middle school High school Technical school Four-year college or higher

35.4 49.4 66.1 79.8 82.0

Source: Manpower Survey Statistics.

Table 6.4. Rate of women’s participation in labor force by level of education in Taiwan (2007) (%). Middle school or lower High school Technical school Four-year college or higher

31.0 65.5 75.4 82.6

Source: Manpower Survey Statistics. 5 In the measurements of only Taiwan’s education levels, those who dropped out of school were also counted as well as graduates for each level.

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rate is nearly on a par with that in the United States and Europe. This is a strikingly high rate. If those who are giving birth or are not working due to illness are left out of the calculation, 80% is equivalent to having nearly all women with advanced education in the workforce. The graph of women’s participation in the labor force by age and level of education in Figure 6.2 clearly does not form an “M” pattern among women with higher levels of education. As mentioned, unlike Japan, in Taiwan, it is not at all rare for well-educated women to play a prominent role in society. In developing countries, which have great disparities in wealth among the people, differences in employment patterns based on gender are much less than differences based on social strata, and one sees women with high levels of education joining the labor force. When comparing Japan and Taiwan, however, one can discount factors based on social status or economic conditions due to the lack of differences in women’s levels of education or in the standard of living. It simply seems that the difference is rooted in the fact that Taiwanese women with higher levels of education view working as something that is perfectly natural. As seen in Table 5.7, examined as a percentage of men’s employment set at 100, nearly 90% of the women with higher levels of education were in the labor force. This rate is clearly higher than the comparable rates in South Korea and Japan. Reflecting this tendency, the gap between men’s and women’s wages in Taiwan is relatively smaller than it is in Japan. A look at the differences between employment patterns in the large cities and outlying regions in the three countries reveals another interesting point. In Japan and South Korea, while the rate of participation in the labor force remained rather high among women in rural areas, the migration of people to the big cities set the stage for the birth of the modern housewife. In South Korea, we have seen that the rate of participation remained low among women in the large cities after their child-bearing and child-raising years. As discussed in Chapter 4, the rate of participation in the labor force remained generally low among Japanese women in the Tokyo metropolitan area and other large urban centers, where social conditions lent themselves to an economic system and a lifestyle in which men were largely the key members of the labor force and women were mainly full-time housewives. It appears that the migration to the cities led to the acceptance of the values of this system among families in the upper-income strata and that these values began to operate as norms that differed from those in the rural areas. This leads to the idea that these values were conducive to the emergence of the housewife.



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(%) 90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0 15~19 20~24 25~29 30~34 35~39 40~44 45~49 50~54 55~59 60~64

Junior High or under

High school

65+ Age

Junior College or over

Figure 6.2. Taiwanese women’s participation in the labor force by education level (2008). Source: Manpower Survey Statistics (women in school are counted as not working).

On the other hand the changes that occurred in Taiwan along with the movement of population to the cities were rather unique. A look at Figure 6.3 shows that the rate of women’s participation in the labor force in Taipei has never been lower than the national rate. The data for Taipei show the same pattern as the national data. Characteristic of both sets of data is the

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fact that the “M” pattern is not very clear. There is a striking difference with the pattern seen in South Korea. This shows us that Taiwanese society has been one in which the migration of people to the cities has not led to the birth of the housewife. While this fact is difficult to interpret, one can say that it is a characteristic of Taiwanese patriarchy. As we will discuss later, Taiwan did not have upper-class norms strongly acting to restrain women’s employment that other societies had—the values of the yangban of South Korea, the model of the good wife and wise mother in the case of Japan, or the evangelical teachings of English society. The Southern Chinese idea that women were a source of labor power did not disappear in the course of urbanization, and, as society quickly left the stage of the early modern housewife, women were encouraged to find jobs in Taiwan. Most would agree that this hypothesis is supported by what we have seen in Hong Kong and Singapore. Another characteristic difference between Japan and Taiwan shown in the graph in Figure 6.3 is that, while the center of the bottom of the “M” pattern in Japan is seen among women in their mid-thirties, the rate of 90

Labor Force Participation Rate(%)

80 70 60

Taiwan 2008 South Korea 2008

50

Japan 2008

40

Seoul 2007 Taipei 2007

30 20

65+

60~64

55~59

50~54

45~49

35~39 40~44

30~34

25~29

20~24

0

15~19

10

Age

Figure 6.3. Rates of women’s participation in the labor force in East Asia, including Taipei and Seoul (2007/2008). Sources: Manpower Survey Statistics (Taiwan); Annual Report on Economically Active Population Survey (South Korea); Labor Force Survey (Japan).



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participation in the labor force does not drop very much among Taiwanese women of that age group. Compared to other economically-advanced countries, the rate was lower among middle-aged and older Taiwanese women, which explains why the overall rate of women’s participation in the labor force does not differ greatly from that of Japan. In 1992, the overall rate was 44.3% in Taiwan and 50.7% in Japan. By 2010 the difference was even smaller, with the figure for Taiwanese women a bit higher than that of Japan, 49.9% compared to 48.2%. In 1992, 54.8% of Taiwanese women aged thirty to thirty-four were working, while 52.7% of the Japanese women in the same age group were working. By 2010, this gap had widened, with 76.7% of the Taiwanese women and 67.7% of the Japanese women in the same thirty-to-thirty-four age group were in the labor force. As seen in Table 6.5, in 2009, the rate of participation in the labor force for all married Taiwanese women with children aged six or below or even with children aged three or below was approximately 60%. This was far higher than the 30.9% of Japanese women whose youngest child was three or younger in 2009. In addition, the fact that about 75% of the Taiwanese women in the college graduate group were working even when they had children under the age of three, is an indication that they did not feel restricted by any norm requiring that mothers be together at home with children under the age of three—as is the case in Japan. At a minimum we can say that Taiwanese women do not appear to be constrained by this kind of consciousness to the extent that Japanese women are. We can also see that, in Taiwan, as the level of education rises, the rate of participation

Table 6.5. Rate of participation in labor force by level of education among married Taiwanese women with children (2009) (%).

All levels Middle school or below High school Junior college or technical  school College or above

With children aged six or under

With children aged three or under

60.9 46.0 54.5 56.0

57.4 31.2 49.8 53.1

74.4

74.5

Source: 2009 Manpower Survey Statistics (Taiwan).

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in the labor force rises, and that the higher the level of education, the less having children influences the decision to work. How do these working women arrange care for their children? A 1992 Taiwanese government survey of living conditions of women aged twenty to sixty (臺灣省婦女生活狀況調査報告) found that 62% of the working women in need of childcare “relied on their parents.” As for the others, 12.7% said “Other relatives” and 6.6% said “Baby-sitters” (meaning women who did baby-sitting either in their own home or in the customer’s took care of their children while they worked). “Childcare centers or nurseries” was the answer provided by 18.7% of the women. We see that the percentage accounted for by parents or other relatives was very high—a basic tendency seen among women with higher levels of education as well as the others. Just over 60% of the women whose education level was technical school, junior college or above reported that they relied on their parents, while 14.2% reported using baby-sitting services that charged fees. Data from Women’s Marriage, Fertility and Employment Survey in 2006 (婦女婚育與就業調査) indicated that 66% of working women with children under three mainly “Arranged for childcare themselves (relying on on their parents)”; 26% said “Relatives take care of their children”; and 7% said they relied on baby-sitters. By level of education, 83% of the working women with a middle school education or less said they “Arranged for childcare themselves”; this response was given by 62% of the high school graduates and 36% of the women whose education level was technical school, junior college or above. The responses given by working women with children aged three to six included 39% who said they used private childcare centers, and 37% who said they “Arranged for childcare themselves”; a conspicuous 51% of those whose education level was technical school, junior college or above relied on private childcare services; only 18% of this group responded by saying they “Arranged for childcare themselves.” This data gives us a picture of how Taiwanese women with higher levels of education continue working even though they have children. Not seen in the above statistics is the fact, when Taiwanese women say that “Relatives take care of their children,” they are often talking about relatives on the children’s father’s side of the family, usually the grandmother. When Japanese women say this, they usually mean that relatives on their side of the family, often their own mother, take care of the children especially in urban areas. Another rather unique practice in Taiwan is that, when a relative takes care of the children of a working woman, rather than a situation in which



taiwanese patriarchy193

one of the parents has to deliver the children in the morning and pick them up in the evening, it is not unusual for the relative to take the children on Monday morning and keep them until Saturday evening. Many of the women, employed at various enterprises, whom I interviewed in my own surveys in Taiwan in the late 1980s, told me that relatives on their husband’s side of the family, often their mothers-in-law, took care of their children while they worked. In one case, a worker’s in-laws lived deep in the countryside in the central part of the island, in Jiayi; in those days with no bullet train, this was three hours away from Taipei by express train. The husband and wife, who worked in Taipei, would see their children about once every two or three weeks. The mother was a graduate of a commercial high school. This type of childcare arrangement, which would have been unthinkable in Japan, was not considered strange at all in Taiwan. While family cooperation is impressive, if one only looks at the fact that very few working families place their children in a center or institution providing childcare, one must say that there is a severe shortage of such facilities, and that, at the social-welfare-system level, especially for children under the age of two, it is even more difficult for parents with young children to work than it is in Japan. Another key point in our analysis, probably linked to some extent with the phenomenon of grandparents looking after the children of younger working family members, is the fact that the rate of participation in the labor force among Taiwan’s middle-age and older citizens is relatively very low. In Japan, nearly 70% of each age cohort after forty is employed. In Taiwan, it is approximately 50% among middle-age workers, and the rate sharply drops after the age of fifty. Statistically, these low employment rates among older workers bring down the overall rate of participation in the labor force among Taiwanese women; and if one were only to look at the overall rate, one would get a skewed picture of Taiwanese women’s advancement in society. As seen in Figure 6.4, in addition to Singapore and Hong Kong, the rate of women’s participation in the labor force in mainland China drops at a relatively low age. This appears to be a characteristic of culturally Chinese areas.6 Some might attribute this trend simply to the effect of aging—the result of behavioral patterns changing as people age. Others might see it as a characteristic of a particular generation. It is worth noting that this pattern appears to be continuing in the 6 Jo Kabun (饒佳汶 1996) studied attitudes among families with three generations living together and described how this tended to lead to young women advancing in society and to a lower rate of participation in the labor force among older women.

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(%) 100 90 80 70 60 Taiwan 2008 50

Singapore 08 Hong Kong 2008

40

China 2000 30

Urban China 2000

20 10 0

15

9

~1

4

~2

20

9

~2

25

30

4

~3

9

~3

35

4

~4

40

9

~4

45

50

4

~5

55

9

~5

4

~6

60

d an 65

er ov Age

Figure 6.4. Women’s participation in the labor force in culturally Chinese societies.

next generation. In Chapter 9, when forecasting the future role of women in Taiwanese society, we will return to this important question of the effect of aging and changes among attitudes in different generations. We have seen that the inclination to engage in a profession among Taiwanese women with higher levels of education is very strong. The way these women do not feel restricted by motherhood is one reason to believe that, more so than Japanese society, Taiwanese society might easily become one in which the housewife disappears. Even though governmentrun childcare programs are not developed at all, children do not become a big obstacle to women advancing in society in Taiwan. This is particularly true of women with higher levels of education. Of course childcare remains a source of concern for working women, but it at least does not compel them to give up working. Judging from the recent extremely low fertility rate, one might even say there is a tendency for them to give up having children, instead of giving up work. The pattern of women’s employment we have examined can be described as a characteristic of the Taiwanese model of patriarchy. We will discuss this model in greater detail in the following paragraphs.



taiwanese patriarchy195 4. The Taiwanese Model of Patriarchy

During the postwar period, compared to South Korea, Taiwan had a slightly higher per capita GDP, and its unemployment rate was low for a longer period.7 The pattern of women’s employment discussed above corresponded in certain respects to the scale of the economy and the structure of economic development. In that sense, it is possible to use a unilinear economic development hypothesis to explain this pattern. However, the fact that the rate of women’s participation in the labor force tended not to decline during women’s child-bearing and child-raising years, cannot be simply or completely explained by the economic expansion that took place. Hiring women with small children is not necessarily the most rational way to meet labor demand. And, when viewed from the labor supply side, the employment pattern among Taiwanese women with higher levels of education cannot be simply explained in terms of rational economic decision-making. If we compare the Taiwanese example with what happened in Japan and Korea, we can see that the behavior of Taiwanese women would not have occurred without the existence of social norms conducive to such behavior. Also, compared to Japan, trends such as the higher rate of women with higher levels of education participating in the labor force cannot be explained by economic factors alone or by simple human capital theory. As indicated by the women’s employment rates shown in Table 6.2, in which men’s employment is set at 100, the rate of employment among Taiwanese women is higher than that of South Korean women by about 10 points. If we were to assume that the same social norms applied in Taiwan and South Korea, in Taiwan, the percentage of women participating in the labor force accounted for by those in their child-bearing and child-raising years would have to be lower than it is in Korea because Taiwan has a relatively greater number of employed women. However, quite the opposite is true. It is necessary to assume the mediation of such factors as women’s attitudes toward working and different social norms in Taiwan and South Korea to explain the phenomena. One reason we adhere to the concept of patriarchy is that we believe that it enables us to closely examine these types of factors.

7 In 1994 values, per capita GDP in South Korea was 8,540 dollars; in Taiwan it was 11,629 dollars. However, this situation was reversed by the first half of 2000, and in 2009, per capita GDP was 17,085 dollars in South Korea and 16,423 dollars in Taiwan.

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The lack of a large number of attitude surveys in Taiwan somewhat restricts our discussion of the extent to which a trend toward the disappearance of the housewife is found in internalized values of contemporary housewives. However, it is possible to partially verify such a trend. For example, a survey of working mothers in Taipei conducted by Taiwan University professor Gao Shugui, (1989), asked, “Have you ever thought about quitting your job in order to take care of your children?” Less than 10% of the working mothers interviewed said they frequently thought about it. Slightly under 40% said they occasionally thought about it, and a majority of the subjects said they either never, or only rarely, thought about it. When asked about who does housework in their families, 70% of the working mothers answered that they did such chores as cleaning, washing and cooking themselves. On the other hand, 50% said that it was not necessary for them to mainly take care of their children themselves because someone else was available to do it. The results of this survey show that Taiwanese women do not to think that taking care of children should be an obstacle to their working. When asked if they agreed with the opinion that “Men should work and women should stay home,” the same question used in the 2002 international survey conducted by the Japanese government (the “Comparative Study” discussed in Chapter 5), 54% of the Taiwanese subjects whose level of education was technical school or junior college or higher said they disagreed. Since this was an expression of opinion by working women, and in view of the high rate of participation in the labor force among Taiwanese women with a high level of education, this presents a sharp contrast with the 56% of the South Korean women with a university education or above who said they agreed with the opinion. On the other hand, in the previously cited 1992 Taiwanese government report, a survey of living conditions of women aged twenty to sixty (臺灣 省婦女生活狀況調査報告),” 45.2% of the women respondents agreed and only 29.1% disagreed with the traditional Confucian idea of “Men outside, women inside.” The differences between the percentages in agreement and in disagreement shifted the other way as the level of education of the respondents rose, with 34.3% of the high school graduates saying they agreed and 38.1% saying they disagreed; and among women whose level of education was technical college or higher, 33.4% agreed and 43.1% disagreed. Overall, the respondents in higher age groups tended to be in favor of the old idea. These survey results clearly showed how deeply



taiwanese patriarchy197

rooted attitudes are when it comes to traditions pertaining to the allocation of roles according to gender. In addition, the EASS Survey (2006) cited in Chapter 5 asked Taiwanese women if they agreed with the statement, “The husband should work outside and the wife should take care of the home.” The results were 41% said they disagreed and 49% said they agreed. This is an indication that it is hardly the case that the majority of Taiwanese women consciously set out to become career women. Nevertheless, the survey also found that Taiwanese women, particularly those with higher levels of education, thought it was natural that women work, whether or not they have children. It is apparent that the lack of any great emphasis on the role of the mother in Taiwanese patriarchy helps make it possible for such high percentages of women to work. Although the survey results regarding agreement or disagreement with the “Men outside, women inside” way of thinking show an acceptance in Taiwan of norms establishing a division of roles between men and women, the typical patriarchal norm that mothers should constantly attend to their children is very weak at least in comparison to Japan or South Korea. It is clear that the low level of stress related to the role of the mother is a characteristic of Taiwanese patriarchy. The formation of patriarchy with this characteristic took place against the background of old Southern Chinese norms regarding labor that we discussed in Section 2. In the Southern Chinese tradition, the idea that women should work to contribute to the family’s finances was commonly accepted. By itself, the idea of women working was not unique in many agricultural societies, including Japan’s, but Taiwan was unique in that norms of the upper social strata restricting women’s employment were not applied when the modern housewife emerged. Taiwanese patriarchy does not have any strong taboo against women being in the labor force. Another rather unique and very interesting feature of Taiwanese patriarchy is related to the lack of any great strain associated with the role of the mother. In Taiwanese families it is common for the husband’s mother (the wife’s mother-in-law) to energetically help raise children. This means that the children are not regarded as belonging to a nuclear family. Instead they tend to be seen as a prized possession of the father’s extended family, a treasure of the patrilineal family line. In fact babies are called treasures (“baobao”) in Chinese. The feeling is that taking care of their family’s little treasures is perfectly natural activity for the husband’s father and mother. This attitude is clearly expressed in the answers working women give in interviews when questions about work and childcare are asked.

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This traditional family norm in Taiwan tends to encourage mothers to go to work, which is unlike the tendency in Japan and South Korea to view the mother’s role in the modern family as to be an exclusive occupation. It is extremely interesting to see how this characteristic of Taiwanese patriarchy has served to support the emergence of the contemporary women’s employment situation. Comparing this system of reproductive labor with those seen elsewhere, we would say that, rather than a system in which the role of the housewife conforms to patterns seen in nuclear families, the Taiwanese system is a type more like that seen in an extended family network.8 On the other hand, as we said in Section 2, some aspects of the position of women in Taiwan cannot be completely explained by the country’s social and cultural background. Many have pointed out that advancement in society has been more conspicuous among women from the mainlander (waishengren) families than among the local (benshengren) families. This difference certainly cannot be explained by only referring to the cultural base of Taiwanese society. To do this we must cite a secondary, but an important factor, which is the way of life of the mainlanders. Statistical data is almost never broken down according to family background, i.e. local or mainlander. Therefore many characterizations of the social differences between the two groups, which are commonly accepted, cannot be verified with statistics. The mainlanders migrated to Taiwan from China in the late 1940s with the Nationalist forces and Kuomintang leaders who crossed the Strait. For the most part, the heads of these immigrant families had been soldiers, public employees, and white-collar workers. Owning no land or other assets in Taiwan, they put a great deal of energy into educating the children in their families to gain and maintain a high social status. To do this they invested early on and at similar levels in the education of both the boys and the girls in their families. According to Cai Shuling (1987), mainlander females of all ages went to school longer than their local counterparts, and the difference in the number of years of school attendance between mainlander males and females was less than it was among the local Taiwanese. Cai also noted another characteristic difference between mainlander and local women: The professional status of mainlander women was measurably higher than that of local women.9 8 We will compare the systems of reproduction of labor power again in Chapter 10. 9 However, the gap in professional status narrows as the ages of the women being compared drop. .



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The mainlanders have been more fervent about education for their children. This has been true not only among white-collar families, but also among relatively low-ranking military families. They have also found ways to arrange for exemptions or reductions of school fees for their children. It has also been noted that this has, naturally enough, led to higher rates of college attendance among the mainlanders. The level of education of many of these immigrants was high, and, accordingly, they were capable of thinking objectively. In addition, the mainlanders had often left family members in China behind. This tended to free them from many of the constraints imposed by the conventional ways of thinking among their extended families in China, and left them freer to allow their daughters to leave the confines of the home to pursue an education and a career. Although the absence of extended family members made finding childcare providers more difficult due to the smaller network of potential baby-sitters, a higher percentage of mainlander families than local families took care of their daughters’ children. Also, compared with the strong tendency to think in terms of the patrilineal line among the local families, the mainlander families were more involved with the upbringing of their own children and thought more in terms of both sides of their families, the mother’s and the father’s sides. It is said that this difference tended to offset the disadvantage of having fewer relatives to help out with childcare. Building new lives in a new land, the mainlanders were willing to invest in their sons’ and daughters’ education to improve their family’s social status. Relatively free of traditional concepts, they were more open to the idea of helping their girls as well as their boys advance in society. There is little doubt that this way of thinking now has some influence on the form of patriarchy existing throughout contemporary Taiwanese society. These conditions have prompted very large numbers of young Taiwanese women with high levels of education to choose to seek careers outside the home. 4.2. Generation and Age in Taiwanese Management Finally, we would like to briefly touch upon relationships between the generations in Taiwan. As mentioned in Chapter 1, a trend in Chinese society, including Taiwanese society, is for couples with more than one son to choose to have their adult sons continue to live with them, including after they marry. Inheritance is evenly divided among male siblings in this new form of family life, which means it can be classified as an (exogamous) community family according to the classification system created by

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Emmanuel Todd. Although ranking of siblings remains somewhat significant in these families, unlike the situation in South Korea and Japan, this is not transferred to a systematic arrangement of senior and junior members in other areas of society. This lack of vertical ranking among siblings can be related to the horizontal ties among networks of associates formed in contemporary Chinese communities and organizations. In a society in which, as a general rule, vertical, senior-junior relationships pertain only to relations between parents and children and where egalitarianism prevails among siblings, rather than bureaucracies that use ranking by age as the basis of group relations or stages to advancement, Chinese organizations tend to be characterized by employees having one-on-one relationships with managers, and human relationships in the organization tend to radiate outward like the spokes of a wheel. Taiwan’s small- and mediumsize enterprises become compatible with employees that are accustomed to these kinds of relationships. Filial piety generally takes precedence over loyalty in contemporary Chinese societies. (The situation is much the same in this regard in South Korea.) This means that, in a Chinese cultural setting in which no principle is given higher precedence than blood relationships, it is difficult for a company to have a policy carried out if it conflicts with the logic of family ties. This is in direct contrast to the situation in Japan. With so many of Taiwan’s small- and medium-size firms being family owned, this contradiction between family and company is often easily resolved. In Japan, companies were formed and then expanded in ways that followed the structure of the old mercantile houses, the ie, which were essentially not enterprises exclusively managed by blood relatives. In fact, the Japanese families involved were more like groups operating an enterprise than groups related by blood. The smaller Taiwanese enterprises largely avoid contradictions between family and company since the scale of management is small and the core managers are mainly family members. We have seen how, with labor practices that allow women to work serving as a base, with the traditional norms of large, extended families still alive, and with an impetus from the new behavior patterns of the mainlanders, a form of patriarchy has emerged in Taiwan that does not place particular emphasis on the role of the mother. The situation of contemporary Taiwanese housewives and the pattern of women’s employment are supported by these mechanisms. Of course, the period from the latter half of the 1960s through the 1970s was one in which modern housewives did not generally become workers. The current pattern of women’s employment grew out that period as demand for labor strengthened into



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an environment with full employment. The fact that the economic situation spurred women’s employment is beyond any doubt, and it is clear that the sudden rise in women’s participation in the labor force cannot be attributed merely to social norms. Nevertheless, as a comparison with Japan shows, economic factors alone cannot account for the disappearance of the bottom of the “M” pattern in women’s employment. This cannot be explained without considering housewives’ expectations regarding their role in society. To be sure, the tendencies in women’s employment we have described are most prominent among women with higher levels of education. They are not necessarily seen in all social strata. As we pointed out in Chapter 2, however, the choices made by those free to make real choices suggest the direction of change for the society in question, when in the future, choices become possible throughout the society. Taking all these considerations into account, one can say that the lack of strong insistence on the role of housewives as mothers is the most important characteristic of Taiwanese patriarchy. This characteristic sets it apart from patriarchy in Japan and  South Korea, and it leads to the tentative opinion that Taiwanese society is the East Asian society where it will be easiest for the housewife to disappear.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PATRIARCHY IN NORTH KOREA Up to this point we have analyzed patriarchy and economic development in East Asian capitalist societies. In this chapter we will examine them in North Korea, a socialist society. The situation for women under socialism differed fundamentally from that under capitalism in that policies to convert women into workers were aggressively implemented. This was a feature of socialist development almost everywhere, but it was hardly the case that it was carried out in a uniform manner. Under socialist industrialization, the ways in which women were made part of the labor force in each society varied greatly because of compromises made with patriarchy as it existed. As a result, socialist industrialization, including policies regarding women’s roles, reflected the characteristics of each society where it was carried out. To state one of our conclusions in advance, the disparities that we will find among the types of patriarchy in socialist countries closely correspond to the disparities we have found among the types in capitalist countries. While keeping the comparisons we have made among capitalist societies in mind, we will study North Korea and China, in Chapter 7 and Chapter 8, respectively. It has been virtually impossible to do field research in North Korea, and research materials on our subject are scarce. While quite a number of books have been written in Japan on political and economic issues in North Korea, almost no groundbreaking research has been produced on gender issues, the subject of our analysis. Fortunately, however, a steady flow of reports on home life and women’s issues in the North has been published in South Korea. Many of them contain quotations from North Korean documents and statements by defectors from the North, which means they can be relied on to some extent. We will use this work in this chapter, which focuses on gender issues in North Korea, while also referring to North Korean documents. Since almost no research of this kind has been done in Japan, and elsewhere except South Korea, we hope our work will also have some value in the area of regional studies. We will begin with a look at how policies have changed and at what the image of the ideal woman has been in North Korea.

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Yoon Mi Ryang divides North Korea’s policies on women into five distinct stages (Yoon Mi Ryang 1991). From our perspective, what is most important is that classification can be done according to the strength of the influence of Kim Il Sung. A system with Kim as paramount leader (suryeongjae 수령제,首領制) began to take shape in 1956, and it is important to note, as Masayuki Suzuki (1992) does, that Kim’s dominant position was fully established by the latter half of the 1960s. We will rely on Suzuki’s work in the following analysis of this system. First we will examine the steady advance of the dominance of Kim Il Sung’s thinking and see how it was intertwined with policies on the status of women. Until the 1950s, Kim did not hold absolute power in the Worker’s Party of Korea. He had served as Supreme Commander of North Korean forces in the Korean War effort, and what was perceived as a “failure” by some, would have been expected to have jeopardized his leadership position. However, Kim was successful in purging Pak Heonyeong and other members of the Workers Party of South Korea for their alleged errors. A second crisis took shape in 1956 in the aftermath of the death of Stalin. Stalin’s successor, Malenkov, advocated a policy stressing the development of light industry in North Korea, which was in opposition to the policy of making heavy industry a priority favored by Kim and other leaders. A pro-Soviet faction and a pro-China faction were gaining strength in the Party. At the same time, ongoing criticism of the cult of the individual in regard to Stalin was beginning to spill over into criticism of the emerging idolatry of Kim Il Sung. These disputes, which had broadened from intra-party struggle to debate in the public sphere, prompted a joint visit by Soviet First Vice-Premier Mikoyan and Chinese Defense Minister Peng Dehuai. Despite this, Kim was able to ride out the storm and managed to expel the opposition faction from the Party. This greatly strengthened his base for personal power. It was in the same year, 1956, that the more dictatorial system of adhering to the policies of a single leader began to take shape. These realities were in the background of the policy moves that would follow. The expulsion of the Kapsan faction was announced at the 15th Central Committee Plenum held in 1967. The core group within that faction was made up of individuals who, working under the leadership of Kim, had been active in the resistance inside Korea prior to liberation. This move marked the end of purges of internal Party factions. Politically, it established dictatorial power in Kim’s hands. From this point on, all policies that would emerge would be imprinted with the thinking of Kim Il Sung. The period between 1956 and 1967 formed a watershed in the country’s



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political history and serves as a dividing line in our classification of its policies. 1. Socialist Construction 1.1. Policy Development and Views on Women The initial period of socialist construction is of great significance when examining how policy was intertwined with the reproduction of labor power. In North Korea, the stage of building socialism, described in general terms in Chapter 2, took shape prior to the watershed period mentioned above. To find the start of this movement we have to go back to 1945–46, before nation-building began. It was during these two years that the Provisional Peoples Committee (chaired by Kim Il Sung) set new policies and laws. The earliest of these included land reform measures under which land would be equally distributed to men and women; labor legislation enforcing a policy of equal wages for the same work; and in July 1946, a law establishing equal rights for men and women. It was emphasized that these laws were issued to do away with feudalistic practices that had prevailed under Japanese imperialist domination. Most noteworthy was the law establishing equal rights for men and women. Here we will examine Articles 4 through 7 of this law, which dealt with the marriage system [our translation]. Article 4 Men and women have the same right to freely decide to marry. Marriages that are not freely entered into and forced marriages arranged without the consent of both parties are banned. Article 5 If difficulties occur between the partners in the course of married life, and conditions are such that the relationship cannot be continued, then both the woman and the man shall have the same right to freely decide to be married or to divorce. [Following sentences omitted.] Article 6 In regard to ages at the time of marriage: The female must have reached the age of 17 and the male must have reached the age of 18. Article 7 The system, which is a residue from feudalistic practices and customs, of one husband having many wives and the buying and selling of women to be kept

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Articles 4 and 5 provided for freedom in marriages and divorce. Rules pertaining to detailed implementation of the law issued in September of the same year authorized divorce based on consultation between the parties, making court proceedings unnecessary if both parties agreed. As noted in Chapter 2, this move meant the destruction of marriages not in accord with the intentions of the women involved. It rescued women from the feudalistic family system and gave them the power to independently make decisions affecting them as individuals. This was one of the greatest challenges the socialist movement presented to patriarchy.1 In addition, an important aspect of this challenge to patriarchy posed by building socialism, one not limited to this particular period of time, was the fact that, although it did not go so far as to break up traditional ties within clans, compared to South Korea, it did much more to weaken clan loyalty as opposed to loyalty to the state. On the Korean Peninsula, clan ties are verified through ancestor worship, and extensive family records or genealogies are created to support the identity of a clan as a large association. However, in North Korea, almost no family histories exist. If you visit the country, a guide or other contact will explain that family records and histories were almost completely lost amid the confusion and vast migrations caused by the Korean War.2 In South Korea, persons with a common line of male ancestors going back four generations will gather to participate in elaborate rites honoring their ancestors. In North Korea, this kind of clan activity is discouraged by tight restrictions placed on domestic travel and migration. What remains is small in scale and limited to rites conducted by extended families with very intimate ties. Unlike Japan, cremation ceremonies are not held so often, and unlike South Korea, no

1 In fact, there were recurring cases of such problems as Party officials abandoning the wives who had shared hard times with them before they moved up in society, to pursue relationships with women with a higher level of education. This disturbed family life, which was considered to be the foundation of society. This was of great concern to the government, which, in 1956, abolished the right to divorce only on the basis of consultation between the parties. 2 The other side of this comparison is that in postwar South Korea the clan system was restored. Rather than being merely a revival of old traditions, this led to ties within clans growing stronger than ever.



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burial mounds with Confucian-type graves are built on hills. Instead the dead are buried in public cemeteries. As we will discuss in detail later, a family nation-state, with Kim Il Sung as the father, was being built in North Korea. That is why the strengthening of clans beyond a certain point was not welcomed. All in all, the net effect of the country’s policies toward clan organizations was to break them up. This undermined the foundation of traditional patriarchy. Establishing the Democratic Women’s Union of North Korea (which became the Korean Democratic Women’s Union in 1951) was a big step in organizing women politically. The Union played an important role when women were mobilized for the nation-building campaign launched after the end of the Korean War. Traditionally, independent small businesses and farms were family operations, which meant the work of the women was controlled by the male head of the family. These enterprises were literally under patriarchal management. Women had to be torn away from this system if the country was to move ahead with its drive to convert women into production workers. From this standpoint, the collectivization of agriculture and the conversion of individual enterprises into cooperatives were very important. It has been said that the destruction of small farms and businesses during the war facilitated this collectivization effort. At any rate, the government’s collectivization of agriculture and bringing individual commercial, small-production and handicraft enterprises into cooperatives was completed by 1958 (Yi Tae Young 1988: 23). The government built childcare centers and kindergartens at a rapid pace to promote bringing women into the labor force. As is shown in Table 7.1, the country only had 116 kindergartens and only twelve childcare centers in 1949. Such facilities were quickly built as part of a program of postwar national construction in the latter half of the 1950s. “On Increasing the Numbers of Women Entering All People’s Economic Departments,” Cabinet Decision No. 84 issued in July 1958, set goals for 1961 for percentages of women employees in the various departments. For education and health units the percentage was to be raised to 60%; for all other departments the goal was 30%. To be able to do this, the government called for accelerated construction of childcare centers and kindergartens. The effect of this policy was that by 1960 the number of childcare centers was thirty-four times greater than the number existing in 1956. By 1966 the number of kindergartens had risen to 15,218, the number of childcare centers stood at 23,251, and the facilities were taking in 60% and 70%, respectively, of the country’s children in the pertinent age groups.

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Table 7.1. Childcare Centers and Kindergartens in North Korea (1949– 1966). Year

Childcare centers

Capacity

Kindergartens

Capacity

1949 1953 1956 1960 1966

12 63 224 7,624 23,251

620 2,165 6,538 394,489 877,000

116 19 173 4,470 15,128

8,656 1,048 12,015 295,485 790,000

Source: Yi Tae Young (1988:225).

Childcare centers were not only taking care of children on a daily basis, some also provided weekly care for families that lived far away from their work sites. Each province and city had two or three of these weekly facilities. The children cared for would return home only on Sundays to be with their families. By about 1965, monthly childcare centers were established in the larger cities such as Pyongyang, Kaesong and Chongjin (Yoon Mi Ryang 1991: 96). It goes without saying that creating these facilities met the needs of the North Korean system and helped sustain the drive to convert women into workers. Also, to a certain extent, a new generation of workers free from the control of their families was emerging. This created the need for the state to assume responsibility for administering the raising of children. By 1975, North Korea was implementing an eleven-year system of compulsory and comprehensive education for children aged five and above that was of a type seen nowhere else in the world.3 This system went beyond the level of ensuring support for reproduction of the labor force. It was intended to instill a sense of commitment to national goals in the people. Under these policies, women’s participation in the labor force steadily climbed. As noted in our examination of South Korea, a persistent aversion to women working outside the home was a characteristic of traditional Korean culture. It was against this social background that the percentage of the North Korean labor force accounted for by women jumped from no more than 20% in 1956, to 34% in 1960, and 36.5% in 1963 (Yi Tae Young 1988: 190). To raise production volumes and crop yields, the government relied on mobilization of the masses and ideological 3 The compulsory education system included one year of kindergarten, four years of people’s schools, and six years of middle school, for a total of eleven years.



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awareness and motivation and did away with most material incentives which were criticized as “revisionist.” Mobilization efforts were guided by five-year development plans (Chollima Undong) launched in 1956. It was also clear that the aforementioned Cabinet Decision No. 84 issued to promote full mobilization of women as laborers was on track with this policy line. The view of women put forward during this period splendidly met the needs of this mobilization program. The “Women’s Liberation Song” of those days contained the following exhortation: O women, our comrades Stand up to end the bourgeois system! Pick up the gun to win equal rights!

Women’s labor was indispensable during the period of recovery after the Korean War, and bringing women into the work force as rapidly as possible was part of the plan. A characteristic of the period was the basic idea that, without distinction, men and women were to be placed at various work sites. Around 1959, it was reported that an all-woman crew on fishing vessels dubbed The Women (녀성호) spent 300 days at sea engaged in trawl dragnet fishing for anglerfish without returning to land. This all-female crew was disbanded after a few years, but women continued working in a wide range of blue-collar jobs, including tractor driver, lathe operator, coal miner and stonecutter (Yi Tae Yeong 1991: 132–5). In summary we can say that, through the latter half of the 1950s, men and women were fully put to work without distinction, and organizations hindering this policy such as clan organizations or family-managed enterprises were broken up. This was clearly the direction of policy during that period. At this stage, Kim Il Sung’s complete control was yet to be fully established, and the policy of making women into workers was completely in line with the strongly and publicly proclaimed socialist ideological position on this subject.4 This process, which to varying degrees resembled programs adopted in China and the Soviet Union, can be viewed as in accord with general socialist thought that prevailed during the stage when socialism was being built. It was during this stage that the attempt to build socialism was in direct conflict with the patriarchy embedded in Korean traditional society. Which was it going to be: patriarchy or socialism? 4 To be more precise, we should probably say that the mobilization of women in the socialist development campaigns (Chollima Undong, 천리마운동,千里馬運動) were mobilizations that accompanied Kim Il Sung’s consolidation of power.

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chapter seven 2. Indigenization 2.1. Kim Il Sung Idolatry Resonates with Tradition

It can be said that most socialist societies have shared common elements during the stage when socialism was being built. However, after this initial stage in North Korea, the policy trend shifted away from socialism, and socialist elements became heavily infused with unique traits of the cultural environment on the Korean Peninsula. We describe the next stage as a move away from socialism, but this is not to say that the country embarked on a policy of adopting capitalist market principles as was the case with perestroika in the Soviet Union and China’s “reform and openness” line. North Korea maintained a socialist-type of managed economy, and, in fact, tightened up the system in that regard. The change was a process that could be described as establishing “Kimism.” As we shall see, the creation of a system centered on the cult of Kim Il Sung was certainly the creation of a system deviating from Marxism-Leninism. This next stage in North Korean social development was a move toward a system that was independent of socialist doctrines found elsewhere in the world. An effort was made to create a self-described unique socialist society based on the thought of Kim Il Sung. It had special North Korean characteristics that included the partial reintroduction of Korean social traditions. The revival of national tradition was an element that North Korea shared with China and the Soviet Union in their moves away from socialism. We place this stage of North Korean development in the context of a move away from building socialism, or indigenization because we want to emphasize its connection with the pattern of change that occurred in these other two socialist societies. 2.2. Establishing the Kim System Relying on Suzuki (1992), we will present an account of the establishment of the Kim Il Sung dictatorship and the transitions that occurred in that process. The North Korean social system became heavily imbued with the emerging cult of Kim Il Sung after the purge of the so-called Kapsan faction at the Central Committee meeting of May 1967. It was in December of that year, at the First Supreme People’s Assembly, after the fourth election was held, that Kim began to be called “Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.” The use of this appellation would continue uninterrupted. This expression gave recognition to Kim as the country’s supreme leader and was used to elevate him to an infallible, demigod status. From that point



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on, Kim would no longer merely be the highest-ranked political leader. While formally remaining a Soviet-style national state run by the Party, the country came under a system in which the paramount leader stood above all institutions and made all major decisions. In 1970, around the time of Kim’s fifty-eighth birthday, the epithet “Esteemed Leader” was added to the expression “Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.” Enhancing this glorification were the giant portraits of Kim displayed at North Korea’s famous mass games. The first portrait of this type appeared with the work, “The Corps Carrying on the Revolution,” which was reportedly created under Kim Jong Il’s direction in October 1967.5 Revised Party Bylaws issued at the Fifth Worker’s Party of Korea Congress held in November 1970 proclaimed: “Our activity will be guided by Marxism-Leninism and the creative application of Marxism-Leninism expressed in Juche, the thought of Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.” This very clearly was a change from a statement in the Bylaws issued at the Fourth Party Congress held in November 1961, which declared “Our activity will be guided by Marxism-Leninism.” Then, in 1980, at the Sixth Party Congress, the equivalent statement read: “Our Party’s activity will be guided by a single line, Juche, the revolutionary thought of Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.” We see that, ultimately, Kim’s thought was given a position high above Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism and Juche (self-reliance) had always been hung like pails on two ends of an ideological pole during the period of socialist construction in North Korea, but by the 1980s, Juche clearly was given much more weight as the country’s guiding philosophy. The Party was not ashamed to proclaim this in its own statements. This momentous shift in ideology clearly reflects how a uniquely North Korean brand of socialism was being built and how the Kim Il Sung system was being established. Rather than materialism and objective methodology, the Juche ideology rests more on a principle of activism, human energy and voluntarism. One can think of several important factors to consider when trying to determine the core meaning that this ideology had for the North Korean people. First of all, domestically, the idealism of Juche served as a tool to mobilize the people for economic construction at the same time it helped the Party unify them politically and control them. Overall, it was a very convenient means of shoring up the system. It is probably safe to say that 5 See “The Brilliant Journey of the Mass Games”; North Korean Art News (朝鮮画報) 1996, No. 3.

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very few countries have succeeded as North Korea has in unifying and controlling its citizens. That being said, the emphasis on spirit and human will can easily lead to a failure to recognize objective limitations. Economic exhaustion can be one result. China’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are examples of this. Examples in North Korea also show the validity of this point.6 In China, economic failures led to an increase in power for reform factions within the Communist Party, and, in the end, idealism did not continue for a long time. In North Korea, the purges that had been carried out weakened and then virtually eliminated the opposition, which meant that poor performance of the economy did not lead to a weakening of those holding power. Under a centralized system of political control, this lack of opposition also helped Kim and his allies maintain a tight hold on power despite the economic problems that appeared. Turning to international issues, Kim and his allies had to first of all vanquish pro-Soviet and pro-China factions to achieve party control. Adopting an independent line was of great significance in accomplishing this. The Moscow-Beijing struggle was at its height when the Kim dictatorship was established in the latter half of the 1960s. To maintain independence during this period, North Korea had to keep a certain distance from and steer a course between the Soviet Union and China. This was a delicate task for a country with borders with both nations. Kim Il Sung opted to intensify nationalism. He proclaimed, “We are building our own type (uri sik 우리식) of socialism.” The very unique brand of socialism that was adopted can be seen as a requirement for strengthening the centripetal force within the country and enabling it to survive amid the confrontation between the two socialist giants. 2.3. Kim Il Sung’s System and a Nation-State with a Patriarchal Order Amid the tilt to nationalism, the Kim Il Sung regime developed a unique view of the nation-state. The Kim theory was that the nation-state should 6 Many who have visited North Korea have pointed this out. I saw it when I visited the country. Applying so-called Juche agricultural methods to achieve increased crop yields (short-term increases), exhortations were issued to create farmland even on steep mountain slopes. The unfortunate result was denudation of mountainsides and a serious loss of water-retention capacity. Viewed from the air, the lack of forests on the country’s mountains is striking, as is the red soil. Even though the devastation from frequent flooding that began in the summer of 1995 and similar disasters afterwards have been primarily due to torrential rains, which are natural disasters, the loss of water retention in the mountains due to over-zealous Juche approaches to farming makes the flooding a human disaster as well.



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be seen as a “sociopolitical living organism.” This organic body, the nationstate, included a leader that functioned as the brain. The people were the arms and legs. The leader gave sociopolitical life to this body. Accordingly, the people were to pledge limitless loyalty to him in return for his “benevolence (은덕, 恩德).” Of great interest is another idea included in the North Korean view of the nation-state: that it is a group of people related by blood, a group akin to a family. In Chapter 1 we explained how one current of thought in seventeenth-century England opposed the idea of people rising up in revolution against the king because the king was seen as the patriarch, the father of the nation, which was pictured as an organic body or family. In North Korea, an even more stereotyped view was advanced, a view that included the logic of blood. It was Kim the Great Leader, the “Father (and Mother) of the Nation (Eobeoi Suryeong Nim 어버이 수령님),” who bestowed political life to the nation. He was a personage more important than the father and mother giving individuals physical life. We have explained that, unlike Japan, traditional Korean society, which was heavily influenced by Confucianism, as a rule, placed devotion to parents (孝) over loyalty to lord (忠) if a choice had to be made between the two. It was considered proper behavior for a general on the front lines of battle to stop fighting and put on his mourning garments when his father died. In Japan, before loyalty and filial devotion were brought together in a family-state ideology in the Meiji era, loyalty to the feudal lord had already been partially established as a paramount virtue over filial duty, a tendency that began in the Sengoku Jidai, the age of civil wars from 1467 to 1568. This was an important source of the system of absolute loyalty to the emperor (tenno sei) that was enforced in the decades leading up to World War II. In the case of North Korea, the nation-state made use of the traditional high priority given to filial piety. Adopting a form of unified loyalty and filial piety became necessary to foster and ensure absolute loyalty to Kim Il Sung. A theory of a blood relationship uniting the Great Leader (the nation’s father) with the people was developed. The statements used to promote this concept and the appeal made to filial piety deeply rooted in Korean culture were similar to Japanese propaganda during the Asia-Pacific War in which the subjects of the Empire were referred to as “the Emperor’s children (天皇陛下の赤子).” Filial piety was, in effect, merged with loyalty to the leader and to the state. The weakening of clan ties, which were extremely strong in Korean society, was another step needed to solidify the Kim system in which patriarchal organizations based on family and clan were broken up to be replaced by a giant patriarchal order, the North Korean nation-state taken as a whole.

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This unification of the traditional virtues of loyalty and filial piety is still insisted on as it was as the Kim regime was being strengthened. An example of this can be seen in an issue of Korean Women (조선녀성 1995, No. 3), which carried a story extolling “heroic mothers” who took joy in sending their sons to the front during the Korean War to die for the revolution. Not a tear was shed on mourning garments when their sons died in battle, and they took pride in the way their sons fought to the bitter end against the American invaders, the story said. This is reminiscent of the rhetoric used in wartime Japan. It may not be that difficult to understand loyalty and love of country transcending love of family in a time of war. However, one can point to the fact that this type of rhetoric was still being used in a time of peace, in 1995, as proof that the North Korean regime was still actively trying to instill a brand of loyalty to the Great Leader that transcended filial devotion. We will take a look at subsequent manifestations of this effort in Chapter 9. The emphasis placed on the fictitious concept of the nation-state as family was also related to the transfer of power to Kim Jong Il, who began to appear preeminent as the successor after the Party purge of 1967 was completed. From that time on, Kim Jong Il’s grip on Party affairs was to grow stronger, particularly in the area of agitation and propaganda, and he was quite successful in promoting ideological unity. Kim, the son, achieved a great deal in advancing the absolute power of Kim, the father. The process of unifying thinking within the Party involved reissuing Party membership cards in 1972. This enabled officials to test each member’s thinking, a move that fortified Kim Jong Il’s position as successor. He was selected as Secretary of the Central Committee, in charge of the Party organization and agitation and propaganda work, at the seventh Central Committee Plenum in 1973, after the fifth election. At the eighth Plenum held in February of the following year, Kim Jong Il’s position was all but completely established with his selection as a member of the Political Committee of the Central Committee and as Secretary of the Party’s Military Commission. Referred to as the “Center of the Party” rather than by name, Kim Jong Il was appointed standing member of the Political Committee of the Politburo at the sixth Party Congress held in October 1980, where he was also appointed Member of the Politburo, Secretary of the Party Secretariat, and Member of the Party Military Commission. In name and reality he was now number two, second only to his father. Kim Jong Il’s important leadership role could be seen in various situations in the 1980s, particularly in the rush to finish construction of giant monuments to the Great Leader prior to his seventieth birthday in April



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1982. This was done to restore Kim Il Sung’s honor after economic failures took place under his leadership in the 1970s. In the 1980s, North Korea built a series of giant structures in and around Pyongyang. Construction started with the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital in 1980, and the People’s Great Learning Hall (인민대학습당) in 1981. Then in 1982, structures all proudly built to be “the largest in the world” and gifts to the Chairman included the Tower of the Juche Idea (Juche Sasangtap, 주체사상탑), the Triumphal Arch, and the Kim Il Sung National Stadium. Considering North Korea’s economic power, this was a very excessive program. Mobilizing the personnel and utilizing the materials and capital needed for these new structures meant diverting them from renovation of aging factories and other facilities. According to NK Kai, a North Korea watchers’ group in Japan, the projects also led to a widening of the economic gap between outlying regions and Pyongyang and contributed to economic exhaustion (NK Kai ed. 1982). One can say somewhat ironically that, even if the expenditure was a great economic waste, it was very meaningful when it came to bolstering Kim Il Sung’s absolute political control. North Korea had clearly suffered from economic failures since the 1970s, but politically, the country had achieved a level of national unity and political control unseen anywhere else in the world. This enabled the regime in Pyongyang to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, who along with China, were their key trading partners. In other words, viewed from the aspect of political unity, Kim Jong Il’s achievement was not a small one. Until about 1970 “Self-Determination and Independence” was still a meaningful slogan given the international situation. Amid the subsequent changes that occurred in the world economic situation, this slogan simply came to mean “Closed and Isolated,” given the fact that North Korea had been left behind. However, preserving “Self-Determination and Independence” could be termed a success if it is viewed strictly from an internal perspective, that is, the perspective of the Kim regime.7 In other 7 “Defend Self-Determination in Solidarity with the World’s People” is a commonly used slogan in North Korea. It represents the country’s line on self-determination and independence. This may seem a bit funny to some. However, when Saigon fell in 1975, most progressive intellectuals in Japan felt that Vietnam was worthy of applause as a small Asian country winning self-determination and independence from U.S. imperialism. Subse­ quently, like South Korea and Taiwan, over the past twenty years, Vietnam has decisively adopted a policy of pursuing economic development by bringing in foreign capital. This makes North Korea’s talk of self-determination and independence seem like it is choosing to close itself off from the world and remain isolated.

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words, viewed from other than an economic standpoint and leaving aside any comparison with its South Korean neighbor, the regime had succeeded in building a nation on its own terms. The Confucian norms present in Korean society were utilized along with the logic of a blood relationship to justify the transfer of leadership on the basis of heredity and to transfer the charisma of the Great Leader to Kim Jong Il. By presenting the greatest gift in the world to his father, Kim Il Sung, on his birthday, Kim Jong Il became the embodiment of the spirit of filial piety. In Korean society this was evaluated very highly. It must also be remembered that the practice of the leader of an organization passing on his position to his son was considered quite appropriate in Korean society. In contrast, in Japan, it was quite common for a family to bring an outsider not related by blood into the household. For example, a merchant family might bring a capable young man into the family as an adopted son with the intention of having him take over leadership of the family business. (This was particularly the case when a son related by blood lacked management ability.) A well-known argument has been made that this was an example of excellent flexibility on the part of Japanese organizations. In regard to this point, families on the Korean Peninsula traditionally did not adopt or raise children unrelated by blood, and the custom of bringing an unrelated young man into the family business to function as a son did not exist. This was in keeping with the adage “Do not adopt children of a different family (異姓不養).” Blood ties were considered to be extremely important.8 Making the oldest son the father’s successor was the most approved way of transferring leadership rights.

8 This belief in the importance of blood ties clearly appears in North Korea’s thinking on social class. The people are classified in great detail according to their “constituents (성분, 成分),” which are used to identify their class status (one of three basic classes subdivided according to fifty-one categories). Kim Il Sung badges are distributed with different designs used to identify the status of the wearer. Some constituents are social attributes such as a person’s background (where and how a person was raised) and his or her place of work and rank, but the constituent for background is determined by tracing the person’s family line back three generations. An intensive Party leadership program (당집중지 도사업) conducted from 1958 to 1960 classified citizens into three levels: a leading “Core” level; a somewhat “Unstable” level; and a “Hostile” level. Then from 1968 to 1970, the government carried out a citizen registration program in which each citizen’s constituents were examined. Without exception all citizens were classified according to fifty-one categories. Citizens whose grandparents were capitalists or landowners are subjected to various forms of discrimination and exclusion. A system of evaluation based on a conceived need to trace people’s family lines back three generations surely rests on a cultural theory of blood lines being of the utmost importance.



patriarchy in north korea217 2.4. Changes in the View of Women

Having provided an outline of how the Kim Il Sung regime was established and how power was transferred to his son, the most important question to address, as we did in our examination of Japanese society, is, how did this process affect gender policies? In North Korea, these policies clearly took a new direction in the period that followed the stage when socialism was being built. An early example of the change was a revision of the rules pertaining to implementation of the law on equal rights for men and women. The rules were revised in 1956 to eliminate authorization of divorces based only on consultation between the parties (which had made court proceedings unnecessary). It was decided that the goal of the law on equal rights, which was to free women from the yoke of feudal family relations, had been fulfilled. Now, the leaders reasoned, the family had become a basic unit of socialist society and it had to be protected. This meant that the policy had to be shifted. Our next example is an address made by Kim Il Sung to a National Meeting of Mothers organized by the Korean Democratic Women’s Union in 1961, two months after the Fourth Party Congress was held. In his address, entitled “The Mother’s Duties in Child Education,” Kim said “Mothers must bear a very important responsibility in home education. Why is the responsibility of the mother greater than that of the father? It is because it is the mother who bears children and raises them (Kim Il Sung [1967]).” The role of women as mothers was absolutely affirmed. No doubt of any sort was expressed. In fact, this role was emphasized in Kim’s address. This line of thinking was more strongly expressed at a subsequent women’s conference when the participants issued a declaration making the following points: women should put up with a bad mother-in-law and serve her; women should be strong in tolerating a dissipated husband in order to educate or reform him; divorce was not a desirable step; and participation in social labor was no reason to neglect child education—to do so was a sign of insufficient revolutionary spirit. These assertions emphasizing the role of women as daughters-in-law, as wives, and as mothers were made one after the other (Joseon Minju Nyeoseong Dongmaeng [1962]). This was clearly a big shift in the policy on women, away from the line that only emphasized women serving as workers during the stage when socialism was being built. It is worth noting how the new line emphasized women’s role in the home. This new emphasis on women’s traditional roles accompanied the consolidation of Kim Il Sung’s political power. Of course women were being

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called on to raise their children in a “communist” and “revolutionary” manner, not in the old, traditional way. However, we note with interest that no questions or doubts were being raised about the correctness of allocating different roles to men and women. Women were not exempted from participation in social labor. They were being mobilized to work outside the home and mobilized to work in the home. This amounted to double duty. At the same time, men were not being called on to shoulder household responsibilities. Unlike China, North Korea generally did not expect men to do any housework. This can be described as nothing more than a typical placing of a double burden on women. The cult of Kim Il Sung was firmly established by 1967. This dovetailed with the beginning of cults surrounding his individual family members. Personality cults of his father, mother and grandparents all developed. From our perspective, the most important of these was the cult of his mother, Kang Pan Sok (강반석, 康盤石). On July 31 of the same year, a fullpage article featuring reminiscences of Kang Pan Sok appeared on page 2 of the Worker’s Newspaper. In addition, a song written about her referred to her as “Korea’s Mother,” and, along with other groups, the Korean Democratic Women’s Union launched a “Learn from Kang Pan Sok” campaign, which was accompanied by the publication of a pamphlet entitled “Learn from Madame Kang Ban Sok.” Many episodes in her life were included in the pamphlet. The following are representative. First as a wife: “Madame Kang Pan Sok cooked rice ten times a day, and washed clothes ten times a day. If it was for her husband and his comrades who were engaged in revolutionary work, she not only didn’t mind, she was happy to do it. This was how she felt about her lofty duty as the wife in a revolutionary household (Joseon Minju Nyeoseong Dongmaeng 1967: 24).” As a mother: “Madame Kang Pan Sok, took great care about the words the Great Leader would learn when he was a little child; she took pains to develop his character so that he would be able to overcome difficulties; and she was careful to lead him on the right path (1967: 43–4).” Then, when it came to serving her husband’s parents: “Madame Kang Pan Sok never talked back to her husband’s mother, and she never once made excuses or asked for easier work. … And as the mistress of the household, Madame would humbly accept the blame for anything that went wrong, even if a mistake was made by her husband’s brother’s wife or a younger sisterin-law. She would simply say, ‘I was wrong. I will be more careful next time.’ She never once made excuses or tried to hide her own mistakes (1967: 30).” We can see in all this a sustained effort to sing her praises on the basis of her performance of traditional women’s roles.



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Kim Jong Il’s position as his father’s successor was being firmly established as the country entered the 1980s. As this went on, Kim Jong Suk (김정숙, 金正淑), Kim Jong Il’s mother, was replacing Kang Pan Sok as the country’s exemplary woman. Kim Jong Suk had died in 1949 when Kim Jong Il was only seven. Kim Il Sung remarried in 1956 to Kim Song Ae (김성애, 金聖愛), who served as Chairperson of the Korean Democratic Women’s Union. Order had to be respected, however, and Kim Jong Il’s mother became the model. Articles on Kim Jong Suk carried in Korean Woman, the magazine published by the Korean Democratic Women’s Union, portrayed her as never once talking back to Kim Il Sung, etc., as faithfully accompanying him, as raising her son Kim Jong Il to be a revolutionary, and as being a revolutionary fighter and a paragon of femininity at the same time. Her portrayal as a wife included the following: “When the esteemed Madame would pass by the room where the Great Leader was at work, she would always walk on her tiptoes to avoid disturbing him, and when she washed dishes in the kitchen, she was careful not to make any noise with the pots and pans (July issue of 1982).” As a mother: The revolutionary Madame Kim Jong Suk took pains to develop her son’s intellect, virtues and body, and she poured her heart into raising him to be a communist revolutionary with knowledge of a wide range of subjects. … The esteemed Madame Kim Jong Suk taught her son such subjects as reading and writing, natural science, and geography when he was very young to be sure he had ample knowledge of many subjects, and she made sure he learned to sing, dance, engage in sports and games, paint and create other works of art. When nighttime came she would read children’s stories and old folk tales to him. When Madame would speak to him, she would not just talk; she would think about the educational content of what she was going to say, and keep it simple yet interesting (December issue of 1981).9

In addition to this, she was also portrayed as being feminine and gentle in keeping with the latest image of womanhood being pushed. To provide another example, we will quote from an article in the same magazine, which quoted the following declaration issued at a gathering held to commemorate the enactment of the law establishing equal rights for men and women. The declaration said:

9 According to Yoon Mi Ryang, Kim Jong Suk did not have a formal education and only learned to read and write later in life at night school. This makes the descriptions of her directly teaching Kim Jong Il history, natural science and geography nothing more than fakery (Yoon Mi Ryang 1991).

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chapter seven We women have benefitted greatly from being granted equal rights with men, but we must not lose sight of the work we must do as women, nor lose the qualities expected of us as women. When it comes to revolutionary work we will resolutely do no less than men do, but in our daily lives, we must also maintain our feminine qualities, and make our words and deeds beautiful (July issue of 1982).

The idolatry of Kang Pan Sok and Kim Jong Suk shows North Korea’s image of the ideal woman. The depictions of them in their roles as wives, in which they walk quietly, etc., closely resemble the virtues extolled in Confucian Four Books for Women. Clearly North Korean patriarchy is lurking in the background of this view of women. We see Confucian norms being used to prop up the Great Leader and his successor in a nation-state presented to the people as a giant family-like society based on fictitious blood ties. In other words, the nation as a whole has turned into a giant patriarchal order. In this context, it does not appear strange to see norms applied to women that closely resemble traditional Confucian norms. With the Kim system firmly established, with norms being applied in North Korean society that increasingly resonate with traditional Confucian norms, the influence of patriarchy is growing stronger and women are being forced to shoulder a double burden. Judith Stacy’s term “patriarchal socialism,” used in her analysis of China, even more aptly fits North Korean society (Stacy 1983). Despite the exhaustion of the North Korean economy, Kim Jong Il was in position to maintain the system created under Kim Il Sung, and after decades of economic hardship, in 2012, his son, Kim Jong Un, inherited his role as the paramount leader. Given the current domestic and international crises, it remains to be seen if the regime can be sustained. Although it is difficult to imagine how the gender issues we have studied will shift if North Korean society were to fall apart. In many cases, the end of socialism has led to women being driven away from their positions of employment. Although difficult to imagine in the short term, ultimately, a collapse of the North Korean system would likely lead to the country being absorbed in a merger with South Korea. If this were to happen, in view of the patriarchal norms common to both countries, it is easy to predict a tendency for housewives to come into existence. Such ventures as the Tuman River Area Development Project and the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where over fifty medium-size South Korean companies operate, could be signs of a gradual opening of the North



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Korean economy.10 Be that as it may, when one thinks of the type of patriarchy that exists on the Korean Peninsula, one heavily influenced by Confucianism, we can foresee wives in the more affluent classes and other women steadily moving out of the labor force to become housewives. Such a scenario might correspond to what is happening in China. In the initial drive to convert women into workers, it was only natural that a socialist society like North Korea would follow a path similar to that taken by its neighbor, China. Today, however, as mentioned earlier, differences in types of patriarchy will outweigh disparities between social systems. Rather than North Korea becoming like China, North Korea can be expected to show points in common with South Korea with which it shares a common tradition. This has significance for the problematic of the comparative sociology of patriarchy.11

10 It is quite likely that an opening up of the economy would rapidly weaken the current political system. Control of information greatly helps the regime control the populace, and enables it to advance such slogans as “We envy no one in the world” and have them believed. An inflow of information would undermine this control and the regime could lose its cohesiveness. 11 During the final editing of this book, North Korean media reported on November 15, 2012 that the Fourth National Meeting of Mothers was held in Pyongyang on April 25, with Kim Jong Un attending. This is an example of the ongoing attempt by the regime to consolidate its hold on the loyalty of women and the ideology of the nation-state as a giant family. The news of the event held back in April was reported on November 15, presumably because North Korea celebrated its first Mother's Day on November 16, to commemorate the First National Meeting of Mothers held on the same date in 1961 during the Kim Il Sung regime. For a video showing scale and mood of the meeting see http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9n1Oul9Mtq4 (Accessed on Nov. 20, 2012).

CHAPTER EIGHT

PATRIARCHY IN CHINA China was once praised as the Asian country where women had made the most advances. Many Japanese observers probably came to hold this opinion because they had received a substantial amount of information on this subject from the Chinese side, particularly during the period of the Cultural Revolution. One cannot help but feel that in many cases the image of China created by this propaganda was accepted with little or no qualification. That being said, it is true that, in terms of participation in social labor, Chinese women have made significant advances in society. More recently, however, this interpretation no longer holds true in a positive way in view of the harsh conditions, including mass layoffs, women workers have had to face. As discussed in Chapter 2, there are contradictory forces at work when it comes to women advancing in society in socialist societies such as the two we examine. Mobilization of women as workers has raised the problem of a dual burden being placed on women, if compromises are made with patriarchy, and ultimately women may want to stay at home. Therefore, one can see signs of the societies moving into a period subsequent to the disappearance of the housewife in terms of women being active in the labor force. Yet at the same time we see signs of the birth of the housewife, as increasing numbers of women indicate they might want to stay home if their economic situation does not make it necessary. We have also studied the unique mutual interaction of traditional forms of patriarchy with the process of change in each society. Chinese society was influenced by its own type of patriarchy in a way that set it apart from other socialist societies. It was clearly not the case that Chinese society was influenced by patriarchy in the same way North Korean society was. 1. Building Socialism 1.1. From the Soviet Period to the Marriage Law Like their counterparts in the Soviet Union and North Korea, Chinese revolutionaries, during the initial phase of building socialism, made an effort

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to break down the existing mode of family life which served as the foundation of traditional patriarchy. New concepts were strongly advanced and new policy lines were hammered out. Chinese intellectuals had consistently taken up the cause of women winning independence from the old family system since the time of the May Fourth Movement, which began in 1919 as an anti-imperialist movement and extended to a New Culture Movement that challenged traditional values. This differed from the process of change on the Korean Peninsula, which came under Japanese colonial control prior to the time when criticisms of tradition were launched by persons influenced by Western thought and linked to independent nation building. In the early part of the twentieth century, the thinking in Korea tended to be that “modern equals Japan” because modernity was to some extent brought by Japanese colonial rule. Unlike China, there was a tendency among Koreans with a strong nationalist viewpoint and desire to resist Japanese influence to think of traditional family life as a set of beautiful customs that ought to be preserved. Instead of critically examining their own traditions, the tendency was to make tradition a cornerstone of their national identity—an identity violently suppressed by the Japanese colonial regime. In China, the tendency among intellectuals influenced by the West was to position opposition to traditional patriarchy at the core of anti-feudal ideology. This was in line with communist policies. In his famous “Report on an Investigation of the Hunan Peasant Movement, March 1927” Mao Zedong said that men were subjected to the domination of three systems of authority, political, family and religious. Women, he said, were additionally dominated by men in the form of the authority of the husband (Mao Zedong 1927). The basic idea was that liberating women from the oppression of the family and their husbands would be a key task in freeing them from the bonds of feudal patriarchy. This concept was applied in the Marriage Law issued in 1931 by the government of the Chinese Soviet Republic established at the Ruijin Base in Jiangxi province. It granted freedom of choice to marry or divorce and was based on a system of one wife and one husband. The Law banned concubinage, selling wives, and child brides,1 but its most striking characteristic was its authorization of divorce, without requiring specification 1 This refers to a system in which a young boy’s parents would find a girl to be his marriage partner, take the girl to be his future bride, and raise the children together. The children would be married when they became adults. It is said that this practice developed to avoid trouble between wives and their mothers-in-law.



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of a reason for wanting one. Divorce would be granted on the basis of an agreement reached by the two parties or simply in accordance with the wishes of one of them. This enabled a woman who had been forced to marry against her will to obtain a divorce simply because she wanted one. The Marriage Law additionally covered the welfare of the woman after a divorce. Any children born prior to a divorce were to generally be made the responsibility of the husband, but if the woman was made responsible, the husband was still required to bear two-thirds of the cost of raising the children up to the age of sixteen. This Law resulted in a sharp increase in divorces in the Jiangxi Soviet area—the majority granted simply because the wife had expressed a desire for one (Niida and Ubukata 1955). Other policies implemented during the Jiangxi Soviet period (1927– 1934) included many rather extreme measures targeting patriarchy that were taken to advance socialism. Adopted in 1928, the first Land Reform Law (井冈山土地法) was typical of these socialist policies. It provided for confiscation of all land for redistribution to impoverished peasants. Absolutely no private ownership of land was permitted (Yamamoto 1975: 118). Due to the collectivization of land, the Communist Party was able to intervene in the power relationships within households with full implementation of socialist policies. These radical policies would be modified not long after their adoption— after the Communists were forced to retreat from their base in Jiangxi and embark on the Long March. Later, in 1937, among the concessions they made to form an anti-Japanese united front with the Kuomintang (国共合作), their forces had to administer districts formally placed under Kuomintang political control. Compromises were made with some of the rural village customs, and these were reflected in new marriage and divorce regulations—regulations that included requiring that reasons for divorces be specified, and that certain marriage ceremonies be held.2 As for land ownership, only the 1928 Land Reform Law denied the right to privately-owned land. Subsequently, to win over middle peasants working their own, medium-scale holdings, the Party changed its policy to one in which only the holdings of large landowners would be confiscated for distribution to poor peasants and small family farms would be protected. A new Marriage Law was enacted in 1950, shortly after the Communist Party defeated the Kuomintang in the civil war and founded the People’s 2 Examples of this in 1943 were marriage regulations for the Jin, Cha and Ji districts (晋 察冀边区婚姻条例). Jin means Shanxi province, Cha refers to Inner Mongolia, and Ji refers to Hebei province.

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Republic of China. Under its provisions, divorces based on consultation between the two parties were authorized, but they would only be registered after both sides had filed a notification and the intentions of the couple were verified, and after it was confirmed that children would be cared for and that property would be properly disposed of. In addition, a mediation system run by the People’s District Government and People’s Court was established. In this way, the brakes were applied to divorces through the intervention of national agencies.3 A Land Reform Law was also enacted in 1950. Its intent was to take land from landholders for redistribution to poor peasants and to overthrow the domination of the great landlords. It did accomplish this, but the Law essentially brought about distribution of land to family units, which meant that the reform had the effect of protecting the small-farm economy. In this way, the moves made in the initial stage of building socialism did not thoroughly uproot old patriarchal values. Instead, by breaking up landholdings into small family units, it shifted the basis for patriarchy to the family level, where, in effect, it was given support. In other words, the early socialist government compromised with the old patriarchal order. It was as though the family reform and land reform carried out under the new system amounted to distributing land and women to poor peasants (men). Attempts were made to achieve a measure of equality at the household level, but they did not necessarily go beyond this to strongly change power relations within the family unit. Judith Stacey has described this new arrangement as “New Democratic Patriarchy,” and the following arrangement became in her words “patriarchal socialism” (Stacey 1983). This is an apt characterization. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, divorces greatly increased in every section of the country after the 1950 Marriage Law was implemented. 3 The divorce regulations in the 1950 Marriage Law included the following provisions: Article 17 A divorce will be granted when the man and the woman both freely decide that they want to divorce. A divorce will be granted when either party persistently insists upon a divorce and mediation efforts undertaken by the legal organ and the People’s District government are unsuccessful.  When both the man and the woman freely decide that they want to divorce, both must register the divorce with the People’s District government and receive a divorce certificate. The People’s District government shall immediately issue divorce certificates after clearly establishing that both sides want the divorce and that the care of children and property issues have been properly settled. When either party, the man or the woman, persistently insists upon a divorce, the People’s District government can undertake mediation efforts. When such efforts prove to be unsuccessful, the case must be promptly transferred to the People’s City Court for final disposition. [Remainder omitted.]



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Moreover, most of the divorce proceedings were instituted by women. The extremely large number of reports of cases in which regional officials would not accept women’s petitions for divorce and in which women filing for divorce were harassed tell the story of a stubborn resistance to reform on the part of those wishing to uphold traditional patriarchy. In response, the Communist Party launched a national campaign for full compliance with the Marriage Law, and one can say that a definite effect was obtained in the effort to rid the country of feudal relationships between men and women. Stacey’s argument emphasizes the aspect of the compromises made with entrenched patriarchy even in the campaign to ensure enforcement of the Marriage Law. However, considering the subsequent move to bring women into the labor force, one has to conclude that the educational effect of this campaign cannot be disregarded. One can also view these moves toward socialism as moves to suppress patriarchy. 1.2. From the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution The effort to build socialism strengthened during the period from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution. Confident that socialism could be built, the Communist Party leadership launched a “Correct the Wind (Zheng feng)” campaign carried out from April to June in 1957, and issued a call for intellectuals and other middle-class elements outside the Party to participate in the movement. Assurances were made that freedom of speech would be granted. Mao’s slogan, “Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend,” was to be the watchword. However, continuous criticisms of the Party voiced by pro-democracy factions and intellectuals led the Party to launch the Anti-Rightist Movement. Mao denounced the criticisms as not being “a contradiction among the people” but an example of “a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy.” One could say that the Great Leap Forward began from this point on. The policy line of accelerating development of the socialist economy was confirmed in May 1958 at the second meeting of the eighth Communist Party Congress. Precedence was given to investment in heavy industry in the full-scale implementation of the plan. To do this collectivization of agriculture and mobilization of labor were intensified, and to increase industrial yields, allocations of resources to peasants were reduced. Collectivization had been promoted throughout the 1950s. Early efforts extended from mutual aid teams to the formation of initial, lower-level Agricultural Producer Cooperatives (APC). This continued with progress

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toward higher-level APCs, the scale of which steadily expanded. By 1956, just prior to the Great Leap Forward, 96.3% of farming households belonged to one form of an agricultural collective or another. By the end of 1958, approximately 98% of the farming families had been organized into a people’s commune. Each commune included an average of 5,000 participating households. Basically, individual ownership of land had been abolished, which meant an end to the family enterprise system underpinning traditional patriarchy. This was a period when the power of collectivization pulled women away from the control of their families. The number of industrial workers increased dramatically during this period when the government made industry, particularly steel production a priority. In 1956, the number of industrial workers was no more than 2.17 million. By 1958, the number of factory workers had increased by nearly a factor of ten, to 20.82 million. This type of growth could only have been sustained by a drive to bring women who had never worked outside the home into the labor force. In 1958, the number of female workers in state-owned enterprises was twice that of the previous year. During this period, women who could be called housewives had disappeared from both farming villages and cities. A system in which the majority of women were working outside the home had been created (Tan Shen 1993: 353). One of the most characteristic reform efforts during this period of collectivization was the creation of collective dining halls to reduce housework. This move enabled communes to add more women to the labor force and increase production. As in the case of the people’s communes, the effect was to strip away the family’s control of women’s lives.4 This was a truly epoch-making advance in collectivization because it

4 Stacey argues that women’s opinions were also divided on the question of collective dining halls. Opposition particularly came from women past the age of forty, who, in traditional society, would have enjoyed the authority of the mother-in-law but now faced the prospect of additional chores and a lowering of status (Stacey 1983). Generally in an association organized along the father’s lineage, even when a bride was taken from outside, a woman giving birth to a son would enjoy a stable position in the expectation that her son would become head of the household and she would gain authority. Pointing to examples of this phenomenon in Taiwan, Wolf (1972) has called this system the “uterine family.” Examples such as this simply tell a story of how, no matter how much women generally seem to be oppressed in a given system, certain women will somehow gain advantages. This is an example of the difficulty that arises in broadly calling for women’s liberation in the sense of freeing all women to live as they wish to live. What we can perhaps say in view of this is that rather than “women’s liberation,” the goal should be a society based on gender equality and equality among the generations.



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not only affected the productive labor situation, but it also extended to meals, a core aspect of daily life. However, this movement was criticized for interfering with family life. In some areas there were complaints that the times meals were provided were inconvenient. The communal halls were very unpopular in some areas for a range of other reasons often having to do with local conditions, local leadership and political struggle. At any rate, they were done away with when the Great Leap Forward became looked upon as a failure. The idea was never revived. There was a strong component of voluntarism in the ideology driving the Great Leap Forward. Its policies placed great expectations on the subjective activism of the masses. Lack of due attention to objective limitations led to great economic damage, including famine in many areas, rather than the expected leap ahead in production. In 1960, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and other leaders ordered a slowdown of collectivization and adjustments to the emphasis on stimulating industrial development. This process included a fair amount of criticism of Mao’s ideas. Starting in 1965, Mao Zedong and his allies stepped up their counterattack on this leadership group, which they identified as “those in authority taking the capitalist road.” This struggle led to the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Amid the large-scale mass mobilizations spurred by this uprising, an ideological trend among the left was to denounce policies assuring workers and peasants material benefits as bourgeois and revisionist. Once again, private enterprise, whether in agriculture or in urban areas, was attacked as being bourgeois and the trend toward collectivization was strengthened. Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, was a leader in the attempt to revolutionize culture and art during the Cultural Revolution. Her efforts led to the creation of revolutionary Peking operas and other works. The women extolled in these productions were those who could fight just as well as men. The image of women projected was “Women can do anything men can do.” This was a typical view of women pushed during this stage of building socialism. It was also exemplified in the style of clothes worn in those days, the Zhongshan fu, or “Mao suit,” in which no distinction was made between men and women’s attire. The “Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius” campaign launched after the September 1971 Lin Biao incident was primarily a political attack on Lin, but the inclusion of Confucianism as a target can be seen as an attempt to attack patriarchy and make socialism primary. Also, the movement in those days included a call to “Make politics primary” and to “Draw a clear line of distinction (划清界线)” between comrades and those, even

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parents, who cling to the old ideology.5 The idea was that loyalty to revolutionary ideology was required not loyalty to family. 1.3. A Comparison of the Kim Il Sung System and the Cultural Revolution At the risk of straying from our main subject, we would like to present a comparison of the Kim Il Sung system and the Cultural Revolution. They had important points in common. Both put forward a line that stressed self-determination and independence in ways that set their countries apart. Both movements placed great emphasis on the will and activism of the masses, and both relied on a mass movement inspired by extreme idolatry of their leader. However, major differences between the two existed. Here we will briefly point out a few that are important from our perspective. First of all, basic differences can be arranged in terms of what occurred in the middle of key power struggles and what occurred after they ended. The Cultural Revolution was launched in the midst of a fierce power struggle at a crucial stage in the development of socialism when Mao’s thinking did not prevail without opposition within the Party, as well as nationwide. Great confusion and violence spread, and in the end, political differences were resolved with bloodshed. In contrast, the Kim regime was able to consolidate its power by conducting purges of opponents and winning complete political power. No vast upheaval or disorder among the people took place as was the case in China. The great difference between the two movements is perhaps best shown by the fact that the Red Guards passionately supporting Mao were at the center of the turmoil in China, while in North Korea, support for Kim was demonstrated by well-regulated participation in the country’s Mass Games. Of course the differences in level of political control were not unrelated to the vast difference in the size of the two countries. However, this presence or absence of control should primarily be seen as a reflection of the different types of power relationships within the respective communist parties.

5 The idea that social origin and blood lineage were important did exist in the Cultural Revolution—in the sense that these were thought to affect political consciousness and positions in the class struggle. However, the practices involved in “drawing a clear line of distinction” were significantly different from the emphasis placed on blood ties in North Korea. For a discussion of the importance given to people’s blood ties during the Cultural Revolution see Kagami (1980).



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A point Emmanuel Todd (1990) has often raised is that an explanation of such organizational differences can be found by correlating them to differences in family norms in the societies involved. We noted in our discussion of patriarchy in Taiwan and South Korea how generation and age are very important factors in Korean groups, but not as important in Chinese societies. So we find that age is a key reference point in North Korea. It is relatively easier to build a strictly hierarchical organization in cultures where age and generation are such important factors. In contrast, in the case of China, organizations tend to take the form of rays emanating outward from a boss, which means that achieving full centralized control is more difficult than it is in North Korea. A more important point from our perspective is the persistence of ways of thinking that can be traced to Confucianism. The carryover of Confucian tradition typically appears in the treatment of women and intellectuals. In North Korea, the status of intellectuals is very high. This is symbolized by the placement of a pen in the center of the Worker’s Party of Korea flag (Figure 8.1), right between the hammer and sickle traditionally representing the unity of industrial and agricultural workers. The pen symbolizes the role of intellectuals. Other signs of the priority assigned to education

Figure 8.1. The flag of the Worker’s Party of North Korea.

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and the importance given to intellectuals is the long period of compulsory education in the country and the slogan “All Citizens— Become Intel­ lectuals.” This reflects the respect afforded intellectuals on the Korean Peninsula dating back to the traditions of the elite yangban class and the intellectualism inherent in Confucian philosophy. In direct contrast to this was the anti-intellectualism of the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in intellectuals as a class coming under attack. This trend was partly influenced by Mao’s personal antipathy for intellectuals. The hero’s status given a student who turned in a blank sheet of paper at a university entrance exam is a symbol of this attitude during the Cultural Revolution. What the Kim system and the Cultural Revolution had in common in the area of gender issues was a strong advocacy of women becoming workers. However, in North Korea, differences between men and women were emphasized and supported, while the cultural revolutionaries did not accept such differences and put pressure on the authorities to eliminate differences in treatment. As discussed in the previous chapter, the Kim regime developed policies that resonated with Confucian norms and fostered a unique image of the ideal woman. In direct contrast to this was the unremitting attack mounted during the Cultural Revolution on Confucianism and the feudal ethics it was based on. This was sharply expressed during the “Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius” campaign. Whether or not one believes that the Kim system was influenced by feudal norms or the discrimination between men and women strongly supported by Confucianism, the sharp differences on gender issues between the Juche ideology and the ideology driving the Cultural Revo­ lution were undeniable. This could be seen in women’s attire. Visitors to North Korean cities would see all women wearing either very long skirts that looked as though they were all stamped from the same press or a traditional Korean chima chogori. In China during the Cultural Revolution, the tendency was for all, men and women alike, to wear the very functional people’s suits. Men and women wore clearly different attire in North Korea. The images projected by the people of the two countries clearly contrasted, and while this was merely outer appearance, it clearly symbolized intrinsic ideological differences. We have seen how the policy direction in China during the period when socialism was being built was clearly one in which women were being removed from the confines of the home. We have seen it in the divorce regulations of the initial revolutionary period, in the move to turn women into production workers, in the characteristics of the collectivization of agriculture, and in the strong effort to enable women to escape from the



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domination of family life guided by patriarchal norms. Although compromises were made with traditional family values, the thrust of policy during the period formed a vector of women moving out into society. 2. Moving away from Socialism or Indigenization, Compromising with Tradition The line pushed by Mao Zedong from the Great Leap Forward through most of the Cultural Revolution led to turmoil and economic exhaustion. Mao’s death brought this period of left-leaning policy to a bitter end. Jiang Qing and her closest allies known as the “Gang of Four” were expelled from the Party after they lost the shield of Mao’s protection. Deng Xiaoping made a full comeback to the pinnacle of power and led the Party to developing the “Four Modernizations” that were formally adopted at the Fifth National People’s Congress convened in 1978. This marked a clear turn to new political and economic goals. Material incentives and independent economic activity on the part of workers or peasants were at the top of the new policy goals following the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party held in the same year. The policies of economic liberalization adopted are connected to the flow of change that continues to this day. The dramatic changes in policy direction ran counter to the collectivization that was the order of the day up to the end of the Cultural Revolution and counter to the trend of converting women into workers. As the government looked back upon the Cultural Revolution with a critical eye, it reversed the country’s priorities. The emphasis shifted to rebuilding the economy. Rather than placing politics in command as was done according to the revolutionary policy line, it was now an age of economy first. Developing a high level of political consciousness among workers was no longer a goal. The focus simply became raising production volumes. The new attitude was symbolized by Deng Xiaoping’s famous remark, “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white. If it catches a mouse, it’s a good cat.” Various debates on gender issues came to the fore as this new line was implemented, particularly in the latter half of the 1980s. 2.1. Economic Reform and “Er Bao Yi” A sharp debate unfolded in the first half of the 1980s on an issue called “Er Bao Yi, (二保一),” literally “Maintain one, out of two.” The debate, which was carried out in the pages of the sociology magazine Shehui (Society)

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and other journals, centered on the question of whether or not it would be more effective to have only one person in a married couple work (meaning that the wife should stop working). Those in favor of the idea asserted that, rather than have both the husband and wife work and both get tired even though the results of their work did not amount to much, it would be better for only one to work and earn enough for both. In the background of this debate was the way the work of intellectuals had been thoroughly disparaged during the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent shabby treatment and low standard of living they had to endure. In the case of intellectual couples living in the cities, both the husband and the wife had to work to earn a living. With the socialization of housework having advanced very little, this was a very severe environment. Unlike advanced countries, housework for the typical Chinese couple at that period, included standing in long lines to buy almost anything. Buying meat for example, did not mean the store would have the meat cut and packaged. Preparing chicken for dinner was a great deal of work. One had to buy a live chicken, kill it, clean it and cut it up to serve. In the 1980s when Chinese people frequently spoke of the socialization of housework in Japan or America as being an ideal situation, they were not simply engaging in idle praise to make a foreign listener feel good. In China, the objective conditions that would enable both husband and wife to work with relative ease simply did not exist. Both working indeed meant that both would be exhausted. This led to the assertion that, rather than that, it would be better for one of the two to work and the other to stay home. In the debate that ensued, All-China Women's Federation (中华全国妇女联合会) put forward an opposing opinion. The debate did not spread much further than that, but the way in which criticism was made of women advancing to work positions outside the home during the period of building socialism was a reflection of how fundamentally times had changed. The first half of the 1980s also saw assertions being made that, from the point of view of social efficiency, returning women in the workforce to the home might be the answer to the problem of unemployment among youth waiting for a job. In 1983, Bright Light Daily, a paper read by intellectuals, and People’s Daily in 1985 carried editorials against the proposal that women should return to home and housework.6 These were occasioned

6 See editorials in Bright Light Daily, September 10, “妇女职工回家去”的观点是错 误的, 1983 and in People’s Daily, March 8, 1985.



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by the following: All-China Women's Federation delivered a report to the Party center on a trend advocating that women return to the home. After a discussion of the issue at the Party Secretariat, the party center issued an opinion that the assertion that women should return to the home was mistaken, and “the authorities intervened” (Tan Shen 1993: 363). In other words, in the early 1980s, a proposal based on “economy-first ideas” that women should return to the home came under official criticism based on the traditional socialist advocacy of women’s liberation. 2.2. The Struggle around the Idea of Women Returning to the Home As economic reform progressed, pressure on women workers increased on a daily basis—all in the name of efficiency. With enterprises strongly encouraged to determine their own profit levels, moves were made to restructure the welfare system and social guarantees that had existed. The idea that “All should eat from the same big pot (吃大锅饭)” no matter what their contribution to the economy was came under attack. Enterprises shut down childcare centers; women workers considered to represent unnecessary payroll costs became subject to temporary layoffs; and factories holding back on hiring recent female graduates became a nationwide phenomenon. This situation sparked a debate in the latter half of the 1980s on the question of whether or not women should leave work to return to the home (妇女回家). Actually, the opinion that women should return to the home had been expressed on an ongoing basis throughout the early 1980s, so the “debate” was hardly new. Nevertheless, conditions had begun to change somewhat in the latter part of the decade. This question was heatedly debated in the pages of Chinese Woman, the magazine published by All-China Women’s Federation. For a full year in 1988, the magazine ran a special series of articles under the title “The Way Forward for Women.” One article told the story of a thirty-seven-year-old woman with children who had been laid off because of the wave of reform. Another pointed out that, in Daqiuzhuang, a village outside of Tianjin, although at one point 95% of the married women in the village had worked, only 16% of the women were then working. A debate quickly appeared in the magazine about the content of the stories.7

7 See Chinese Woman (中国妇女), January 1988.

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In this debate, a particularly interesting idea expressed in opposition to the idea that women should return home and in favor of women working was that a “leftist” error had been made during the Cultural Revolution (Shi Xiaomin 1988). The leftist error was made in crudely overemphasizing the idea that women could do the same type of work as men, the writer said, pointing out that women were often exhausted by physical labor. The error made, he said, was in emphasizing only women’s employment without considering the limitations due to the country’s level of economic development. In the theoretical sense, this was a “leftist” error, the writer said. He added that it was the limitations related to underdevelopment that contributed to China’s inability to make progress in socializing housework. One can say that this opinion reflects the type of theoretical thinking that became dominant in the 1980s. Many theoreticians now said that the priority Cultural Revolutionaries had placed on politics had led to leftist errors and one-sided ideas about women’s employment. If we view this debate in terms of how the labor involved in housework should be judged, we might say that those advocating women “returning home” highly evaluate the social contribution made by women engaging in housework. And we might say that those who stress the importance of women’s employment outside the home do not recognize the fact that household labor is part of social labor. Some feminists in capitalist societies make the point that housewives contribute their labor to society. Representative of this trend is Italy’s Mariarosa Dalla Costa, who, along with certain other feminists, asserts that wages should be paid for housework. Be that as it may, it is interesting to note that, in socialist China, where women’s participation in the labor force was a general feature of society, arguments were raised in favor of a move to suppress women’s employment outside the home. The issue continued to be hotly debated in China up until early 1989. However, the Tiananmen incident that occurred in June of that year led to the debate no longer being raised in a public manner, and the issue died down with no clear conclusion being reached. Unlike the way the issue was handled in the first half of the 1980s, the authorities did not express a clear position on it. Instead they seemed to simply leave the matter up to the vicissitudes of economic forces. As the policy of economic reform and openness progressed, the Communist Party took another great step distancing itself from the policies of the era when socialism was being built. This has left the issue of women “returning home” below the surface as an unresolved contradiction in Chinese society.



patriarchy in china237 3. Gender Issues in China—Now and in the Future

Was socialist China a vanguard country in the area of having women advance in society? Or did socialist policies simply lead to “leftist” errors? Will the emergence of the housewife be held in check as China continues to move to a market economy? In our field of comparative sociology we probably should not venture to make flat predictions, but we can indicate probable developments. To do this, in the following pages we will depict the existing employment environment for women and touch upon the completely different conditions that exist in the coastal cities and in the farming villages in the country’s inland areas. 3.1. Farming Villages We will turn to an examination of conditions in China’s farming villages, which account for some 80% of the country’s population. As China expanded its free-market economy, it adopted a system in the villages in which farming families are once again serving as key economic organizations free to earn a profit (联产承包). Basically collectivization of agriculture has been brought to a halt. The aim is to maximize incentives for farm­ers to produce by opening up opportunities for individual enterprise. To be more precise, it is not truly individual enterprise. The family has become the basic economic unit. Work is organized under the management of male heads of households, which means the old patriarchal work system has come back. Extended family ties become an important resource when the household engages a side business. Even if we assume that giant clan organizations will not reappear, it is still true that the importance of connections within extended families has reemerged (Wang Huning 1991). Freed from field work, women in well-to-do households are now fulltime housewives. Daqiuzhuang Village, the town that became a topic in the “return home” debate, serves as an example of this. Collectivization during the period when socialism was being built led to limits being placed on the authority of male heads of households. Now, in the economic reform and openness period, the power of the patriarchs has been strengthened. To be sure, the situation has not returned to pre-socialist conditions. Land reform meant that land was taken from big landowners and redistributed to small farming families, which under the leadership of heads of households were able to expand their operations into small farms. What we are seeing today might be described as a return to the patriarchy that

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existed during the New Democracy stage when the new China was being formed. Of course, the status of women has risen dramatically from that of the initial New Democracy stage (Stacey 1983) as a result of reforms such as the Marriage Law and the inculcation of the idea of male-female equality. The current position of women in the farming villages cannot be described as the same as that which existed when the new China was being built. However, one can certainly say that conditions for women have moved in a new direction from the period in which socialism was being built, with socialism already being replaced by organizational forms in which each village economy depends on enterprises managed by family patriarchs. As Stacey has pointed out, socialism is once again working hand-in-hand with patriarchy. 3.2. Cities The situation in the cities is not as simple as it is in the rural areas. As Sonoda (1988) and others have pointed out, to determine how the old norms governing family life and interpersonal relations have persisted under socialism, one has to take a look at the problem of what the Chinese call guanxi (关系). The Chinese characters make it look as though it means the same thing as “relationship” in English or kankei in Japanese, but the Chinese meaning is closer to “connection” (as in business connections). The guanxi problem, which is comparable in some respects to the problem of family norms being combined with socialism in the rural villages, comes to the fore because many work-related issues are not clearly covered by regulations or regulations are applied arbitrarily. One might call this unprincipled. In a good light, it might be called “flexibility.” Loose, arbitrary administration is commonly seen in societies where modernization has not advanced. In China, guanxi becomes very important in the absence of clear legality. Connections can be of decisive importance in obtaining permission for something or being able to make a purchase (of something scarce). The Chinese frequently find themselves having to use guanxi to find this or that intermediary, someone with pull to finally get what they need. Extended family connections are the most reliable and important form of guanxi. Others include regional connections, school ties, ties among fellow employees, or even among friends made in the same hospital room (Ka Hyo 1993). Of course from a modern point of view, getting special treatment or favors in this way is unfair or constitutes a breeding ground for corruption. As Pan Yunkang (1989)



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points out, there have been cases in which state enterprises have been taken over and monopolized by a single family.8 This is an indication that family-centered guanxi had deep roots in China’s socialist society, including the cities. The struggle to build socialism certainly had the effect of weakening family connections by breaking up family organizations. In the current living environment in Chinese cities it would be difficult for a large-scale family association to maintain family ties in an organized way. In that sense one can probably say that extended families have grown smaller. But that doesn’t mean the extended family has lost all significance. In the farming villages, land, a symbolic resource, which was for a period cooperatively utilized, has been once again turned over to family management. In other words, patriarchy has been reinforced among smaller families. In the cities, even though it has attenuated, the influence of norms based on gender and generation—patriarchal norms—has persisted. Traditionally, Chinese culture has not been particularly conducive to individualism or liberalism, and individual freedom has been much less valued than it has in many Western countries.9 To varying degrees, this comment can be generally applied to the other societies of East Asia. And China has been unlike the countries of the old European socialist bloc, which had a tradition strongly valuing romantic love between individuals. This is one reason why the divorce rate in China has been characteristically low. Of course the very low divorce rate, which was 0.72% in 1992, is heavily influenced by the farming villages which account for about 80% of the country’s population, but even in Shanghai where urbanization has 8 The following are actual examples of families and the abuse of power: (1) In Anhui province, a certain Mr. Li was head of a state-run drug company and Secretary of the Communist Party branch from 1984 to 1985. He sent his own children and the children of provincial officials to various universities or technical schools. During their period of study, the children not only received tuition money from the drug company; they received a salary and bonuses as well. Mr. Li also selected six relatives for various managerial posts. (2) The former mayor of Ruzhou (汝州) city in Henan province, not only embezzled one million yuan, he turned the city government and city enterprises into a center for the employment of his extended family. He made the following appointments: his eldest daughter’s husband as sales manager of the city’s mining bureau; his next daughter’s husband as vice-director of the city’s security bureau; his second son as head of a mining bureau branch office and that son’s wife as a police woman; and his wife’s niece’s husband as head of the personnel department and head of the financial department at the mining bureau (Pan 1989). In the case of (1), a state-run enterprise was more or less hijacked by an extended family. As for (2), it was more like a family network was running a city for its own benefit. 9 In the Chinese language “freedom (自由)” can have the connotation of “selfishness,” and the word is sometimes used in a negative sense.

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steadily advanced, in 1988, there were 148,460 marriage applications and only 22,285 divorce applications, roughly a rate of about one divorce for every seven marriages (Zhonghua quanguo funü lianhehui 1991: 342). This divorce rate was much lower than Japan’s, which was about 25% in the early 1990s. The figures on China indicate a strong inclination to avoid divorce, and they show the extent to which individualism is smothered within the family. It must be noted that the socialist movement brought great changes to urban family life in China. This can be clearly seen in the way housework was shared. As shown in Table 4.1, although the figures vary from survey to survey, the amount of time Chinese men spend on housework is about 50% to 80% that spent by Chinese women. Of course, this can still be criticized as being unequal, but this type of obvious complaint would represent a failure to recognize the uniqueness of the facts compared to elsewhere in the world. Leaving a country such as Japan outside the scope of discussion, a look at Table 8.1 and Table 4.3 shows that, worldwide, including the former Soviet Union and countries in the former Eastern European Bloc, men spent about one-third the time women spent on housework in the 1980s. The figures for Chinese men living in the urban sector clearly stand out in comparison. They show that male-female equality in the home is quite advanced. The claim that China is the most advanced country in Asia when it comes to gender equality may be a hard one to support overall, but on this point, China is beyond a doubt, an advanced country. Since it is not the case that Chinese men were participating in housework to any great extent prior to 1949, one can surely say that one very significant change has occurred in the new China. At the beginning of the chapter we said one sees in China signs of society moving into a period subsequent to the disappearance of the housewife and signs that society is in a period prior to the birth of the housewife. Table 8.1. International comparison of time spent on housework by employed men and women in 1980s. (Figures are minutes/day in average day.) Czechoslovakia W. E. Germany U.S. Soviet Poland Germany Union Women 225 Men 78 Source: Schmittroth (1991: 124).

216 48

220 80

162 197 46 67

200 60



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(%) 100 90 80 70 60 1982

50

1990

40 30 20 10 0

15-19 30-24 35-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65+ Age

Figure 8.2. Female labor force participation rate by age cohort in China. Source: Census.

For example, women’s attitudes toward participating in the labor force seem inconsistent or contradictory. Two surveys conducted in Beijing asked the respondents to say whether or not they agreed with the following opinion: “It is best if the husband works outside and the wife does housework.” About 30% of the subjects of the two surveys indicated approval, and just over 60% said they were opposed (Feng Litian 1995: 88; Asia Women’s Exchange Research Forum 1994: 105). One of the surveys (the Asia Women’s Exchange Research Forum survey) also asked the question: “If your husband’s income is sufficient, would you like to stay home and do housework?” About 30% of the married women respondents said they would like to stay home. A quick conclusion from this data would be that we can project that about 30% of the married women in urban areas would probably become housewives if their standard of living were to rise. Apart from the question of attitudes, is the fact that differences in women’s participation in the labor force are found among the regions of the country. The graphs in Figure 8.2 and the more recent data in Figure 6.4

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show that women’s participation by age is taking a plateau shape. This clearly indicates that women have been working whether or not they have children. A 1985 survey conducted shortly after implementation of the economic reform and openness policy began showed that the percentage of the labor force accounted for by women was 43.4% nationwide. According to the 1985 survey, in Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces in the northeast, the percentages of the labor force accounted for by women were 41.6%, 36.6%, and 34.1%, respectively. The figure for Heilongjiang Province is the lowest in the country, and we see how the northern provinces bring the national average down, with Inner Mongolia at 36.4% and Shanxi Province at 38.7%. On the high end are the southern provinces. In Shanghai, women account for 45.9% of the labor force, and in Jiangsu Province, which has the highest rate in the country, women account for 47.7%. In both Guangdong and Yunnan Province the rate is 46.0% (Zhonghua quanguo funü lianhehui 1991: 231).10 As mentioned in our discussion of Taiwan, Southern Chinese society has traditionally been more open to women being part of the labor force. In addition, from about the fall of 1988, when the debate on women “returning home” was in progress, the authorities thought the Chinese economy was overheating, and a period of adjustment began in which enterprises reduced their payrolls. The problem of surplus labor had emerged. Economic reform began to accelerate again in 1992 after Deng Xiaoping’s talks during his Southern Tour (南巡讲话), and the fourteenth Party Congress held in October of that year announced that a socialist market economy would be built. Then, the role of government agencies in allocating labor was curtailed as moves to have women workers leave their positions early progressed. What was called a free labor market steadily took shape. The government was no longer assigning workers to various industries according to plans to meet national needs. Labor began being utilized in a way that matched gender and type of work—all according to the needs of the labor market. This represented a broad retreat from the male-female equality achieved during the socialist construction period. By moving away from former socialist policies, the government allowed patriarchal norms, always there beneath the surface in Chinese society, to regain influence and affect the structure of the labor market.

10 A quick examination shows that the general tendency is for the percentage of women in the labor force to be high in the South, which means that the somewhat low 41.0% figure for Fukien Province is rather strange.



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Despite these negative aspects of the new policy, the overall activation of the economy did bring women the possibility of expanded employment opportunities, which meant the turn to a free market was not entirely a loss for women (Wen Xianliang 1995). The government also created new regulations protecting women. Reforms were carried out to counteract the ideological position that women could do whatever men could do, which had strong influence since the days of the Great Leap Forward. The new regulations stipulated that women were only to be assigned physical work that they clearly could handle. Another issue to be addressed was the tendency for employers, including foreign-capital-affiliated companies, to try to create any kind of labor conditions they wanted. Related to this was the steady flow of young women from farming villages coming into the cities to look for work. Regulations were adopted to protect these women and prevent harsh treatment. Rather than equality, these new regulations were aimed at protecting women from the worst practices of employers. For example, on July 21, 1988, the State Council promulgated, “Regulations to Protect Female Workers (女职工劳动保护规定),” which had the following provisions: (1) Women were not to work in mine shafts; (2) Women were not to engage in cutting down timber; (3) Women were not to engage in physical labor of an intensity beyond the standard, Intensity Level IV; and (4) Women were not to engage in the setting up or taking down of scaffolds for construction work, or install communication cables in high places, etc. On October 1, 1992, “The People’s Republic of China Women’s Rights Protection Law (中华人民共和国妇女权益保障法)” was enacted. It included the following: (Article 22) “When hiring labor, each place of work (work unit) shall not engage in discrimination on the basis of gender (with the exception that women shall not be hired for work that is inappropriate for them), and that efforts shall be made to raise the standards of women’s employment . . .”; and (Article 25) “All places of work (work units or “danwei”) shall take heed of women’s special characteristics and shall, in accordance with existing laws, ensure that, when working, women’s safety and health will be protected, that women will not be required to engage in work that is unsuitable for them, and that special protections will be provided for women during their menstrual period, when they are pregnant and when they are nursing (Benshu bianxiezu 1993: 49–53).” It was clear that these regulations were established to do away with the ideas on how women should work that had prevailed from the Great Leap Forward through the Cultural Revolution. These regulations had real meaning

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because, compared to conditions in developed countries, work sites in China can be quite dangerous, and superior physical strength is often needed to do the work required. Nevertheless, the ways in which the new regulations limited the categories of work that women could engage in go beyond restrictions in Japan. As seen in the removal of legal restrictions placed on work hours for women in 1997, Japan has taken steps to remove “protections” that limited women’s work opportunities, and now mainly restricts the types of work women can do in specific periods such as during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth. What we see in the new Chinese regulations are very weak ideas about not allowing gender discrimination and an attitude that women are to be protected by prohibiting them from engaging in specific categories of work. Broadly speaking, in China, it is not the case that a thorough examination has been made of the meaning of gender differences. What has happened is that the authorities have taken it upon themselves to try to act on what they assumed were actual differences, out of a concern to find ways to protect actual working women. We find this same general sort of thinking expressed in the debate on women “returning home” in which those in favor of the “return” seemed to be thinking that freeing women from grueling labor would be liberating them—that women freed in this way would be liberated women. In the case of Japan, it has been recognized that policies ostensibly aimed at protecting women by a thorough division of categories of work according to gender have had the effect of limiting women’s employment opportunities. In a culture such as America’s where individualism and liberalism are very strong, ideas in favor of protecting women as a group are very likely to be dismissed as another form of gender discrimination. In her essay included in a collection of essays entitled Engendering China, Margaret Woo claims that this type of protectionism is likely to raise the cost of hiring women workers and that laws protecting women are only there to paint a pretty picture of the government’s market economy system, which has a negative effect on women’s employment (Woo 1994). Here we see one of the characteristics of the woman question in China clearly coming to the fore. 3.3. Future Gender Problems in China In the above discussion we have seen how the economic reform and openness line followed since the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution has led



patriarchy in china245

to a weakening of state control of the economy, and that as a result, the patriarchy that had existed in Chinese families has once again shown its face and is influencing the economy. A pillar of the socialist system was the idea that the government or the party should intervene in political, economic, or organizational situations on the basis of ideological principles. We can look upon the move away from socialism since the end of the Cultural Revolution as a type of laissez-faire policy. This has created room for patriarchy, which had been an undercurrent in Chinese society, to come back out into the open as a set of norms to guide people’s lives. In a certain sense, it can be said that this was only to be expected. As a reflection of this trend we see the family once again becoming the organization that manages labor in the farming village; and in the cities, we see the numbers of women wishing to become housewives increasing. Should we conclude that socialist China was not a society in which the housewife had disappeared, that it was perhaps a society at a stage in which conditions were being set for the birth of the housewife? It could be that those of us who thought we saw a greater advance were to some extent bedazzled by the propaganda issuing out of China during the Cultural Revolution. Of course we cannot be expected to precisely predict what the future has in store. However, by studying patriarchy and comparing its manifestations in several East Asian societies, we should be able to provide a perspective on what to expect. In building socialism, China mobilized women to make them workers, yet during this period of indigenization with its compromises with patriarchy, we have a situation in which approximately 30% of Chinese women appear to look forward to becoming housewives. However, in Chapter 6 we saw that women working outside the home has become the general trend in Taiwan—without any government mobilization of women as a matter of policy. By carefully studying the forms of patriarchy involved, we see that in much of China, particularly Southern China, people have generally had a positive attitude toward women working outside the home. With this in mind, it is difficult to imagine the majority of married women becoming housewives in China’s socialist market economy. Of course, the number of housewives will increase. Without the pressure of government policy causing them not to do so, a certain percentage of women can probably be expected to opt to stay home. However, we can expect about the same percentage of married women as in Taiwan to continue to advance to employment positions outside the home. Judging only from the relatively long hours of housework performed by Chinese men in

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urban areas, we can surmise that a change in the structure of power in the household has taken place in China since the revolution. And judging from the way ethnic Chinese women work in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, we can imagine that, even if the socialist economy completely gives way to a capitalist economy, the aspect of Chinese society in which the housewife is disappearing will continue to exist. We have seen that conditions for women in China are remarkably different from those in North Korea, where the norms of traditional patriarchy have been used for ideological reasons. We found that the differences in the forms of patriarchy in the two societies have contributed greatly to significant differences in how gender relations have developed, even though both societies adopted socialist regimes to lead their industrialization .

CHAPTER NINE

RECENT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGES IN EAST ASIA – LESS CHILDREN AND AGING POPULATIONS, SOCIALIST STATES TRANSFIGURED Our discussion of patriarchy and the role of women in East Asia in Chapters 5 through 8 covered two main subjects: the possibility of the disappearance of the housewife in the capitalist societies examined and the status of women in China and North Korea. Our comparisons of how the housewife was born and the trend toward her disappearance in the capitalist societies indicated that the housewife was most likely to disappear in Taiwan and least likely to disappear in South Korea. One could say that the likelihood of the disappearance of the housewife is about the same in Japan and South Korea—perhaps a bit stronger in Japan. The comparisons mapped out help us clarify the relative positions of housewives in these societies by examining the rates of women’s participation in the labor force and the extent to which these rates rise with level of education. This gives us a picture of how the overall percentage of women working can be expected to rise. When we graphically compare Taiwan and Japan we see that the lines of the “M” patterns illustrating women’s employment signify what is truly unique about Japanese practices in the area of women’s employment. The second line of argument is derived from an examination of the differences between the two societies of East Asia that had embarked on a socialist path. We found that China has had a more consistently positive position on gender equality. We say this because we find traditional Korean norms increasingly permeating North Korean society after the establishment of the Kim Il Sung dictatorship. These were the basic hypotheses developed by the 1990s. In this chapter, while adding data from the 2000s, we will move ahead with the analysis and touch on a few new social phenomena in East Asia such as declining numbers of children and the aging of the labor force. Since we lack the kind of quantitative data needed for a statistical analysis, we will examine how gender issues are officially discussed in North Korea and China. The quantitative data is sufficient for a statistical comparison of Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

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chapter nine 1. Declining Birth Rates and Destabilization of Marriage

Before discussing women’s labor, we must touch upon an important change occurring in post-2000 East Asia, one that was unimaginable in the early nineties. This is rapidly declining birth rates, which are illus­ trated in Figure 9.1. The year 2000 was a popular year to have children due to the popularity of “millennium babies” and because it was the Year of the Dragon. In the Chinese cultural sphere this was a lucky year, TFR 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.5 1.4 1.3 1.2 1.1 1 0.9

2010

2008

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2007

2005

2006

2003

2004

2001

2002

2000

1999

1997

1998

1995

1996

0.8 Year Japan

Taiwan

S.Korea

Hong Kong

Figure 9.1. Total fertility rates* in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong (1995–2010). *Total fertility rate is the number of children a woman would have in her life.



recent social and political changes in east asia249

and a small upswing in births occurred. Since that time, birth rates have rapidly declined in South Korea and Taiwan. Family ties are strong in these societies, and children are considered “treasures” of the extended family rather than only the nuclear family. In the early 1990s, no one would have thought that these societies would experience birth-rate declines faster than Japan’s. While an analysis of the effects of China’s one-child policy is beyond the scope of this chapter, we will note that China has also projected a declining birth rate. In these societies, the decision to have children rests with the entire extended family, especially the father’s side, not just with the mother. In 2001, data on the ratio of newborn boys to girls (setting female births at 100) show male births at 111 in South Korea,1 109 in Taiwan, 108 in Singapore, and 107 in Hong Kong. Compared with the natural rate of 105 in Japan and the West, these rates show a substantial preference for boys. In itself, this preference for males shows that the values of patriarchy remain strong (Rao, Lai, Cai, Wang 2003: 28) and that children are considered to be treasures of the extended family not the nuclear family. Despite this, the birth rates are rapidly declining. For almost every society, a common explanation for these falling birth rates has been something like this: “Neither the social system nor men’s attitudes have properly adjusted to the increasing number of working women.” Of course this explanation works to a certain extent. However, it doesn’t fully explain situations in societies such as Hong Kong, where middle-class women employ maids (often from the Philippines) to do housework, and where in some respects women have made greater advances in society than they have in Japan. In these societies, we still see a declining birthrate. A conclusion that might be drawn from this is that one cannot simply say that the birth rate will recover if we create a society that makes it easy for women to work outside the home. At any rate, we can see that it is overly simplistic to hold to the view that a more gender-neutral working environment will always lead to a rise in the birth rate. Economic factors can be considered the main cause of declining birth rates, which dropped in many Asian countries in the wake of the Asian economic crisis of 1997 and 1998. The decline in Taiwan was particularly striking. The fact that Japan experienced a dramatic drop, the “1.57 shock,” in 1989 might lead one to believe that it is difficult to ascribe declining

1 In South Korea, the ratio fell dramatically afterwards and reached a normal level of 106.1 in 2007.

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fertility rates to GDP growth alone since the decline occurred when the country was still in the midst of an economic bubble. However, in view of the continuing decline in birth rates, one has to consider the ongoing recession since the 1990s as a factor. Under current economic conditions, advancing in society can be a disincentive to having and raising children. This idea becomes clear if we think of wages and promotion opportunities lost if time is taken away from work to raise children. It might be thought that adopting policies that hinder or discourage women from advancing in society would solve the problem. However, this would be going against the trend of the times, and in the end, women remaining in the workplace would not be able to raise children if policies discouraging women from becoming working mothers were adopted. We are forced to conclude that what is needed to maintain or raise birth rates is an environment conducive to working women having children. Women opinion leaders, when questioned about the cause of the declining birth rate, say that they themselves suffer grave difficulty in trying to both work and raise children. These complaints are commonly voiced by highly educated women in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. One example of higher opportunity costs leading to lower birth rates is a decline accompanying working women becoming relatively better off. At the same time, it is recognized that poverty is also leading to an ongoing decline in each of the societies we are examining because people increasingly cannot afford to raise children. Figure 9.2 shows unemployment rates for Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese men in their late twenties from the mid-1990s up to 2009. One can see how the Asian financial crisis (1997), the IT Bubble (2000–2001), and the Great Recession of 2008 have affected young people. The idea of supporting a family has become virtually unthinkable for millions. Under these circumstances, a decision to have children carries a serious risk. In Japan, very low incomes among younger workers, exemplified by the rapid expansion of numbers of “freeta” (“free part-timers,” i.e. workers without regular jobs), is viewed as a serious social issue—one that clearly contributes to a low rate of marriage among younger men. Setting aside for the moment the questions of gender equality and limitations imposed by patriarchy, one can see that economic factors are a primary factor driving down birth rates. This is an example of poverty contributing to the ongoing decline in numbers of children. Worsening economic conditions have also contributed to an increasing destabilization of marriages—and a dramatic increase in divorce rates, as



recent social and political changes in east asia251 (%) 12.0

10.0

8.0

6.0

4.0

2.0

2009

2008

2007

2006

2004

2005

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1993

1994

0.0 Year S.Korea 25-29 M

Japan 25-29 M Taiwan 25-29 M

Figure 9.2. Unemployment rates for South Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese men age twenty-five to twenty-nine (1993–2009).

measured by the ratio of divorces to marriages.2 Figure 9.3 shows how this rate increased in three East Asian countries from 1993 to 2009. One can 2 Divorce rates are sometimes calculated by the number of divorces per 1,000 persons, which is called the crude divorce rate. I used divorce over marriage here as a substitute to show how fragile marriages have become.

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20

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2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

1997

1995

1993

1991

1989

1987

1985

1983

1981

0

Year Japan

Taiwan

S.Korea

Figure 9.3. Changes in divorces per marriages in East Asia (1981–2009).

interpret the spike in divorce rates as being spurred by the Asian financial crisis, IT bubble collapse and the Great Recession of 2008. Even in South Korea, where the weight of Confucian tradition and other social restraints act against divorce, the divorce rate surged past the 50% mark in early 2000s. In a country where rate of divorce per marriage had stayed at just over 10% from the 1980s through the 1990s, this is a shocking social change—even if allowances are made for the effect of changes in the population structure. The dramatic climb in the divorce rate will surely lead to a decline in the birth rate. It is likely that these two changes, a higher divorce rate and a declining birth rate, will lead to a greater weakening than might be imagined of the influence of “created” traditions—including the elaborate ancestor worship ceremonies (chaesa) and keeping of genealogies—that



recent social and political changes in east asia253

have underpinned patriarchy and played such an important role in the reproduction of Korean society. As we have seen in North Korea, these “traditions” are no longer prevalent after the turmoil and cross-border evacuations of people during the Korean War. This is an indication that attempts have been made to create the traditions in the South. While we are not yet at a stage where we can make definitive projections, it is probably safe to assume that the rapid shifts in economic conditions will be the driving force of social and cultural change. 2. Patterns of Women’s Labor 2.1. The Position of Housewives and the Relationship between Educational Levels and Women’s Participation in the Labor Force Rather than merely determining whether or not the rate of women’s participation in the labor force rises or falls in general, it is extremely important to consider the relationship between employment rates and educational levels in the context of the general social position of women. This has been our approach in the statistical analysis presented in Chapters 4 to 6, where we compared East Asian societies and sought to determine if women were becoming housewives or entering the labor force as their social position rose. The image of women working is enhanced when women of a higher educational background opt to work rather than stay home. When the decision to work is seen as a choice being made by upperclass women, the image of remaining a housewife tends to fall. Conversely, the relative position of the housewife easily rises in a society in which women with higher levels of education are apt to become full-time housewives, and the disappearance of the housewife is less likely in those societies. To gauge the direction of change we will start by taking another look at data on educational advancement. Girls’ high school attendance rates were approximately the same in 2008 for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, at 96.6%, 99.0% and 96.1%, respectively.3 College attendance rates at fouryear colleges for the three countries in 1992, were 17.3% for Japan, 22.9% for South Korea, and 16.5% for Taiwan. These rates again can be considered roughly the same. However, big changes can be seen in the 2008 data. In Japan, the percentage of female middle school graduates advancing to college three 3 Japan, “Basic Survey of Schools”(学校基本調査); South Korea, Educational Statistics Almanac (教育統計年鑑); Taiwan, Republic of China Educational Statistics.

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years after graduation was 49.1%; in South Korea this rate increased dramatically from 32.4% in 1990 to 88.6%; in Taiwan, 95.9% of the regular high school graduates went on to college as did 78.3% of the vocational high school graduates, which roughly was 89% of the graduates of either regular high schools or vocational schools. Like South Korea’s, this is a very high rate. (However a simple comparison cannot be made because girls advancing to five-year technical or professional schools do not go to high school.) College attendance rates in South Korea and Taiwan have become quite high. In the case of Japan, attendance at two-year institutions of higher education known as senmon gakko (technical schools) is not counted as college attendance, while attendance at tandai or a junior college is. If the approximately 20% of the female high school graduates  who attend the senmon gakko is added, Japan’s college attendance rate becomes about 70%, which is fairly close to those of the other two countries. On the other hand, if we limit the examination to advancement to a four-year college, Japan’s rate becomes 42.6%. Calculated the same way, South Korea’s becomes 58.6%. Both are lower than Taiwan’s rate of advancement, which is 68% of high school graduates.4 Conversely, more than in Japan, South Korean and Taiwanese four-year colleges have taken on a mass character—a change that has occurred over the past fifteen years. A look at the percentage of the population aged eighteen to twenty enrolled in school shows South Korea with a 77% enrollment rate, Taiwan with 86%, and Japan with 54%. Taiwan’s very high rate is striking.5 We will now turn to the rate of participation of women in the labor force by education. As previously mentioned, in Taiwan, people enrolled in school are counted as not working. We revised the calculation for Table 9.1 below to remove this influence. The table uses figures from the year 2007 because Japan gathers data on this subject once every five years. Compared to Taiwan where the employment rate for women rises neatly with level of education, in South Korea, a rise in women’s level of education does not necessarily lead to a rise in the rate of employment. In Japan the employment rate rises with education to a lesser extent than it does in Taiwan, and it is noteworthy that we don’t see dramatic

4 For South Korea: Annual Report on Educational Statistics (教育統計年報); for Taiwan: Republic of China Educational Statistics (中華民國教育統計). 5 Graphs Showing Data by Gender (Administrative Statistics Agency) (2010 年性別 圖像) (行政院主計處); for Japan and South Korea in 2007, for Taiwan in 2008.



recent social and political changes in east asia255

Table 9.1. Percentages of women employed by level of education (1992–2008). Country

Year Middle High school Junior college College school or graduation or technical graduation below school of higher graduation

Japan Japan South Korea South Korea  (women with spouses) South Korea Taiwan Taiwan

2007 1992 2007 2008

53.9 42.9 37.9* 51.0

64.8 59.8 53.1 53.0

69.1 64.6 67.8 51.1

71.0 66.0 62.2 53.0

1995 44.6 2007 31.0 1992 49.4*

50.2 65.5 66.1

63.5 75.4 79.8

67.9 82.6 82.0

* Does not include those below elementary school graduation. Sources used in calculations for each year Japan: Employment Status Survey. South Korea: Annual Report on Economically Active Population. Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics. For comparison: U.S. figures for 2008 were: middle school 46.1%; high school graduate 66.8%; and college graduation or higher 79.0% (OECD Education at a Glance 2010).

changes in the pattern when we compare the 1992 and 2007 data for each society. As mentioned, a rise in the rate of women’s participation in the labor force accompanying a rise in women’s level of education can be interpreted as a sign of a relative decline in the status of the full-time housewife. When the employment rate does not rise with each level, it is a sign that, relatively speaking, becoming a housewife is a choice being made by women in higher social strata. We can see a continuing tendency among Taiwanese women to have a positive attitude toward advancing in society. On the other hand, in South Korea, we see that the employment rate among married women does not rise at all as their level of education rises. As discussed in Chapter 4, the employment rate among Japanese women college graduates in their forties drops below the level of high school graduates, and the fact that we see a relatively high percentage of women remaining unemployed after leaving work to bear and raise children can be taken to mean that, compared to Taiwan, the status of the housewife remains relatively high in Japan.

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Table 9.2, which shows employment ratios by level of education, provides the same comparison as that provided in Table 5.7. The data has been updated for 2009 in Taiwan and South Korea and for 2007 in Japan. We see that employment among Taiwanese women with high levels of education remains brisk—a description that cannot be applied to employment among their South Korean counterparts. In Japan, we see a high rate of employment among junior college graduates, which as explained earlier, is a reflection of the fact that, for a long time, junior colleges in Japan have been primarily educational institutions for females and that the employment of these women is generally meant to be for the period of their lives up to marriage. Disparities in conditions faced by women can be verified in various ways. For example, the United Nations’ Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is used to indicate women’s advancement in society. GEM uses such indicators as percentages of parliamentary seats held by women, percentages of women in technical and professional occupations, and the ratio of per capita GDP for women to per capita GDP for men. South Korea stands out with a very low GEM score and Chinese societies, including Taiwan, stand out with high scores. According to the GEM used in the United Nations “Human Development Report 2007–2008,” which used 2005 data, Japan was ranked 54, South Korea 64, and Singapore 16. Taiwan is not cited in official UN statistics, but a special GEM calculation made for Table 9.2. Ratios of women’s employment by education level (with men’s set at 100). Level of education

Taiwan 2009

South Korea 2009

Elementary school or below Middle school graduate High school graduate Above junior college Junior college graduate College graduate and above

76 46 77 89 77 91

141 87 66 57 80 49

* For Japan: Middle school graduate or below. ** Includes technical school graduates. Sources: South Korea: Annual Report on Economically Active Population Survey. Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics. Japan: Employment Status Survey.

Japan 2007 60* 75 70** 174 33



recent social and political changes in east asia257

Taiwan using 2005 data showed that Taiwan would have been ranked 19, which is among the highest in Asia.6 One finds Japan ranked after Chinese societies and ahead of South Korea in terms of women’s standing in society.7 As seen in Chapter 5, one aspect of these comparisons is that attitudes are rapidly changing in favor of various forms of women’s advancement in South Korea—even though verifiable data such as labor statistics do not readily show any great transformation there in the fifteento-twenty years since the beginning of the 1990s. While we can anticipate change, we will need more time to see what the effects of new ways of thinking will be. 2.2. The “M” Curve Illustrating Women’s Employment One characteristic of Japanese women’s employment is the fact that the rate of participation in the labor force falls when women are in their thirties, during the period when they are raising children. When graphed, the rate describes an M-shaped curve. As seen in Figure 6.3, the pattern shown by women’s employment in South Korea is nearly the same as that of Japan, but the bottom of the “M” is lower than that is for Japanese women. The line representing the rate of participation in the labor force for middle-aged and older female workers in South Korea drops further during child-raising years than it does for female workers in Japan, and the rise in the line representing a return to work is not as high as it is in Japan. In fact, the increase in participation resembles the pattern shown by Japanese women in large cities, or the rate for Japan ten years earlier. In comparison, a graph of Taiwanese women’s rate of participation in the labor force does not trace an “M” pattern. The rate for Taiwanese women in their thirties, the period of child-bearing, child-raising years, is high, while the rate for those in their late forties drops precipitously, forming a beak shape. As seen in Figure 6.4, this pattern is seen not only in Taiwan, but also in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, societies that could be included in the Chinese cultural sphere. In China, ostensibly a socialist 6 The statistics for Taiwan are independently gathered by the Republic of China. Taiwan is not included in the U.N. rankings. If it were, Japan’s and South Korea’s rankings would each move down one position. 7 Japan ranks 14th and South Korea 27th according to the Gender-Related Development Index (GDI) used by the U.N. to examine human development while highlighting the status of women. This index takes such data as women’s average life expectancy and rates of school attendance into account. While the overall rankings are relatively high, some of the data used strongly indicates that Japanese and South Korean women receive unequal treatment in the political and economic areas.

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society in which all citizens are encouraged to work together, it still is the case that the rate of participation in the labor force among women drops sharply once they reach their late forties. This can be attributed to two factors: the retirement age for women is five years earlier than it is for men; and women in wealthier social strata are opting to become full-time housewives. The main point here is that women in Chinese societies, whether socialist or capitalist tend to continue working when they have small children and retire relatively early. We will discuss the patterns shown by older women below. For now, we want to emphasize that an M-shaped employment pattern is the result of various cultural and systemic factors rather than “self-evident” economic factors. The kireogiappa (“father goose”) situation has become a topic of conversation in South Korea in recent years. This refers to the practice of Korean mothers accompanying their sons or daughters if they go to America or another English-speaking country to study before entering a university. The father is left behind to work and sends money to the two of them. This is an example of a society in which it is thought that a mother must stay alongside her children. This way of thinking is also prevalent in Japan, but the extreme to which it is carried out by South Korean mothers is rarely seen in Japan. It would not occur to a Japanese mother that she should accompany a high school-age child going to America to study. One can probably say that the primary role of Japanese mothers is thought to be giving full attention to their young children, through the elementary school years, while in South Korean society, mothers are expected to carefully watch over their children until they successfully enter college. Responses to the question, “Who should have to work?” such as “Mothers with small children should not have to work,” or “Mothers with children who haven’t entered college yet should not have to work,” are never self-evident. Even if we have seen signs of small changes to these patterns of thinking in Japan and South Korea over the the past fifteen years, no decisive change has taken place. These persistent characteristics of Japanese and South Korean patriarchy stand out when Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese societies are compared. 3. Employment Patterns among Older Citizens 3.1. Differences in Desire to Work As indicated in Table 9.3, senior citizens rarely are employed in continental Europe. The employment rate among seniors is relatively high in the



recent social and political changes in east asia259

Table 9.3. Rates of participation in the labor force among older citizens in 2008 (%). France Germany Japan England U.S. South Korea Taiwan

Age 60–64

Age 65–69

Age 65 and above

17.0 37.8 59.8 47.0 54.1 55.1 31.9

4.2 7.6 37.4 17.2 30.7

1.5 3.9 20.2 7.5 16.8 30.6 8.1

Sources: ILO http://laborsta.ilo.org/; for Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics.

U.S., where social security and welfare systems are insufficient and people seek independence, but it is still lower than that of Japan. To Northern Europeans, retirement is looked upon as an opportunity to become free of the need to engage in labor, “labor” in the sense of “toil,” and it is very unusual to see a person living on a pension and working. For Japan, although the rate of participation in the labor force among persons sixty-five and above is brought down due to the fact that longevity is high, one can see that Japan’s seniors have a very positive attitude toward working. The very high rate of participation in the labor force among South Koreans aged sixty-five and above reflects the practice of having older workers engage in agricultural work. We will discuss this later. In Taiwan and other societies in the Chinese cultural sphere, the attitude toward employment of the elderly tends to be negative. Taiwanese women will remain in the labor market when they are in their thirties, the period of their lives when they generally raise children. Nevertheless, the rate of Taiwanese women’s participation in the labor force quickly falls among those in their late forties. Their ideal situation is to look after their grandchildren and lead a leisurely life (含飴弄孫). Taiwanese tend to feel that allowing one’s parents to continue working at an advanced age reflects badly on a son. Looking at data on the rate of employment among women sixty-five and older in China, we find a somewhat high national rate of 17.2% due to the influence of the country’s rural areas. In urban areas the rate falls to 3.8% (2000 Census data in both cases). In 2008, the urban rate in Taiwan was 4.6%, and in Hong Kong it was 1.8%. The same rate in Japan

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reaches 13%. Other than the rural areas of China which, for the most part, have no social security and where poverty drives women to seek employment, older women basically do not work in the societies in the Chinese cultural sphere. The results of the Cabinet Office of Japan’s 2008 “Survey of Senior Citizens’ Attitudes on Health” illustrate the positive attitude toward work among older Japanese. Respondents who were employed and aged sixty and over, replied to a question on how long they wanted to continue working as follows: 17.9% said “Until about the age of sixty-five”; 26.4% said “Until about the age of 70”; and 41.2% said “As long as I am able to work.” The percentage giving this last answer was 7.1 percentage points higher than the percentage giving the same answer to the same question in the previous year’s survey. Year-over-year, the percentage that said “Until about the age of sixty” decreased by 1.1 points to 9.0% (White Paper on Aging Society 2009: 34–5). Rather than saying that the tendency among Japanese seniors’ to be positive about working is not changing, one has to say it is growing stronger. A 2005 International Comparative Survey on Senior Citizens’ Lives and Attitudes, in which the subjects were men and women aged sixty and above, found that 46.9% of the South Korean subjects, 35.0% of the Japanese, 32.0% of the Americans, 23.6% of the Germans and 13.7% of the French were still working. It was noted that, although slightly declining, the percentage of the Japanese still working was quite high. When asked if they wanted to continue working, approximately 90% of the Japanese, Americans, and South Koreans said yes, as did 63.1% of the German subjects and 42.9% of the French. The reasons given for wanting to continue working were particularly interesting. As indicated in Table 9.4, the Japanese respondents showed a strong inclination to cite reasons other than a desire for additional income. The German and French respondents showed the same tendency, but the denominator for the rates in their cases are quite different, given that the percentages working and the percentages that want to continue working are completely different. One can therefore say that this tendency is particularly characteristic of the Japanese. In comparison, an aversion to employment is characteristic of Taiwanese senior citizens. Table 9.5 presents a comparison of the attitudes of Japanese and Taiwanese seniors, and the data can be compared with that presented in Table 9.4. We see that Taiwanese seniors completely disagree with the idea that continuing to work is good for a person’s health.



recent social and political changes in east asia261

It is clear that, in Taiwan, seniors seek employment primarily for economic reasons. On the other hand, in a 1998 survey on senior citizen’s (sixty-five and over) attitudes toward work conducted by the Korean Insurance Society, 66.1% of the respondents said the reason they were working was “I need Table 9.4. Reasons why people age sixty and above and now working want to work in the future (%). Japan 1.  Want additional 42.7 income. 24.6 2. My work itself is interesting, and this gives me energy. 4.7 3. I make friends by working and meet new companions. 4. Working is good 25.9 for your health; slows down aging. 5. Other reasons. 2.2

U.S.

South Korea Germany France

60.0

63.4

43.7

35.2

27.7

20.1

42.3

48.1

0.0

0.0

0.0

1.9

11.5

15.8

11.3

14.8

0.4

0.8

2.1

0.0

No. 6 (2005) International Comparative Survey on Senior Citizen’s Lives and Attitudes.

Table 9.5. Reasons for Wanting to Continue Working (%) (Respondents: men and women aged sixty and above). Japan I want additional income My work is interesting I make friends by working Working is good for your health Other/No answer

Taiwan

Men

Women

Men

Women

39.7 12.2 8.1 37.2 2.8

36.4 12.1 6.1 40.2 5.3

79.3 16.1 0.6 0.6 3.5

82.4 14.0 0 1.5 2.2

Sources: Japan: Prime Minister’s Office 1982 Survey on Senior Citizens’ Lives and Attitudes. Taiwan: Jiang Liang Yan, (1988) “Survey of Taiwanese Senior Citizens’ Lives and Attitudes”.

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the money”; 8.2% said it was because “I like my work”; and 7.2% said “Working is good for your health.”8 These results fit rather well with what we saw in the survey results shown in Table 9.4, in which 63.4% of the South Korean respondents cited “Want additional income” as their reason for working. If we compare the data on South Koreans with that on Japanese and Taiwanese in Table 9.5, we can see that South Korean attitudes are between those of the Taiwanese and Japanese. 3.2. Data on Types of Work and Level of Education We will now examine the actual types of work older workers engage in. As for categories of work and how they relate to levels of education, Table 9.6 shows the percentages of workers sixty-five and above in various economic sectors. We see high percentages of these workers in Taiwan and South Korea in agricultural work. The agricultural sector no longer has great weight in the current industrial structure of these two countries, and Table 9.6. Percentages of workers sixty-five and older engaged in various sectors of the economy (%). Japan 2007 Agriculture, forestry  and fishery Production process Office work Sales

21.5

Service Specialized, technical,  management

9.8 13.6

25.8 8.8 13.5

Taiwan 2008

South Korea 2004

47.6

53.9

14.1 1.6 Included in service  sector 24.1 6.2

27.8 0.7 5.4 3.4 4.2

Sources: Japan: Employment Status Survey (2007). Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics (2008). South Korea: National Survey of Senior Citizens Welfare and Living Conditions (2004).

8 Korea Health and Society Research Institute, “Nationwide Survey of Senior Citizen Living Conditions and Need for Welfare” 1998.



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it appears that agricultural work has been left to older workers as the pace of industrialization accelerated. In Japan, on the other hand, we see high rates of participation by older workers in each sector, whether office work, specialized or technical work, or management and other white collar occupations. This could lead to the conclusion that the rate of participation in the labor force by seniors is high in Japan simply because the economy offers many positions in each sector that older workers can fill. Traditionally, however, older Japanese often worked in agriculture just as they now do in the other two countries, and if one also considers their high rate of participation in blue collar production work, it becomes difficult to think that seniors’ high rate of participation in the labor force is merely due to the types of positions created or the structure of Japanese industry. The data on employment and level of education are also interesting. We have compared the rates of women’s participation in the labor force by level of education in the three countries. An examination of the question of education and employment shows that those with higher levels of education gain a broader range of choices, including greater leeway in deciding whether or not to work. These women make employment decisions based more on personal desire than economic constraints. The data can be interpreted as showing whether or not the individuals with higher levels of education want to work or not. From this standpoint, Table 9.7 provides excellent reference data. In Japan, the rate of participation in the labor force rises with level of education for all age groups. In comparison, the number of Taiwanese sixty-five or over who work is quite small, and rather than rise, the rate of employment among seniors slightly declines among those with higher levels of education. In South Korea, the percentage of seniors working is relatively high, but the tendency is for the employment rate to decline as the level of education rises. South Korean data in time-series shows that a transition has taken place among older South Korean male workers. From 1965 to 2000, the rate of participation in the labor force did not rise among male seniors in urban areas, but it did rise sharply among those in farming villages and other rural areas (Figure 9.4). This has been interpreted in the following way (Yi Cheolhee 2006). Originally, seniors did not necessarily do farm work. This was not the general custom. However, the migration to the cities spurred by the high rate of economic growth drew workers away from agriculture, and it has become a general practice to have seniors work on farms.

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Table 9.7. Percentages of older workers in labor force by level of education (%). Age Japan Taiwan South  Korea

Elementary or middle school

65–69 38.0 70–74 23.8 75–79 15.1 60–64 31.2 65 and older 8.4 Age Elementary 65 and older

34.9

High school

University

37.3 44.8 25.2 29.1 15.2 23.3 32.6 34.2 7.5 6.4 Middle school Junior college  or higher  or high school 29.3 23.6

Sources: Japan: Employment Status Survey (2007). Taiwan: Manpower Survey Statistics (2008). South Korea: National Survey of Senior Citizens Welfare and Living Conditions (2004). (%) 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

60 yrs & above urban

1995

2000

Year

60 yrs & above rural

Figure 9.4. Changes in the rate of employment among older South Korean urban and rural male workers. Source: Census.



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In comparison, in Japan in 1965, the rate of participation of seniors in the labor force was higher than it was in South Korea. In subsequent years the creation of social security programs, a shrinking of the agricultural sector, and other factors have caused this rate to decline somewhat (Figure 9.5). Comparing the data, one can infer that, traditionally, the rate (%) 90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0 1960 1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Men 60~64 yrs

Men 65 yrs & above

Men 60~64 yrs

Women 65 yrs & above

2009 Year

Figure 9.5. Employment rate among older Japanese men and women (1980–2009). Source: Labor Force Survey.

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of employment of older workers was higher in Japan than it was in South Korea. The recent extension of the mandatory retirement age has caused the rate of participation in the labor force to rise among both men and women aged sixty to sixty-four, and, as we have seen, Japanese older workers have been absorbed into white-collar and service-type jobs. All this adds up to an employment environment for older people that differs significantly from that of South Korea. In comparison, one cannot find a period in recent history when the rate of participation in the labor force by older Taiwanese was ever high, and we can easily imagine that traditionally it has always been low. It is noteworthy that the rate of participation in the labor force among Taiwanese men sixty-five and above has consistently been lower than the rate among Japanese women sixty-five and above (Figure 9.6). (%) 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

1980

1985

1990

Men 65 yrs & above

1995

2000

2005

2009 Year

Women 65 yrs & above

Figure 9.6. Employment rates among Taiwanese men and women aged sixty-five and above (1980–2009). Source: Manpower Survey Statistics.



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It is frequently pointed out that, in the Chinese cultural sphere, including Taiwan, it is considered a dishonor to the sons to have their elderly parents working, and that enabling the elderly to live at a leisurely pace is looked upon as the ideal situation. It is considered a reflection on the son—a sign of his inability to provide for the elderly in his family—if his parents have to work to earn money. South Koreans do not have this type of strong aversion to having their elderly parents work. No more than 10% of the elderly respondents to a survey conducted by Kim, Ikki et al. in 1999 stated that they “Couldn’t work because their children would object.” Only 4.5% of the respondents to a 2000 survey conducted by the South Korean Research Institute on Problems of Senior Citizens (2002: 15) said working would be a problem for such a reason. While simple comparisons cannot be made because the choices are not the same in each country, one can find two meanings in the results of the South Korean surveys. It is very likely that an even lower percentage of respondents would give the same answer in Japan, while in Taiwan the percentage would be higher. Therefore one can say that South Korea can be positioned between Japan and Taiwan in regard to attitudes on seniors working. 4. North Korea Pushes ahead with Its Own Line In Chapter 7 we described turning points in North Korea’s policy on women under the Kim Il Sung regime, including (1) the National Meeting of Mothers held in 1961 where Kim declared, “Mothers are primarily responsible for raising children”; and (2) the “Learn from Kang Pan Sok Campaign” that was launched in 1967. This was perhaps one of the earlier moves toward idolatry following the purge of the Worker’s Party of anti-leadership elements and the solidification of Kim’s position as the paramount leader. These changes led to women’s special roles as wives, mothers and daughters-in-law being stressed more than equal rights for men and women. It is in areas such as these that we can find the uniqueness of the North Korean brand of socialism (Yi Taeyeong, 1991). With the establishment of the succeeding Kim Jong Il regime in the 1980s, the country saw the virtual deification of Kim Jong Suk, the younger Kim’s mother. It has been confirmed that this trend continued into the 1990s, after the elder Kim passed away. In the following paragraphs we will try to present a simple account of further changes. To do this we are unable to use statistical data. Instead we will rely on discussions in South Korea and North Korean newspapers and

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magazines available to the public, primarily Korean Woman, the magazine published monthly by the Korean Democratic Women’s Union, and the Worker’s Newspaper (Rodong Sinmun), the daily newspaper of the Worker’s Party of Korea. We will try to determine changes that have taken place in regard to gender-related issues as economic conditions deteriorated by studying the way they have been treated in official reports and statements. This should have a certain significance since very little research is done in North Korea that could be likened to gender studies elsewhere. Along with the General Federation of Trade Unions, the Socialist Youth League, and the Union of Agricultural Working People, the Korean Democratic Women’s Union is one of the four mass organizations used to lead the North Korean people (Kim Jong Il 2005).9 With this in mind, we will discuss three subjects: (1) the Second National Meeting of Mothers held in 1998; (2) the meaning and effects of the glorification of Kim Jong Suk; and (3) the allocation of social roles and division of labor based on gender. The Second National Meeting of Mothers was held in Pyongyang on September 28 and 29, 1998. The Declaration issued by the Meeting, which was carried in the Worker’s Newspaper, is worth examining in detail. The Meeting began by having the participants listen to a recording of the speech “The Mother’s Duties in the Education of Children,” made by Kim Il Sung at the first congress in 1961, in which he emphasized that it was mothers who had the most important responsibility in their children’s education. We have already pointed out how this speech was an expression of a positive stance on the question of allocating social roles on the basis of gender. The significance of listening to this speech at the very start of the Meeting was not lost on the participants, as the first speaker, Cheon Yeon Ok, Chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Korean Democratic Women’s Union, emphasized how “the struggle to fully carry out this task” had yielded positive results. The extent to which Kim Il Sung’s policy of fully accepting gender differences had been handed down to the next generation was striking. In her speech, the Democratic Women’s Union leader strongly called on North Korean women to (1) firmly believe in and put into practice Kim Jong Il’s statement that “they could build a great and powerful socialist country” in the “Arduous March” they were on as they struggled with continuing economic difficulties; (2) bear and raise many children; (3) follow the example of Kim Jong Suk’s 9 This is not the same person as the late North Korean leader. The name written in Korean is 김종일.



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revolutionary spirit; and (4) recognize the importance of contributing to the People’s Army. Subsequent coverage of the Meeting included detailed accounts of discussions led by “exemplary” persons. (These thirty-two speakers were all women.) On September 29 and 30, 1998, the Worker’s Newspaper carried the main points of the remarks made by the first eleven speakers and then, on the following day twenty-one more. The coverage included talks on raising children who had lost their parents given by ten of the thirty-two speakers.10 The problem of caring for increasing numbers of orphans due to the economic crisis was becoming increasingly severe at that time. It was against this background that the Meeting honored exemplary mothers. These included: a factory worker who had given birth to eight children and sent them all into a military unit headed by a “great general” and a mother, still in her thirties, who had taken in fifty-three children who had lost their parents. She was given the honorary title “Mother Heroine.” Another mother had taken over the care of sixty orphans to whom she had given inspiring names fit for military units such as “Determination,” “Solidarity,” “Suicide Fighter,” “Bodyguard,” “Vanguard,” “Human Bullet,” and “Rifle.” She was described as a woman who wanted to send sixty bullets to the People’s Army. These women were expected to do what was described as a “Mother’s Duty” for their country. In a country established for the welfare of its citizens, one would expect the state to provide a minimum level of services for the people and provide for the care of children who had lost their parents. In contemporary North Korea, women were being extolled for “not relying on government aid.” They were honored for taking responsibility for orphans themselves. 10 This included cases of care in nursery schools and childcare centers. Also, one of the ten reports was that of Seo Jeong Suk (徐正淑), Vice-Chairwoman of the Hokkaido Headquarters of the Korean Democratic Women’s Union in Japan. This report was covered in the September 29, 1998, issue of the Worker’s Newspaper. She had raised three orphans in addition to her own four children. Her story was described as “An example of an untiring effort in a capitalist society where money is all-powerful.” All of her own children attended Chosen Daigakko (Korea University) in Japan and became employees of the General Federation of the Korean Residents (Chongryon). In contrast, the three other children she raised were repatriated to their homeland, North Korea, as part of the repatriation program that country promoted. Based on guesswork as to the age of the reporters and the conflicts within the repatriation movement, including reports of mistreatment or oppression of returnees, which began being completely disclosed after 1960, we can surmise that the three children’s repatriation was a very recent event. The story is interesting for what it reveals about dissension within Chongryon.

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The close ties the mothers had with the military were also striking. Five of the thirty-two speakers had children who had died after being sent to serve in the armed forces. These cases were discussed—not in terms of how tragic the deaths of their children were, but of how dedicated the caregivers had been in sending the children to serve. This rhetoric at the Meeting was similar to that used by Japanese militarists when Japan was under military rule—when “Yasukuni Mothers” who had lost their beloved sons in the war effort were praised for their devotion to the cause. The women at the Meeting were being honored as mothers serving the People’s Army. Voluntary service for the great generals was their essential mission as part of their immortal “political life,” which, in the North Korean theory of an “immortal socio-political body,” is distinct from their mortal or physical life. Along with sending their sons and the sons of others to military service, mothers were expected to have their daughters become brides of the soldiers serving on the front lines. It is interesting to note that the decision to “give daughters as brides (시집 보낸다)” is not based on the desires or feelings of the individuals getting married. The rhetoric implies that everything depends on the intention of the parents. There were also several reports of mothers being advised by people in their neighborhood to “at least have your youngest daughter marry someone outside the military and keep her near you.” This was probably a commonly held view, but the “heroines” had resisted this idea and had their daughters marry military men. This extreme emphasis on support for the military or support for the regime by serving the military was not as pronounced in the 1961 National Meeting of Mothers, held eight years after the end of the Korean War. The statements issued at the 1998 Congress reflected the military-first stance of the Kim Jong Il system. The increased militarism of North Korean society means more than simply supplying people to serve in the military. To help the country overcome the food crisis, families are called on to form household work teams and raise livestock and send the meat produced to the People’s Army. One report on a campaign dubbed “Create Meat from Grass” said a team had “sent 20 pigs, 32 dogs, and 600 rabbits to the military or to important construction sites.” Dogs have been a traditional food item on the Korean Peninsula and it appears that raising rabbits has also been promoted.11

11 Chosen Shinpo (Korea Newspaper, 朝鮮新報 published by Chongryon); based on an interview with the original writer, Ms. Han Tonghyon).



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The changes that had taken place in the thirty-seven years between congresses can be summarized in the following way: the 1961 Mothers Meeting was used to bolster Kim Il Sung’s hold on power, while the second congress in 1998 was used to stabilize the Kim Jong Il regime and build support for its “Military First (songun)” policies as the regime sought to lead the people on the “Arduous March” in the struggle against economic adversity. The second subject we want to discuss is the way in which Kim Jong Suk has been used as an example for the nation’s mothers. The statements issued at the Meeting reflected the moves, ongoing since the 1980s, to deify her and build support for the Kim Jong Il regime. The statements, the like of which continued to be at the core of the regime’s propaganda published in Korean Woman, and elsewhere in the 2000s, called on women to: Learn from the magnificent example of pure devotion given by Comrade Kim Jong Suk, a heroine of the war of the anti-Japan resistance, willing to sacrifice her life to protect the Dear Leader; we must also have this kind of courage and be willing to face death to support our leader; fulfilling our destiny means becoming revolutionary comrades, armed with the Military First Political Ideology, serving as ammunition, ready to resolutely fight shoulderto-shoulder with our officers who are our future.12

A generation earlier, when women were asked to emulate Kang Pan Sok, emphasis was placed on her role as a wife and as a mother. Today a striking characteristic of the use of Kim Jong Suk is the frequent use of military figures of speech. Women are called on to fulfill a role that goes beyond merely being a good mother; their role as members of North Korean society is to serve as loyal fighters for Kim Jong Il. What is new in the “Learn from Kim Jong Suk Campaign” is the very strong influence of the Military First ideology. The third subject we want to briefly discuss is the special gender-based division of labor being promoted. In North Korea, the words “equal rights” or “equality” do not appear in public discussions of male-female relations. This characteristic applies, not only to the pronouncements of the Meeting of Mothers, but to articles in Korean Woman and other publications. More than anything else it is talk of the duty of the mother that is the key point made in talk of how relations between men and women should be. This is indicative of how a special concept of social division of labor is affirmed in establishing gender roles in North Korea. 12 Korean Woman; June 2005 edition, p. 16.

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The Korean language page of the October 21, 1998, edition of Chosen Shinpo, the newspaper published by the General Federation of the Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), carried a record of a round-table discussion with members of the Women’s League affiliated with Chongryon, who had participated in the Second National Meeting of Mothers in Pyongyang held a month earlier.13 In the discussion, one participant frankly stated that she initially had doubts about the need for another Mothers Meeting at that time. She added: Among women who have advanced in society, there is a tendency to believe that men and women should participate equally in child-raising and the education of their children. However, we must realize that properly raising the next generation for the Fatherland is a very important job, one that will determine the future of society. It is not simply housework. Making your children’s education your primary responsibility is performing an important social role.

This statement seemed designed for the Japanese context, to appeal to readers who were likely to be influenced by ideas of male-female equality commonly voiced in Japan and who were likely to harbor doubts about social conditions in North Korea. The article seemed to be crafted to cut off expressions of such doubts. A subsequent Third National Meeting of Mothers was convened on November 22, 2005. On the same date, the Worker’s Newspaper carried a letter of congratulations from the Central Committee of the Worker’s Party of Korea to the Meeting. On the following day the paper reported on the proceedings, which, with talk about moving ahead in the “Arduous March” and admonitions to “Learn from Kim Jong Suk,” could not be described as much different from what transpired at the Second Meeting. The Third Meeting opened on the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Worker’s Party, but it is a bit of a mystery why it was held. Other reports offer glimpses of the gender-based division of labor in North Korea. Chang Pilhwa (2001), then a professor at Ehwa Women’s University, quotes a commentator appearing on a South Korean television program called “South and North Window (남북의 창)” as reporting that people from the North who had sought asylum in the South were saying that 60 to 70 percent of the women in North Korea stop working after they marry. This report fits in with Kim Kuiok’s (2000: 85) 13 The Chosen Shinpo, which is made up of Japanese-language and Korean-language pages, is published three times a week.



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report that about half of the married women in the North had quit working. An article in the Chosen Shinpo written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the promulgation of the law establishing equal rights for men and women included the following statement by a student in her fifth year in the School of Economics at Kim Il Sung University: “If you’re married, it is unthinkable to have your husband do housework.” The same article discussed the situation of Lee Yongmi, twenty-three, who headed the Elementary School Education Section of the Central Committee of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League. This young leader, whose subordinates included thirty-year-old men, was quoted as saying, “I am carefully considering the question of whether I should continue working after I marry.”14 Additional evidence of the strong influence of traditional values comes from Chang Pilhwa, who reports that a female university student, who had been granted asylum in the South, told her that she was “utterly shocked” when she heard other coeds speaking to their male classmates in less than very polite levels of speech. This remark can be seen as evidence that traditional norms are still in place in North Korea (Chang Pilhwa 2001: 78).15 The talk of women quitting work after marriage does not mean they are simply staying home. As indicated in the declaration of the Second National Meeting of Mothers, work for women to do at home is organized, and household work teams are established for such tasks as raising livestock. In other words, these women are engaged in economic activity that contributes to the nation’s well-being. Nevertheless, it has been reported that married women serving in this capacity are classified as dependents, and the total number of grams in their grain allotment is reduced (Ehwa Women’s University Society for Research on Korean Women 2001). Organizing women’s labor in this way may appear to be in line with traditional socialist policy to have women become workers, but in the case of North Korea: (1) in no way can this be construed as promoting gender equality, since women’s special roles as mothers and wives are emphasized; and (2) characteristically, women’s roles are idealized in

14 Chosen Shinpo, August 6, 1996. 15 In South Korean society the use of very polite levels of speech increases without fail as a person’s age rises. Other levels include so-called pan mal, which is speech limited to use between close friends and toward people younger than the speaker. It is very interesting to hear that, in North Korea, the very polite speech level is used without fail by women when they address men.

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standardized military terms in which women are called on to support a militarized political system. Citing articles in Korean Woman and examples from other sources, Kim Kui Ok (2000) shows how extolling wives’ service to society as brides and helpful partners is common in both North and South Korea. The emphasis placed on women’s special roles in society is common to both Koreas, she says, pointing out that this tendency seems to transcend capitalist and socialist ideologies. A look at the differences between ethnic Koreans in China and the Chinese they live and work alongside provides further evidence of cultural norms unique to Koreans in the area of gender relations. Han Jin Ok (1995) reports that husbands’ participation in housework is extremely low among ethnic Korean families in urban areas of Yanbian, the Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in Jilin Province China. In her study of seventythree such families, the wife did all the shopping for food in sixty-six families; in seventy-two families, only the wife prepared breakfast; and in sixty-two, the wife took care of all preparations for evening meals. As discussed in Chapter 8, generally speaking, husbands’ participation in housework is fairly advanced among Han Chinese families. Here we see an interesting example of the influence of cultural norms leading to significantly different behavior by Korean and Chinese families in the same social and political environment. This can be taken as an indication that the Confucian norms traditionally adhered to on the Korean peninsula continue to exert a strong influence on family life in Korean communities, whether in socialist North Korea, capitalist South Korea, or socialist China. 5. Life in China under a Socialist Market Economy As discussed in Chapter 8, a contradiction arose between women’s employment and the logic of enterprise management as the policy of economic reform and openness began to be fully implemented. A transformation of thinking on women’s employment took place. During the period when the country was guided by an ongoing revolutionary line, women’s participation in the labor force was praised and promoted under the slogan “Women hold up half the sky.” In contemporary China, women’s employment is often merely viewed as a business management cost. Rather than describing Chinese society as being in a period following the birth of the housewife, should not we characterize it as one with primitive labor relations, as



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being at a stage preceding the birth of the housewife (Okochi 1948)?16 The controversy in the late 1980s about “women returning to the home,” which we discussed in Chapter 8, is part of the historical background for the current situation. How did the employment situation for women develop in China after this debate took place? Wu Guiming (2004: 200) reports that debate on the idea that women should return to the home was rekindled due to remarks made at the Fourth Session of the Ninth Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in 2001.17 CPPCC National Committee Member Wang Xiancai proposed to the Conference that women should be encouraged to leave their jobs to become full-time housewives. “Society should highly evaluate the contribution women make when they return to the home and do a proper job educating their children,” he said. Those in agreement argued that returning to the home would liberate women from the “double burden” of housework and regular employment, and that a policy promoting this should be welcomed as one giving women full consideration and as a step toward creating job opportunities at a time when the problem of unemployment was growing severe. Those opposing this view claimed that having women return to the home would be a historical retreat and that the status of women relegated to full-time housework would be lowered. This argument took place in a period of rising unemployment and layoffs accompanying corporate restructuring as China moved to a market economy. The burden of rationalization and elimination of excess staff in the country’s state-owned enterprises was clearly falling much more heavily on women than men. The problem of laying off women workers (下岗女工) was frequently raised in the media. A survey of workers in fiftytwo state-owned or collectively managed companies in Beijing conducted at the end of 1997 found that women accounted for 44.9% (34,365) and men 55.1% (42,812) of the 77,177 registered workers. Approximately 27.1% 16 This point is made with the early part of England’s industrial revolution in mind—a period when the entire family was put to work and reproductive labor was ignored. Also see Pun Ngai’s Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, 2005. Pun says lack of union or real legal protection of factory girls “leaves companies free to maximize profits, without having to worry about replenishing the supply of labor … [and] the exploitation of the dagongmei [women workers from rural villages] recapitulates the horrors of Britain’s industrial revolution.” 17 It is worth noting that Wu (2004) says the debate about “women returning to the home” has occurred four times: from 1933 to 1937; in the early 1940s; from 1980 to 1990; and then again in 2001.

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of the women workers, a total of 9,325, had experienced being laid-off by one of these entities. The percentage of men with this experience was 19.5%. This was a clear indication that women were bearing a greater burden during the unemployment crisis (Wang 2001: 323). This situation led to voices being raised in favor of providing re-employment for women who had left work to raise children (阶段性就业). If adopted, this might have resulted in an “M” pattern of employment similar to that seen in Japan. One proposal considered was to provide these women with up to 75% of their pay until their children reached the age of three. It appears that some companies implemented this type of idea on a trial basis (Wu Guiming 2004: 219). However, this idea was strongly opposed by All-China Women’s Federation and others, who pointed out the difficulties women over the age of thirty-five face in finding employment (三十五岁问题). The nature of the debate betrayed how difficult it is to be optimistic about the employment environment for women. China had moved away from a system of allocating employment according to national policies toward a market-based allocation without sufficiently enforcing laws or regulations against discrimination in employment based on age or gender. This has made the employment situation for women all the more difficult. By the year 2000 the average number of years of education for females was 6.1, an increase of 1.4 years from 1990; and the gap between males and females had decreased from 1.9 years to 1.5. Nevertheless, in 1999, the average annual income of women living in urban areas was 7,409.7 yuan, only 70.1% that of men. This differential had expanded by 7.4 percentage points from 1990 (Zhu 2005). In addition, among urban male residents aged eighteen to sixty-four, the rate of employment had fallen to 81.5% in 2000, an 8.5 percentage point drop from 90.5% in 1990; for women the same rate had fallen to 63.7%, a plunge of 12.6 percentage points from 76.3% (Li 2005). There is no way that these discrepancies can be explained in terms of human capital management theory or a policy of pay being based on the ability of the individual worker. They have to be seen as a manifestation of gender discrimination. Another point of interest is the continuation of the ideology of “protectionism”—the belief that women must be protected. Since the beginning of the new order in 1949, the retirement age for female public workers has been lowered to fifty-five, which is five years lower than it is for males.18 18 The situation is the same in North Korea, where the retirement ages for male and female public workers is sixty and fifty-five, respectively (Kim Kui Ok 2000: 112).



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This policy was apparently based on kindness, and almost no claims of gender discrimination were made against it. However, All-China Women’s Federation did view it as a problem. Their line of argument can be found in the Chinese Journal of Women’s Studies (中国妇女论丛) published by a research institute under the wing of the Federation (Liu, et al. 2003). The Federation’s basic position is that the retirement age should be extended to match that of male workers. On the other hand, at a time when employment conditions are insecure, it is clear that many women workers have a strong desire to be able to retire early and receive a pension. As the country struggled in the rough waves of the socialist market economy from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, it was pointed out that Chinese women had a right to feel bewildered by having to bear a disproportionate share of the hardship from the restructuring of enterprises (Wang 2001: 278). However, we should note that this was also a period when some Chinese female leaders, unlike their North Korean leaders, began to accept gender (社会性別) and feminism (女权主义) as concepts. Some used The Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 as an opportunity to express their views in these terms. This way of raising gender issues can come into conflict with Party policies and pro forma affirmations of socialist principles. The Communist Party has a professed stance on equality that has been typically stated as follows: The Chinese Communist Party will take the lead in putting the Marxist theory on women’s liberation into practice by firmly tying the fortunes of women to the fortunes of the Chinese people, and, with the support of the government and society, it will strive to enable women to fully participate in all facets of building the country’s social, economic, political and cultural affairs, hand-in-hand with men, to build a society in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all the people (Bo and Wu 2000: 45).

Should this statement be viewed as an acceptance of the concept of women’s liberation? Despite such statements of principle, in practice, implementation of Party and government policies sometimes acts as an impediment to women advancing in society. On the other hand, the Party has allowed the woman question to be treated as a relatively independent issue, and has not characterized doing so as running against its expressed aims. Therefore, even though the Party continues to exercise control, the Chinese approach is significantly different from the one taken in North Korea, with its “one size fits all” social philosophy in which the entire society is officially viewed as a giant family.

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Compared to the Korean Democratic Women’s Union, which serves as a propaganda organ for the ruling party, All-China Women's Federation will voice independent opinions on issues—the issue of employment discrimination or retirement age, for example. A multi-dimensional situation exists in China. The economic position of women may have weakened in some areas, but advances have been made in others. For example, progress has been made in men’s participation in housework since the early stage of socialist nation-building, and many female entrepreneurs have successfully taken advantage of genuine opportunities in the socialist market economy. In this sense, one can say that, compared to North Korea, Chinese society is one in which, to some extent, there is a tendency toward gender equality. Rather than thinking of Chinese society as backward because there is agreement in some quarters with the proposal that women “return to the home,” one should see the debate that this proposal provoked as a sign that those who wish to dissent have the power to do so.19 Summary Projections indicate that South Korea and Taiwan, with their sharply declining birth rates, will see their populations age more quickly than Japan will. By 2017 in Taiwan and 2018 in South Korea, citizens age sixtyfive and over will account for more than 14% of the populations. This will place them in the ranks of “aged societies” along with Japan; and it is projected that this percentage will exceed 20% only eight years after that.20 By around 2028, seniors are expected to account for approximately 23% of their populations, which is the case in Japan in 2011. Since we are talking about more than ten years from now, one could say that the two countries have time to take countermeasures. However, at a minimum, to avoid severe labor shortages as their populations age, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan will have three possible options, either singly or combined: (1) aggressively make use of women’s labor, (2) raise the rate of employment among seniors, and (3) utilize immigrant labor. In regard to

19 Ted Fishman (2005) says “So long as the party-state itself is not directly challenged, an ever-widening range of opinions and interest articulations can be publicly discussed.” 20 South Korea: Korean Social Statistics Bureau “Future Population Estimates, 2006 (韓國社會統計局; “將來人口推計 2006”); Taiwan: An estimate by the Council for Economic Planning and Development (行政院經濟建設委員會).



recent social and political changes in east asia279

(1), Taiwan is the most positive among the countries of East Asia when it comes to women’s employment, and, despite recent noteworthy changes, South Korea is the most negative. Japan falls somewhere between the two in this area. As for the pace of change, however, the comparison may have to be revised if current trends continue in South Korea. In regard to (2), Japanese society is very positive, while Taiwanese society is negative. South Korea falls between the two, with agriculture as the economic sector where its senior citizens are mainly employed. As for (3), which we have not discussed, it is clear that Taiwan is the most positive when it comes to employing immigrants; South Korea is somewhat less positive; and Japan is the most negative. These comparisons of the capitalist countries of East Asia show us significant social differences based on the roles played by gender and generation. These differences can be attributed to the different models of patriarchy existing in each. In addition, a comparison of North Korea and China shows that the persistent influence of traditional Korean social norms and their acceptance and use by the Kim Jong Il regime has led to North Korea placing great emphasis on gender roles. This is in sharp contrast with the situation in China, where the idea that wives should “leave work to return home” has been the subject of vigorous debate periodically since the late 1980s. This can be interpreted as an indication that some Chinese women are becoming housewives. However, the strength of the opposition to this trend makes it difficult to foresee a shift to an “M” pattern of women’s employment in China. In view of the lack of a sharp “M” pattern in Taiwan and Hong Kong, we can say that this fits in with our hypothesis that Chinese cultural norms play an important role. The new situations in East Asian families that began to develop in the early 1990s, families having fewer children and skyrocketing divorce rates, were difficult to predict in the 1980s. Nevertheless, we identified significant differences in social behavior in East Asian societies, for example, different practices related to employment of senior citizens and the allocation of housework; and we have been able to demonstrate that many attitudes and practices related to gender roles are based on cultural patterns that go beyond differences in social systems such as capitalism or socialism. For example, the difference in the behaviors seen in Taiwan and South Korea can be attributed to Chinese cultural norms on the one hand and norms prevailing throughout the Korean Peninsula on the other. Our general hypothesis was that gender-related issues are frequently determined by cultural norms that transcend differences in political systems. This still appears to have significant explanatory power in the 2010s.

CHAPTER TEN

CONCLUSIONS In this book we have taken a close look at whether or not women, particularly married women, are becoming members of the labor force. As we did so, we compared the norms governing the allocation of gender roles in each of the societies examined and found that, far from being universal, the assumptions underlying people’s ways of thinking on gender roles and relations between the sexes are subject to historical and spatial limitations. Use of the concept of patriarchy and a consistent theoretical framework helped clarify problems common to each of the societies studied. On the other hand, special historical and spatial characteristics were depicted by turning our attention to particular modes of patriarchy in each of the societies examined. As emphasized many times, by their nature, these characteristics act with regulatory power to determine the nature of gender relations. They cannot be reduced to type of sociopolitical system or level of economic development. Accordingly, our analysis is not of the type that, for example, simply looks at the shape of gender relations in the United States and says this is the image of future gender relations in East Asia. Our viewpoint was developed by comparing the internal workings of East Asian societies. The conclusions that can be derived from the results of this approach have two directions. One is seen in the comparative sociology developed in Chapters 3 through 9, particularly Chapters 5 through 8 where we compared gender relations in South Korea, Taiwan, North Korea and China. Studying these four societies offered a rare opportunity for comparisons where social systems and ethnic traditions cross. We were able to study two aspects of gender relations in these societies: the extent to which they are determined by sociopolitical system and the extent to which they are determined by ethnic culture. Including Japan in our study enabled us to make region-wide comparisons of East Asian societies, sometimes referred to as the Confucian cultural sphere, to find definite answers to the question of the influence of Confucianism on gender relations. For this, the book can be seen as a contribution to gender studies and research on the region. One further conclusion we reached is directly related to a Japanese social problem. This is the status of women in Japan. Along with a few

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others, I have discussed the problem by asking, to what degree does it have universal characteristics and to what degree is it uniquely Japanese? When the status of women in Japan is compared with that in a Western society, differences are likely to be accounted for in a very general way by merely ascribing them to characteristics of Asian culture or the influence of Confucianism in Japan. However, the unique characteristics of the problem in Japan can be clarified in a more meaningful way by comparing Japan with other East Asian societies in the Confucian cultural sphere. I will discuss this approach in the second section of this chapter. 1. Comparative Sociology of Gender in East Asia Once again, as we did in Chapter three, we use a quadrant graph to compare characteristics of East Asian societies. As seen in Chapters 5 through 8, we have plotted data on the modes of patriarchy in Chinese, particularly Southern Chinese, societies which are relatively more open to women being employed than the more restrictive societies of the Korean

(Pattern of industrialization) Capitalism

Taiwan

South Korea

Han culture

Korean culture

China

North Korea

Socialism

Vertical axis: As a matter of policy, are women mobilized as members of the labor force? Horizontal axis: As a variable, does Confucianism exert a strong influence?

Figure 10.1. Comparison of four East Asian societies in Confucian cultural sphere.

conclusions283 Peninsula. Then the differences between each society appear when the different modes of patriarchy are shown in conjunction with data on the differences within each cultural group, according to the extent to which they may be influenced by socialist or capitalist policies. Essentially, the vertical axis differentiating socialist and capitalist shows whether or not women are mobilized to become workers as a matter of policy, while the horizontal axis shows whether or not the employment of women is tightly restricted due to Confucian traditions. In other words, under socialism, both China and North Korea went through a period in which a policy of making women workers was strongly promoted, and the rate of women’s participation in the labor force in those countries is very high. However, we see differences in the modes of patriarchy in the two societies, with North Korean society showing signs of a stronger Confucian influence. Consequently, we see distinctions between men’s and women’s roles more strongly preserved in North Korea than in China. For example, as discussed in Chapter 9, women quitting work after marriage is common in North Korea. In China rejection of ideas based on gender discrimination is much stronger than it is in North Korea. In addition, we find striking differences in the patterns of women’s employment in Taiwan and South Korea, two capitalist countries where one would expect to find similarities. The fact that neither country mobilized women to join the labor force as a matter of policy makes the current differences attributable to different forms of patriarchy stand out in bold relief. Historically the two societies approached the period when housewives would be expected to appear at virtually the same time, but in Taiwan, a strong tendency for women to pursue careers appeared—especially among women with higher levels of education. As a result it has become more likely for the housewife to disappear in Taiwan than it has in Japan. In contrast, in South Korea, neither a rise in level of education nor migration to urban areas brought about a rise in the rate of women’s participation in the labor force. Instead, the social position of the housewife rose. There are signs of big changes in the attitudes of younger South Koreans, so we have to carefully watch for changes in behavior. Nevertheless, as things now stand, the disappearance of the housewife appears less likely in South Korea than it does in Japan. These contrasts enable us to see common features of societies despite differences in political or economic systems. Accordingly, even if China and North Korea were to completely convert to market-based economies, we can point out that, in all probability, China would not see the birth of

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the housewife to an extent greater than has been seen in Taiwan, and that it would continue to be easy for women to go to work in China. On the other hand, we would expect the situation in North Korea to become much like the situation in South Korea. It becomes apparent that similar forms of patriarchy go beyond social systems to act as independent variables. If we think of modes of patriarchy as cultural traits of each ethnic group, we can set up the question of the interplay between cultural norms and social systems not only in our theoretical approach to gender issues, but to other issues as well. When we examined the question of employment of senior citizens in Chapter 9, we found negative attitudes toward it in the Chinese cultural sphere, regardless of the type of social system in place. This norm was not as strong in the societies of the Korean Peninsula as it was in Chinese communities. In their responses to a problem they all share, that of aging populations and fewer children, the East Asian countries are left with three options (which can be adopted singly or in combination) in order to maintain their workforces: employing more women, more seniors, or more immigrants. While an examination of immigration issues is beyond the scope of this book, our analysis of cultural norms indicates that Taiwan will have to promote more employment of seniors, and Japan and South Korea will have to employ more women. These are likely to become big tasks. In this book we only briefly touched on differences in corporate and political organizations, or attitudes toward physical work or commerce. However, it should be possible to use quadrant graphs for analysis of different countries in other areas such as these. We have also developed a set vantage point from which to examine the question of Confucianism and gender. Even though the term Confucian cultural sphere is applied to East Asia, it is important to recognize that, other than on the Korean peninsula, Confucianism is not that useful as an explanatory variable. It is true that the influence of this philosophy had penetrated each of the societies of East Asia in various ways, and I don’t want to say that setting up the question of its influence is a fruitless endeavor. However, lumping Japan and the rest of East Asia together and using the influence of Confucianism as a variable in a study of gender issues simply doesn’t work. Taiwan was an outlying district in feudal times and only loosely integrated with the mainland under the old system of examinations for government positions. Rather than Confucian norms, the lives of the Chinese who settled on the island were governed more by Southern Chinese family values and the ways of thinking of merchant families. As for China itself,

conclusions285 Confucianism came under heavy attack in the modern and revolutionary periods, and despite signs that the philosophy is coming back to a certain extent, its influence has greatly attenuated. In the case of Japan, a look at the development of the “good wife and wise mother” ideology in the modern period and the history of the formation of the mother’s role in contemporary Japanese families should convince us that strict limitations have to be placed on the idea that discrimination against women in Japanese society is rooted in Confucian tradition. It is a different story on the Korean Peninsula. Confucian thought worked its way into every corner of feudal society. A significant factor in this was the desire on the part of land-owning families to rise in social position to the level of the ruling yangban class. Wholeheartedly adopted by that class, Confucianism included norms that strongly inculcated a belief in the need for a very strict separation of men’s and women’s roles. This philosophy served as the ideological foundation for the emergence of a unique mode of patriarchy on the Korean Peninsula, one that provided the social context for restricting women’s participation in the labor force and for the persistence of sharp divisions of gender roles. As outlined above, the large gaps in the degree to which Confucianism permeated the various societies of East Asia led to the formation of significantly different forms of patriarchy. The clear differentiation of the forms of patriarchy to be found in the Confucian cultural sphere is part of the significance of this book. This can serve as background knowledge in policymaking. For example, it might be recognized that, in order to overcome problems related an aging or aged society, Taiwan should consider ways to better utilize the work of senior citizens. (Generally, an “aging” society is one with 7 percent of its population aged 65 or above, while an “aged” society refers to one with a population with 14 percent or more over 65.) And, as stated above South Korea and Japan should find ways to expand employment opportunities for women. 2. Looking for Approaches to Resolving Women’s Issues in Contemporary Japan By using comparative sociology to analyze different forms of patriarchy, we have been able to disprove certain premises taken for granted in labor economics and paradigms often thought of as self-evident. For example, if one only examines a single society, there is a strong tendency to accept existing norms and values of that society as a given—factors that are part of the natural order of things. Rather than simply accepting such norms, we have made them the subject of careful analysis.

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As seen in our discussion of problems welling up among contemporary housewives, patriarchy in Japan has universal as well as unique elements. Universal elements include the imbalances in authority and gender-based allocations of roles seen in modern patriarchy, which make men responsible for productive labor and women responsible for reproductive labor. Uniquely Japanese elements include requirements set by the nation state, the comparative lack of love between husband and wife, and the great emphasis placed on the role of the mother. A comparison with husbandwife relations in Britain or America helped us see that the weakness in love between husband and wife in Japan is one outcome of the overemphasis on the role of the housewife as a mother, and a comparison with Taiwan helped us grasp that this aspect of patriarchy in Japan is unique even among East Asian societies. Then, comparisons with South Korea enabled us to conclude that it is an oversimplification to say that the characteristics of Japanese patriarchy are attributable to Confucianism. Although, in the twenty-first century, relations based on romantic love among the younger generation in Japan may now resemble those of their counterparts in the West, attitudes toward the role of the mother have not changed significantly. It is clear that Japanese patriarchal norms formed in the country’s early modern period have persisted and continue to be a cause of social and psychological problems to this day. We have seen how a high percentage of women accepted their gender role during the period when the modern housewife came into being. Today, of course, many contemporary housewives also have positive attitudes about the situation they find themselves in. However, difficulties are mounting in the system in which only women are expected to be responsible for reproducing the labor force. Japan has entered a period in which the need for change is increasingly urgent. The stagnant economy and households’ need for the wife to work, which, along with an aging population with fewer children has led to a general expansion of demand for women’s labor and an increasing need for long-term care for the elderly. Japan will have to search for a new system for reproduction of its workforce, and this will certainly mean finding ways to overcome the problems presented by its mode of patriarchy. 2.1. Comparing Systems for Bearing the Cost of Reproduction The societies examined in this book can be categorized in several ways according to patterns of childcare viewed as systems used to handle reproduction of the labor force. In Esping-Andersen’s (1990) typology

conclusions287 set up to study how childcare (and other welfare issues) are handled in European and American societies, we find Scandinavian systems, in which the state is involved in providing welfare classified as socialdemocratic; the system in the United States, where baby-sitters and privately operated childcare centers are heavily used, is positioned at the opposite pole and described as liberalism; the system in Germany is called corporatist-statist. This typology cannot be easily applied to the societies we have examined. In socialist China and North Korea the nation-state has been more completely involved in childcare than it has in Scandinavia. In contrast, in Japan, where the rate of employment of women drops off sharply when they raise children, the childcare system is relatively close to those seen in Spain and Italy, which Esping-Andersen (1996, 1999) classifies as Mediter­ ranean. This system could be categorized as the “full-time-housewife type”—a system in which full-time housewives shoulder the burden. Elsewhere in Asia, in situations we did not analyze in the book, systems relying on great gaps between the social strata or on cheap immigrant labor are used. For example, maids are hired at very low wages in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The system in Taiwan does not fit neatly in any of these categories. Taiwan does have nursery schools and kindergartens, but they are not as extensively used as in Japan. Nevertheless, women with relatively high levels of education go to work as a matter of course. This is possible because relatives in the extended family provide the necessary support network and because children are not considered to belong to a nuclear family. We might call this system the “extended-family-network type.” Childcare systems can be classified according the types shown in Table 10.1. Could any of these systems be applied to Japan? Let’s examine the problems with each pattern. The full-time-housewife system may seem rational as long as the housewife’s dissatisfaction does not reach the breaking point, but it is difficult to imagine that this could be avoided in the period ahead. As for the extended-family type, it must be recognized that the actual possibility of using a family support network is a rather special occurrence. This system might be possible in China, but, even though many among the “young” grandmothers in Japan help take care of their grandchildren, they would be very apt to resist the idea that they should be morally obligated to take care of their daughter’s children. Leaving aside certain outlying regions such as Tohoku, where many households have three generations living under the same roof, it is difficult to imagine

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Table 10.1. Patterns of reproduction of the labor force centering on childcare systems. Nuclear family Individualized

↓

Socialized

Family

Full-timehousewife type

Family and relatives

Market

Nation state

Reliance on maids Extended-familynetwork type

Reliance on free market

Social democratic Nation state management

a system based on family support networks taking hold, especially when not all grandparents live close to their children. Furthermore Japan does not have the great gaps between the different social strata that are needed for a system in which lowly-paid maids would provide childcare support. Theoretically it might seem possible to bring in workers from poorer countries, but the country’s housing situation makes the use of live-in maids an unviable option. Providing housing for foreign domestics would drive up the cost of their employment, which makes the whole idea of adopting this system unrealistic. Private baby-sitting services have emerged in Japan, but the costs are high. In addition to registration and annual membership fees, hourly rates run as high as 1,500 to 2,000 yen, or about $20. This puts regular, long-term use of these services beyond the means of most middle-class families, which means a free-market system would be limited to a narrow range of users. Beyond the problem of cost, another obstacle to widespread use of a market-based approach is the emphasis placed on the role of the mother in the Japanese form of patriarchy. The use of baby-sitting services as a substitute for the mother’s care would be frowned on in a high percentage of families.

conclusions289 The nation-state management pattern would surely be less expensive for the users. However, aside from fully socialist countries or a few developing nations, a system of full state control over everything from the content of education to numbers of children would not be accepted by the people. What about a social-democratic system? This pattern is based on a large expenditure of tax revenue, which means the tax burden would be heavy. Their VAT is generally around 20% to 25%. On the other hand, since relying on relatives cannot be expected to work and a private-sector pattern is already in place to some extent, this leaves Japan with the option of adopting a mixed public-private approach in which the provision of public nurseries and other childcare facilities would be expanded to a certain extent. Rather than leaving it up to individual households to bear the cost of raising children, it appears that, to ride out current difficulties, the only choice Japan has is to provide extensive public support for childcare financed in a way in which a small tax burden would be spread widely across society. With numbers of children and, down the road, uncles and aunts, declining, Taiwan will not be able to rely on the extended-family-network system forever. Although ties among relatives in South Korean families are clearly strong, stronger than in Japan, South Korea will also probably be unable to avoid moving toward more public support for childcare. So, we can conclude that to overcome current problems the most plausible direction for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea is to more fully develop public childcare services, which would be supplemented by private enterprise. Strong political leadership would obviously be indispensable to this type of reform. With an aging population and lower participation in elections among the younger generation (particularly in the case of Japan), the percentage of voters who are raising children is decreasing and funding to support child-raising tends to be disproportionally less than that set aside for the care of senior citizens. 2.2. Moving beyond Patriarchy Theoretically, there are only two directions for society to take if we are to see the withering away of the system that made men responsible for production and women responsible for reproduction, the system that emerged with the advent of modern patriarchy. One direction is to have men participate more in the area of reproduction of the labor force. The other is for women to participate more in the area of productive labor. Doing this will require more than simply calling out for a change in thinking. Here,

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I would like to discuss several types of policy measures that could be adopted. First, in regard to the first direction of change, nothing will really happen if all that is done is insist on changes that make the home the place where liberation takes place.1 This would only lead to housewives becoming satisfied with their lives, becoming positive about the current situation. Creating conditions in which working time is reduced is, of course, needed. This will require reforming the current situation in which the cost of reproducing the labor force is only added on to the tasks borne by female workers. The attitude of big business is “Women have to bear and raise children, which means, we want to employ men because that’s who we can employ.” Particularly during an economic slump, application of this kind of logic results in what we now see, the difficulty female university graduates now face in finding employment. Despite the fact that the cost of reproducing the next generation of workers is one that society should bear, this cost now falls on the shoulders of women workers. That is the problem that must be rectified. If it is not, women will face the danger of unemployment every time a recession occurs. Perhaps the following allegory will make my point clearer. Suppose that, in a certain country, companies engaged in logging that include reforestation as part of their business activity compete in a free market with other logging companies that do not engage in reforestation. Clearly the companies that don’t bother with reforestation would win out in the competition. They would be able to continue cutting trees when the other companies were busy replanting rather than cutting; and because their labor cost per log would be considerably lower, they would be able to undercut (no pun intended) competitors that replanted. Consumers only aware that one company’s prices were lower than another’s, would always buy from the company selling at a lower price. Over time the companies engaging in reforestation would be weeded out and the logging business would be left to only those who didn’t replant trees. If this went on for, say, thirty years, all of the country’s mountains would be denuded. The barren slopes would lose their ability to retain water, and the resulting mudflows and other disasters would result in a sudden, heavy price to be paid for neglecting reforestation over the thirtyyear period. In actuality, in Japan, we pay a high price for each log we buy from companies that do engage in reforestation. In that way, we avoid the higher 1 See footnote 3 in p. 29–30, “The Housewife as the Epitome of the Liberated Human.”

conclusions291 cost of water-related disasters thirty years down the road. A policy encouraging drivers to buy high-priced cars that do not emit greenhouse gasses in order to prevent severe climate changes would be based on the same type of logic. Under current conditions we can think of male workers as loggers not engaging in reforestation and female workers as loggers who do. Raising children (reproducing labor power) can be thought of as reforestation. In countries such as Japan and South Korea, where men, for the most part, do not participate in childcare, the men are in effect engaging in logging without reforestation. As a result, the current system enables companies predominantly employing men to avoid the cost of reproducing the labor force. To continue our allegory, the work environment created in Japan is one in which reforestation cannot be done, and the country’s mountainsides are being denuded. This is how the birth rate turns out to be so low. The current decline in the percentage of children in Japanese society can be linked to the great gap between men and women in time spent on housework and raising children. The declining birth rate points to the pressing need for public intervention. It is evident that men must participate more in housework and child-raising, but simply issuing a call for reform will have little or no effect. To move toward a gender balance, men have to be given more time away from work. Giving husbands one week off when a child is born is taken for granted in continental Europe. Japan and South Korea must follow suit. Meaningful economic reform that will make the cost of reproducing the next generation of workers part of the cost of employing men is needed. If the current system with men-oriented employment and long hours of work which allows companies to avoid the cost of reproducing the labor force is left as it is, women will continue to be treated as second-class economic citizens—left at a disadvantage in the labor market and the workplace, and increasingly unable to raise children. Certain strategies would enable more women to work in the production sector. It is projected that the percentage of the population in the fifteento-sixty-four age group which participates in productive labor will drop sharply in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea as the aging of their populations accelerates. Hindering the participation in the labor force of half the members of that age group (women) will be self-defeating. As pointed out, these societies have limited options revolving around the need to effectively use the labor of women, seniors or immigrants. A move in this direction would enable corporations to benefit from doing away with gender discrimination and strategically employing women in ways that allow

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them to use their talents and work up to their full potential. Companies need to adopt the position that women must be hired as full-time personnel on an equal footing with men. The deterioration of the pay and benefit system based mainly on seniority used by Japanese corporations is occurring due to the stagnant economy and intensified competition. This offers companies an opportunity to begin doing away with unfair treatment of women and younger workers. The traditional seniority-based system (nenkojoretsu seido) promotes patriarchy by giving the lion’s share of company benefits to middle-aged and older male employees. It has been an important factor preventing women with high levels of education from pursuing a career. Despite the pressing need to implement changes, Japan lags behind South Korea and is an eternity behind Taiwan in the pace at which it is utilizing women’s abilities. Doing away with various tax and insurance benefits that encourage women to remain housewives would be another policy to consider. Currently in Japan, companies often provide spousal allowances that are added on to the pay of married working men. Other benefits that provide further incentives for women to be full-time housewives include tax deductions provided for spouses, spouses being added free of charge to company health insurance plans, and pension plans that provide benefits (with no premium charged) for wives earning less than 1.3 million yen per year. (These wives are classified as dependents, in “Category 3” in the national system.) These types of benefits seemed reasonable enough when most married women were full-time housewives, but they are no longer appropriate today when approximately 50% of all married women are in the labor force. As we saw in Chapter 4, basically, wives’ employment as a separate source of income decreases as their husbands’ income increases. This means the series of benefits outlined above encourage women whose husbands earn a decent income to stay home as full-time housewives. In other words, these benefits are in the interest of the more affluent strata of the population. Those in lower income groups are in effect paying a subsidy to those in a higher group because their tax payments help subsidize the benefits provided to better-off housewives. To say the least, this is an unfair system. In the following paragraph we will analyze a little further the income tax deduction for spouses and the Category 3 beneficiaries of the pension system. The income tax deduction for spouses was introduced as part of a reform of the tax system in 1961. The underlying concept was that it would

conclusions293 be granted in recognition of the service rendered in the home (naijo no ko). This was related to a provision that enabled the self-employed and small business proprietors to separate their income from compensation paid to their wives, making the wife’s pay a business expense—a measure that would help reduce their business income tax. This was recognized by many as being relatively unfair to ordinary workers earning only wages and paying taxes on them at a fixed rate. The Labor Force Survey in 1960 found that, combined, men and women that were self-employed or working for a family business accounted for 46.6% of those employed in all industries, which was fairly close to the 53.4% accounted for by ordinary workers or employees. At the same time, 46.6% of the married women were working, but only 8.8% of them were ordinary workers (national census). These figures are very likely an indication that the income tax deduction for spouses was having the effect of preserving the household income system. However, the Labor Force Survey of 2010, found that the percentage of all working men and women accounted for by ordinary workers or employees had reached 87.3%. From 1983 to 1999, over 50.0% of married women were working. This figure had dropped somewhat to 49.2% by 2010 due to the effect of the bad economy and aging of the population. In the same year, the percentage of married women working as ordinary employees had reached 40.0%. These figures show that we can now say that the fixed image of women as housewives is no longer accurate, and they are an indication of the problem of unfairness created by the income tax deduction for spouses. In short, the tax system based on the assumption that most families had a full-time housewife was an invention of modern Japan. It may have made sense in postwar Japan when the economy was in a period of rapid growth. We should no longer rely on this system in a society with an aging population, fewer children and high percentage of women working wonen. In 1987, a special tax exemption for spouses was created in an apparent attempt to do something about “the 1.03 million-yen wall”, which was seen as leading to moves to hold down the pay of working housewives and imposing an unfair burden on women whose income was taxed once it went above that mark. Another measure, which was studied but not adopted, would also have served to narrow the gap between the selfemployed and ordinary employees by allowing a couple to divide their joint income in half. The 1987 measure led to the husband’s tax deduction decreasing as the wife’s income increased and averaged out the tax deduction to gradually lower the wall (Zenkoku Fujin Zeirishi Renmei 1994: 37).

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In the end, this did not have the effect of making the treatment of fulltime housewives and working married women (particularly women working as company employees) equal. In the first place, housework was always there regardless of whether or not the married woman was working, which meant the system could not be justified by claiming it rewarded women for the service rendered in the home. The system also meant, for example, that the benefits would be significantly different for two households each with the same 8-million-yen income, if one household’s income was the sum of 4 million yen from the husband and 4 million yen from the wife, and the other household’s income was 8 million from a husband whose wife was a full-time housewife. An additional complaint against the system is that, even though, the tax authorities are showing consideration for taxpayers’ ability to pay, the fact remains that allowing a deduction for spouses is based on the idea that married women are dependents of their husbands, which leads to women’s wages being bent in a downward direction. Moreover, those more in need of a tax break (or economic support) are not relatively well-off fulltime housewives but, at a time when divorce rates are so high, others such as single-parent women living scarcely above the poverty line. With its sweeping victory in the national elections of 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (Minshuto) issued a Manifesto that called for, among other reforms, an end to the tax deduction for spouses and the granting of an allowance for children that would not be subject to a means test. While one might think that a means test should be applied, from the viewpoint of promoting gender equality, the direction of the proposed reforms was a good one. While a Child Allowance was enacted, the spouse deduction was never eliminated, and the DPJ government gave way to a conservative Liberal Democratic administration in 2012 without any substantial reforms conducive to gender equality being realized.2 Under pension system reforms implemented in 1985, salaried or wage workers’ spouses earning less than 1.3 million yen per year were made eligible for premium-free pensions. Currently about 12 million of the 66 million persons receiving pensions were Category 3 recipients (see above), and more than 99% of these recipients are women. It is difficult to justify the preferred treatment given to such a large number of full-time housewives, given the difficult financial situation of the pension system and 2 After the Great East Japan Earthquake, the child care allowance was revised in response to demands of opposition parties that cited the need to prioritize funds for disaster recovery.

conclusions295 in view of the expected big hike in workers’ contribution requirements. As outlined above in the case of income taxes, if household incomes are equal, the system often provides greater benefit to households with fulltime housewives than it does to households with working spouses. In addition, when the husband dies, the widow receives survivor benefits, which means the system continues to provide relatively greater benefits for full-time housewives (Kimura 1994). Like the tax system, this pension system encourages employers to pay lower wages to women, and by granting pension rights on the basis of household situations rather than to individuals it promotes familism rather than women’s equality in the labor market and on the job (Fujii 1993). It must be said in regard to the above that it is obviously difficult to expect to collect more from full-time housewives with little or no income. We do not want to flatly say that women should not become housewives. We must respect a woman’s right to freely choose such a lifestyle. On the other hand, it should be considered a mistake to systematically set standards that protect a relatively privileged status for housewives—particularly in a period when women going to work is the general situation. The object should be to ensure fair and equal treatment for working women and non-working women instead of protecting the latter. It is wishful thinking to imagine that somehow the rising costs of longterm care for the aged and support for childcare can be met without reforming the country’s employment, tax, and welfare systems. The costs of caring for the aged are expected to rise explosively, and many fear that the country will not have the money or workers required. In a situation where many are already raising their voices in protest, it is unrealistic to imagine that difficulties such as these can be overcome on the backs of housewives. However, the country must face up to the fact that the tax and pension systems based on the idea that the standard role for married women is to be that “modern invention,” a housewife, have to be reformed, and financial and human resources must be found to meet new welfare needs. Meeting this challenge will give rise to another problem, namely the need to avoid making jobs in the welfare sector, such as providing childcare and long-term care for the elderly, low-paying women’s work. This is what has happened in Scandinavia and voices are being raised against it. In Japan we already have a situation in which the wages are low for the often heavy physical labor involved in providing care for senior citizens and there is a shortage of workers in this field. It appears that what must be done is to raise the status of these workers and encourage men as well

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as women to engage in this work. An even more difficult task for Japan, one that will not be without political difficulties, is the need to establish a new system that will supplant the patriarchal system that came into being during the country’s early modern period. New ways of thinking and an egalitarian approach to women’s work are the key to overcoming the problems created by patriarchy. No matter how oppressive to women the system may seem, people who feel they are benefitting from it, including, of course, women, will exist. Women in Japan’s feudal household (ie) system and women in Chinese and Korean traditional households often sought to establish positions of influence for themselves by giving birth to sons and gaining power through them. This type of participation on the part of women helped these systems continue to exist for long periods of time. If everyone belonging to one gender or the other who make up half of the population of a given society struggle against a system, that system cannot last for a long time. Our current system is propped up by a significant percentage of women who feel they have a stake in it. Modern patriarchy was established and supported as it was by [large numbers of] both men and women. This new system was, after all, a “rational modern invention.” At a time when we can see signs of change on the horizon, we have to begin preparing for the next system. If the direction of change that we are outlining here is the best way to go, we have to move ahead in that direction, even if some housewives might oppose it. Those who think they are benefiting from the system now in place will never view reforming it as a step toward liberation. In the first place, as is the case with liberating all men, it will never be possible to convince all women of the need for liberation. What we can do by addressing gender issues, however, is to help achieve a measure of progress toward building a society with freedom from gender and greater equality between the sexes.3 3 In addition to the ideal of male-female social equality without class distinctions pursued by gender theory, the demand for complete individual freedom from gender must be kept alive. In a country such as Japan where liberal traditions are weak, people may profess a belief in equality, but freedom is a different story—one frequently sees people showing a negative attitude toward it. Discussions of the Gender Equality Law among Japanese feminists provide typical examples. Excessively concerned about gaps among women and making equality among all women a priority, some feminists have criticized women who take advantage of the Equality Law to work on an equal footing with men. Seen from the standpoint of freedom from gender discrimination, this type of logic must be described as very conservative. This line of argument supported the long continuation of the Equality Law’s provision preventing women from working overnight after it was enacted in 1986. The restriction was finally removed in 1999.

conclusions297 We should be aware that the Japanese form of patriarchy works to conceal this need for change. When family life rests on a foundation of love between husband and wife and is centered around their interaction, as is the case in America and elsewhere, this means any rift that develops between them will disclose the distribution of power and the allocation of roles based on gender that exists in their relationship. Along with this, any measure of economic independence gained by the woman will make her that much more self-reliant (and more willing to demand equal treatment). In contrast, the Japanese mode of patriarchy causes gender issues to appear in a different way. In a system where men are solely responsible for productive labor, and women are solely responsible for reproductive labor, and where a husband’s role in a household is to simply provide a paycheck, “mother” becomes a magic word making people unaware that “labor” itself is involved in the relationship. The imbalance that exists in the gender-based allocation of power and roles tends to be hidden by the belief that being a mother is “a service of love” performed in a community of love. These feelings and perceptions stand in the way of recognition of the mechanisms and decisions involved in the allocation of gender roles. We have already pointed out that a very similar pattern exists in South Korea. Giving birth to children is clearly a special biological function performed by females. The question of whether or not each and every woman should bear this burden and such questions as whether or not every mother should exclusively be responsible for raising the children she bears are social in nature. They pertain to the nature of the social contract. The idea that the special biological role fulfilled by women should be directly tied to women’s role in society is the final fortress defending the practice of gender discrimination. In a culture in which the role of the mother is not emphasized, as the modern concept of human rights permeates people’s consciousness, it will be increasingly difficult to justify allocations of power and social roles on the basis of biological function and sex. In contrast, it becomes difficult for people to question the idea that social roles should be assigned on the basis of biological gender in a society that emphasizes that child-raising and similar roles are responsibilities that necessarily come with the biological act of becoming a mother. In Japan, where the norms described above were created on the basis of a particular form of patriarchy, women will never be able to gain an equal social footing, as free individuals, with men as long as they are first and foremost thought of as mothers inseparable from children. As long as it exists, patriarchy will continue to conceal the mechanisms involved in

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allocating roles based on gender, and patriarchal norms will continue to be used to justify the inequality that exists. Even when the emotional ties between husband and wife are weak, as long as the burden of the complementary nature of the relationship does not fall on the housewife, Japanese marriages will not easily break up, at least on the surface, because the husband and wife need each other to perform their different roles. Some may choose to call this “happiness.” However, I cannot help but feel that lying concealed within “service of love” is the potential for relationships between men and women that are sustained by feelings for one another, relationships that do not depend on separate, complementary roles.

AFTERWORD

A MAN—CONCERNED ABOUT GENDER EQUALITY? “Why did you become interested in these kinds of issues—feminism, gender equality—even though you’re a man?” I do not know how many times I have been asked this question. I am well aware that most people who ask it do so without any real hostility. Without giving the matter much thought, they are simply curious and want to find out why a man would become seriously concerned about gender issues. Nevertheless, some might see such a question as an expression of gender discrimination. To what extent would that be justified? The implication is that a woman would not be questioned about being concerned about feminism or interested in gender studies. But, a man? There must be some extraordinary reason for a man being concerned. Being subjected to this kind of question has helped me understand how women activists must feel when their efforts are misunderstood or how women might cringe due to the type of attention they get for being the “First Woman” to succeed in this or that field. As a graduate student unsure of my future, I felt quite a bit of pressure as I was questioned each step of the way about my motivation. I generally avoided any detailed explanation of my motives, and I somehow got through it all with vague replies. “Writing on feminist themes will not be of much help in getting an academic position,” my faculty advisor told me when I was doing graduate work in the late 1980s. He was very thoughtful and supported me in my choice of subjects, but he was concerned about my being able to find an academic position if all of my papers were about gender. There were virtually no posts in academia related to gender studies at that time. I clearly remember him advising me to write a few essays on subjects other than feminism or gender. In those days the term “gender studies” was virtually unheard of in Japan, and it could hardly be said that feminism was fully recognized as a field worthy of academic study. Feminist ideas spread quite a bit later in Japan than they did in America, and I was a member of the first generation of university students to focus on gender studies as a special field. Consequently, I was one of the first men in Japan to specialize in the study of feminism.

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This was the environment in which I decided on my approach to gender studies. I wanted to contribute to making the study of feminism and gender an academically accepted discipline. Rather than make a political statement or vent my feelings, I have tried to produce the kind of analysis and writing that will be read and be of benefit even to those with contrary ideas and differing points of view. This inclination is probably to some extent natural among those who choose to engage in research as a profession. Adopting this approach, I have made an effort to restrain myself from expressing individual feelings or directly giving a subjective answer to the type of question cited above. This does not mean that many readers will not be able to grasp the “behind-the-scenes” feelings that go into the writing. The pursuit of gender justice is, of course, what motivates my research efforts, but I do not want my work to be evaluated on the basis of pure expressions of anger against sex discrimination. In the same vein, I do not want my work to be rejected or highly prized because of my gender. That type of treatment, which I have experienced, can only be described as a form of sex discrimination. My position on these issues has given rise to a certain type of misunderstanding of my work. Some people think I lack concern about real issues — that I am only interested in theoretical discussion. Be that as it may, I firmly believed that, until I properly developed my own analysis and published the results of my research, I should refrain from readily criticizing or commenting on political or journalistic writing on gender. I maintained this belief until my first book was published in Japan. I suppose that, essentially, one should convey everything one has to say in one’s work. Nevertheless, I would like to beg the reader’s indulgence and consider why I feel the way I do about gender. When I was a child my image of what constituted work came from observing my mother and her work. My father was a professor who sometimes spent a great deal of time working at home. I really had no idea what he was doing all day. My mother, on the other hand, worked as a program director at a public television station. She would be seen less and less at home as the day her program was due to go on air approached. Then, after a few days, we might see her name or sometimes even her face on TV. “Oh, that’s why she’s been so busy,” I would say to myself. Her purpose for working was easy for a child to understand. My mother started doing this kind of work in the early 1960s. In 1960, only 5.5% of Japanese women went to any college; that includes junior college. It was a period when it was extremely rare for a woman to go to a



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four-year university and then, rather than become a housewife, start and continue a career. As a child I was rather proud of the way my mother handled her job. Working outside the home seemed like a natural thing for a woman to do, and while a certain amount of perceived “hardship” was involved, I did learn how to do my share of the housework. My girlfriend and I lived together when I was a graduate student. This was also a learning experience. Our life together gave me first-hand experience regarding the demands of feminism. At the time, my income as a part-time teacher at a junior college was very meager – certainly, nowhere near as much as hers was. Nevertheless, I took pride in my work, and I did not have any qualms about depending on her economically and tried as best I could to be a house husband. Rents in Tokyo were (and still are) extremely high, and she paid all of it. My contribution was to pay half of our remaining living expenses. As things turned out we broke up after a quarrel over some trivial matter. In the heat of the moment, she shouted, “Get out.” When I heard those words, I regretted not having paid at least enough rent to cover the cost of one tatami mat of my six-mat room. Looking back on it now, I realize that, even though I thought I was not worried about it at the time, somewhat unconsciously, I must have felt uncomfortable or inferior about being economically dependent. What about my being a male in support of feminist positions? I had left the apartment, and at that point, I had a hard time understanding my place in a field such as feminism or gender studies. I felt there was no way I had a right to discuss feminism when I could not form a peaceful relationship with a woman close to me. I considered giving up the study of feminism and even giving up my academic career. I was in a selfdestructive mood. This was partly because I could not find a job after spending many years in a graduate school. It took some time for me to recover from such desperate feelings. For months, I did not feel like studying. I finally became rather more confident that there was meaning in my work when I listened to some students arguing for and against a certain position I had taken in a paper I had presented at a workshop. I thought I might be able to stay involved in feminism and gender studies, not through a relationship with a particular person but through interaction with a broad group of readers. Later, now as a tenured professor, I am blessed with a wonderful partner, a Korean-Japanese woman who has a career of her own in the corporate world. Our first child was born while I was in the U.S. for one year as a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute. At first, I had planned to spend a year there by myself because my partner could not get a one-year

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leave of absence from her company. Then, as luck would have it, she became pregnant and was able to get parental leave for one year. As a result our daughter was born in America, and we enjoyed family life there for a full year. Our daughter is Japanese, Korean and American. Our second child, a boy, was born in Japan. So he is Korean and Japanese. It seems as though we added five persons to global population statistics by having two children. I was fortunate in having a wonderful day-care center on my campus in Tokyo, where it is so hard to find one. I spent ten years bringing the kids to that day-care center every morning and picking them up after work. Preparing dinner has also been pretty much my job, and I am glad I am able to say this. The way I see it, even if I wrote the most splendid book in the world about gender, doing so would be nothing but an empty joke if I left childcare and housework completely up to my partner. I am very happy to be able to put into practice some of the ideas the academic field I specialize in should be all about. Afterword to the English Edition This work is based on my book Higashi Ajia no Kafuchosei (Patriarchy in East Asia) published in Japanese in 1996. I have updated most of the data, and I tried to incorporate discussion of some of the new social developments in the region over the ensuing decade. I also revised the content and mode of expression to make the book more readable for English readers. So rather than being an English translation of the original book, it is more like a second edition of it. Much of the English literature on Northeast Asia, which includes China, Taiwan, North and South Korea and Japan, often presupposes that these societies share common cultural features. I do admit the existence of some commonalities, but as a researcher born and raised in the area and able to read Chinese and Korean along with Japanese (my first language), I am confident in saying that very significant differences exist between these societies—particularly when it comes to gender. This book is unique in being the work of a single researcher applying the same theoretical framework to compare women’s lives and the forms of patriarchy in China, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea and Japan. This is mainly due to language difficulties. Some books on gender in the region rely on comparable statistical data without getting into the cultural and historical backgrounds of each society. Others are compilations of the



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works of several scholars, each a specialist on one of the societies being examined—an approach likely to result in the comparisons not being strictly controlled according to unified criteria. I have attempted to consistently apply the same theoretical framework to each society in examining the female labor situation and the lives of housewives. I believe this book can contribute to gender studies as a wide-ranging and in-depth analysis of gender in East Asia. In addition, due to unique historical factors, the societies of China, Taiwan, and North Korea and South Korea lend themselves to a comparison using a four-quadrant table with the variables of ethnicity and social regime, capitalist or socialist. It can be seen that this is a very rare case in today’s world. Persons with an interest in the cultures of East Asia should find this book of great interest, and I am confident that it will be more than useful for readers interested in area studies, and for those concerned about gender issues in other regions, in India, for example. Chapter 1 reviews matters of theoretical interest and touches on certain points that have aroused scholarly debate. Readers not interested in this type of discussion should feel free to skip ahead to Chapter 2 where the investigation and analysis begins. Actually, readers can start with any chapter of interest and move on, regardless of order. I had been looking for an opportunity to rewrite and publish the book in English, but financial constraints had prevented it. I am, therefore, grateful to the Kyoto University project, “Reconstruction of the Intimate and Pubic Spheres,” especially to its leader, Professor Emiko Ochiai, who was kind enough to offer me financial support and an opportunity to publish a translation. I am also grateful to Brill, especially Mr. Paul Norbury, Kiran Kumar Poornachandran and Ms. Nozomi Goto for their careful work in the editing process. Most of the translation work was done while I was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. The translator, Jim Smith, and I became good friends, and our families enjoyed getting to know each other. Jim’s wife, Yumi, is from Japan and his two daughters joined mine for Saturday sessions at a Japanese language school in San Francisco. After dropping our daughters off, Jim and I would adjourn to a nearby coffee shop to discuss the translation. I really miss our conversations. Jim helped not just as a translator, but as an excellent commentator as well. Rather than closely translating an existing book, it was a process of creating a new one. He contributed a great deal to improving the discussions in the book. I spent the better part of my sabbatical year in Berkeley as a “single parent” with my eleven-year-old daughter. (Jim says it was more a case of her

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taking care of me than me taking care of her.) Due to work responsibilities, my partner had to spend most of that time in Japan. (I suppose we could have planned another baby and again applied for leave.) I thank her for all her efforts in taking care of our son while I was in America. On the other hand, my daughter, who was reaching puberty, was suddenly thrown into an English environment. Her experience in an American public school should be a lifelong advantage for her, but I have to admit she had a very hard time living with only her father. Without her, though, I could not have retained my mental health. I look forward to the days when my children become interested in this book, and looking down on the yellow autumn leaves of the ginkgo trees on my campus, I remain full of hope. — Kaku Sechiyama

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INDEX ancestor worship 8, 62, 143–44, 206, 252 appliances (see household) Bachofen, J. J. 9–10 chima chogori 232 Chodorow, Nancy Julia 15–6 clan China’s 143n Confucianism, and 62 Korea, in (kin groups, munjung, tangnae), 142n–144, 206, 206n, 209, 213, 237 lineage groups, in Japan (dozoku) 143n organizations, in China 237 patriarch, leader of 8 weakened in North Korea 206–7 Britain, as classical model of emergence of housewife 30–6, 55–7, 85, 89–90 child, modern idea of 38 childcare baby-sitting services 192, 288–89 contemporary Japan 111–2, 126, 131–2 extended family networks, in 287, 289 public support for 289 North Korea, in 207–8, 269–71 nursery schools 101 system 287–291 Taiwan 192–9 Christianity, Christian 8, 35, 53, 72, 86, 89, 168 comparative sociology Sechiyama, Kaku’s ideas on 1–3, 7, 26 of gender 29, 221, 281–2 (Fig. 10.1) of patriarchy 285 Confucian(ism) 53–5, 220 contempt for work 148 North Korea 207, 213, 216, 220–1, 231–2, 274 Cultural Revolution attacks on 229, 231–2 dutiful child 79 explanatory variable, as 284 folk culture, influence on 65 good wife wise mother 60–80 government service 148, 181 ignorant woman 63–8, 72, 78–9, 146

loyalty to lord 79 obedience to husband 82 respect for intellectuals 232 South Korea 141–9, 167–70, 252, 274 role of women and virtuous woman, on 63–64, 63n, 64n, 79 Taiwan 180–181, 196 women’s education, on 62, 62n, 64 Yi dynasty 141–2, 145 Confucian cultural sphere 3, 53–55, 281–25 contemporary housewife definition of 38–45 comparison with modern housewife 43–5, 110 in Japan 99–134 in South Korea 139, 151 in Taiwan 183–4 Coward, Rosalind 16 Cultural Revolution 212, 223, 227–36, 243 (see Confucianism, Kim Il Sung, voluntarism) Dalla Costa, Mariarosa 236 Deng Xiaoping “Four Modernizations” 229, 233 Southern Tour 242 divorce laws, regulations 48 China 224–7, 226n North Korea 205–6, 206n divorce rates low in China 239–40 Japan, in 240, 294 rise in East Asia 250–2 (Fig. 9.3), 279 poverty as cause of rise 251 domestic employees (workers, helpers) 35–8, 90, 95, 101–2n education, women’s 61–9, 71–82, 86–7, 133 junior colleges 127, 129–32, 154, 156–7, 189, 191–2, 196, 255–6, 264, 301 modern, early in South Korea 147–48 technical schools 131, 192, 196, 239n, 254 premodern 62, 62n employment of women (see women’s participation in labor force) Engels, Frederick 9–10, 16–17n Esping-Anersen typology 287

326

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Factory acts (legislation) 31–33, 36, 55–6  Japan, legislation 56n, 58 factory girls 31, 31n (see Joko Aishi), 275n factory workers (see women’s participation in labor force, primitive labor relations) family, as basic unit of society 87, 217 family, destruction of 114 Filmer, R. 8 Firestone, Shulamith 15n Fukaya, Masashi 61, 64, 64n, 78n, 80, 81n full-time housewife (see housewife) gender discrimination 8, 11, 13, 97n, 244, 291, 296n, 297–299 origin of modern gender discrimination 32 in China 244, 276–77 in Japan 296n in North Korea 283 gender roles 11, 19–20, 24, 29, 45, 105, 107n, 128, 146–7, 271, 279, 281, 285, 297 marriage, in 298 power as factor 20 rectifying imbalance in allocation of 28n generation and age as analytical elements 22, 22n, 24 hierarchical organizations, in China, North Korea 231 in Taiwan 199–201 Todd’s analysis 22–23 (illustrated in Figure 1.1) 23 senior-junior (senpai-kohai) relationships 23 “good wife, wise mother” (ryosai kenbo) 60–61, 285 origin of concept in China, Korea 65–76, 66n, 76n, 147n formation of ideology in Japan 77–83, 87–8, 92, 190 continuity of idea with Confucianism 80 Habermas, Jurgen 37 household appliances, and new lifestyle 39–40, 43, 100–1, 139–40, 175–6 household system of Japan, traditional (ie seido) 12–13, 79 housewife (also see contemporary housewife and modern housewife) burden of caring for aged 295 disappearance of, 3, 30, 42–3, 45–6, 49–50, 253

in Japan 132, 283 in South Korea 160, 170, 283 in Taiwan 194, 201, 283 under Chinese socialism 223, 228, 240, 245–6 likelihood of 247 duties of in Japan 88, 99 duties of in Taiwan 182 emergence (birth) of under capitalism 2, 27–38, 30n, 50, 53, 56–57, 113 in China 237, 240, 245, 275 in Japan 54–58, 84–8 in South Korea 138, 141, 151, 188 in Taiwan 171, 190 “epitome of liberated human,” as 30n, 290n full-time housewife 38, 43, 108, 126, 130–32, 188, 253–55, 258, 275, 287–88, 292–95 industrialism effect of 35–37 role of 34, 44, 53, 60, 88–91, 132, 198, 286 housework 27, 30n, 35–48, 279 in China 228, 234–6, 240–1, 245, 275–278 international comparison 240 (Table 8.1), 241 in Japan 88–91, 100–2, 106, 108–122, 132, 291, 294 Koreans in Japan, China 272, 274 labor, as 44 marketization of (see household appliances) in North Korea 218, 273 “service of love,” as 44 in South Korea 164 in Taiwan 183–4, 196 streamlining of 89 Illich, Ivan 20 Inheritance 22–3, 145, 168, 180, 199 line of, in Japan 57, 82 Joko Aishi 31n Kang Pan Sok 218–20, 267, 271 Katayama, Seiichi 61 kin groups (see clan) Juche (self-reliance) 211, 212n, 232 Tower of Juche Idea 215 Kim Il Sung 204–5, 207, 209–20, 230, 221n, 247, 267–8, 271 idolatry of 204, 210, 218, 267 monuments to 215

index327 Kim system compared with Cultural Revolution 230 Kim Jong Il 211–20, 267–8 “Center of the Party,” as 214 “Military First” policy 270–71 Kim Jong Suk 219–20, 219n, 267–69, 271–72 Koyama, Shizuko 61, 64 levels of speech in South Korea 144, 168, 273, 273n lineage groups (see clan) “M” pattern 25, 40, 103, 119–24, 151, 177, 188, 190, 201, 247, 257–8, 276, 279 Maillassoux, Claude 21 maids (see domestic employees) Maine, Sir Henry 9 “Mao suit” 229 Mao Zedong 227–230, 233 Hunan Peasant Movement 224 men’s domination of women, on 224 Red Guard support 230 intellectuals, antipathy for 232 marriage arranged marriages 37, 142 ceremonies 225 complementary roles in 298 destabilization of 248–252 later marriages 119, 157 love marriages 83, 86, 108n, 111, 166 low rate of among younger men 250 partner, selection of 81–83, 166, 168, 224n quitting work, after 157, 161, 173, 283 working after 157, 161, 162 (Table 5.3), 183 marriage laws Chinese law of 1950 225–7, 226n, 238 Chinese Revolution, and 224–227 compromise with patriarchy  225–6 North Korean 205–06, 206n Marx, Karl on reproduction of working class 29n Marxist feminism/ feminist 15n, 17–20, 28–9, 49, 99 mass games 211, 211n, 230 matriarchy 9–11, 10n, 16 matrilineal family 9, 10n May Fourth Movement 224 McLennan, J. F. 9 Meiji (or pre-war) Civil Code 8, 13, 25 Mencius, mother of 63 Millet, Kate 14, 15n

Mitchell, Juliet 15–6, 15n modern housewife advent (emergence/ birth) of 33–8, 41, 46, 56–60, 84–7, 105, 286 comparison with contemporary housewife 39, 41, 43–5, 111–4 cultural activity/ lifestyle 91–4 duties of 88–91 in South Korea 139, 151, 153 in Taiwan 175–6, 183, 193, 197, 200 in wartime 96–7 modernity, modernization 30, 33–35, 37n, 53, 55, 72, 76, 80, 89, 100, 106, 138, 147, 224, 238 “Four Modernizations” 233 Morgan, L. H. 10 Morioka, Kiyomi 90 motherhood “heroic mothers” in North Korea 214 maternal love, Japan 78, 84–5, 111–2 mother’s duty, ties to military in North Korea 269–72 in Japan 96, 96n, 270 obligation to raise children 167 promotion of, in Japan 96 role in home education (North Korea) 217–9 munjung 142–4, 142n “my home” 87–8, 92 Nakane, Chie 142n Naruse, Jinzo 68, 87, 87n nation-state as family Japan, in 79–80, 87, 87n, 96, 213 North Korea, in 212–214, 220, 221n, 269 New Culture Movement 224 nuclear family 23, 84, 90, 102, 139, 148, 166–67, 183, 197–98, 249, 287–8 Oakley, Ann 30n, 38 Ochiai, Emiko modern family life, on 36–37 Okochi, Kazuo 31–32, 55, 275 Ortner, Sherry 17, 17n participation in labor force (see women’s participation in labor force) patriarchy concept, use of as: by Max Weber 10–12, 11n, 13n, 24 by feminists 7–8 by Marxist feminists 17–20, 18n, 21n by Western feminists 14–8

328

index

greatest common denominator as concept with 24–25 in cultural anthropology 8–12, 16 in traditional Japanese sociology 8–13 contemporary Japanese 105–32 definitions of Ueno Chizuko’s 18, 18–9n, 21–2, 21n Dictionary of Sociology (Japanese) 8 Sechiyama, Kaku’s 19, 24–26 detailed discussion of 7–26 evangelicalism, patriarchy promoted by 35, 190 feudal patriarchy in Japan 8, 12–13, 213 forms of patriarchy ancient 8–10 as independent variable 17, 28, 29n, 41, 106, 284 historical origins of 16–7 Engels and others 15–17 Korea, in 141–9, 285 material basis of 18, 21, 21n measures against in China 224–5 collective dining halls 228, 228n moving beyond patriarchy 289–96 preserved by nation-state 36 tax system, promoted by 292–3, 295 psychological origins of 15–16, 15n return to, in China 237–39, 245 sexuality, and 21, 21n patriarchalism 8–13, 13n patrilineal family 83, 142n, 143, 143n, 145, 166, 197, 199 patrimonialism 11n population aging of 278, 284–5 declining birthrates 248–52, 291 decline in China 249 decline in Japan 100–4, 249 economic conditions, effect of in Japan 250, 286 primitive labor relations 30–33, 41, 46–7, 55, 56n, 105, 138, 274 romantic love 86–7, 111, 133, 166, 239, 286 marriage, reason or basis for 86–7 outside marriage 83 weak feelings of in Japanese marriage 133–4 Rostow, W. W. 30 salarymen (white collar workers) 59, 93–4 samurai 79, 143–44

Sawayama, Mikako 84 “service of love” housework as 44 childcare as 111–2 motherhood as 297 sexual harassment 95 Shimoda, Utako 68 socialism 28–31, 46–50, 55, 205–12, 223–9 childcare policies 289 household reform, and 87n industrialism, as approach to 28 moving away from in China 233–9 patriarchal socialism 49n, 220 mobilization of women as workers  208–9, 223, 245, 283 Sokoloff, Natalie 17 Todd, Emmanuel 22–3, 169, 200, 231 Ueno, Chizuko 18–19, 18–9n, 21–2, 21n, 29n, 116 unemployment 55–6, 138, 159–60, 172n, 175–7, 195, 234, 250–1, 275–6, 290 Victorian paradigms for patriarchy 35–36 voluntarism (Juche/ China) 211–2, 229 Weber, Max 10–12, 11n, 13n, 24 welfare systems (public, social welfare) 133, 142n, 193, 235, 259, 262, 262n, 264, 269, 287, 295 women’s education Japan, in Education ministers’ ideas in Japan 77–82, 81n elementary, in Japan 81 Imperial Rescript on Education 78 private education for girls 87 secondary education early Japanese law 77–80 women’s liberation 7–17, 114, 277, 290 China’s New Democracy stage, in 238 freedom from gender 296–97 gender equality, and 228n Jiang Qing’s ideology 229 male-female social equality 296, 296n socialist approach 29n, 47–49, 235 in North Korea 205–6, 209 Korean ideas on 75n, 75–6, 147n, 171, women’s participation in labor force China, in 230, 236, 241–4 women factory workers 275, 275n

index329 education level, and participation 42–3, 108, 130, 253–56, 262 Japan, in 117–30 “leftist errors” in China 237 mobilization in North Korea 208–9 older citizens 258–67 promoted when socialism built 47–50, 203, 283 South Korea, in 140, 149–60 strategies to enable women to work 291–4 Taiwan, in 175–7, 184–96

Woo, Margret laws protecting women, on 244 Yamamura, Yoshiaki 82, 97 Yanagida, Kunio 86, 86n yangban (Korean ruling class) 64, 142–5, 142n, 146n, 153, 181, 190, 232, 285 women 147–48 “Yasukuni Mothers” 270 (see motherhood) zhongshan fu (see Mao suit)