Cultivating Femininity

Cultivating Femininity Cultivating Femininity Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan Rebecca Corbett University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu © 2018 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Corbett, Rebecca, author. Title: Cultivating femininity: women and tea culture in Edo and Meiji Japan / Rebecca Corbett. Description: Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017025008 | ISBN 9780824872076 (cloth alk. paper) Amazon Kindle 9780824873509 EPUB 9780824873493 PDF 9780824873486 Subjects: LCSH: Japanese tea ceremony—History—18th century. | Japanese tea ceremony—History—19th century. | Women—Japan—Social conditions. | Women—Japan—Economic conditions. Classification: LCC GT2910 .C67 2018 | DDC 394.1/50952—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025008 An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBNs for this book are 9780824878405 (PDF) and 9780824878399 (EPUB). More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The open access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Cover art: Making tea. In Poetry Recitation for Women’s Learning. 1753. Ōzorasha Publishing. Contents Acknowledgments / vii Introduction / 1 Chapter 1: Women and Tea Culture in Early Modern Japan / 25 Chapter 2: A Handbook for Elite Women’s Tea in the Eighteenth Century / 56 Chapter 3: A Handbook for Women’s Tea in the Nineteenth Century / 74 Chapter 4: Guides for Cultivating Femininity / 98 Chapter 5: Guides for Modern Life / 122 Epilogue / 141 Notes / 145 Bibliography / 169 Index / 185 Color plates follow page 100 v Acknowledgments My study of Japanese tea culture first began when I was a Rotary International exchange student in Kuroishi City, Aomori Prefecture, in 1999. My host parents, Yamaguchi Gihaku and Hisako at Hōfukuji Temple, sent me off to attend a class with my host sister, Ami, at her aunt’s house. Ichinohe sensei and her students welcomed me into their class, and to everyone’s surprise I turned up week after week for twelve months, even after Ami had finished her lessons. Ichinohe sensei was a patient teacher, instructing me in the basics of temae (the proce- dures for making tea in chanoyu tea culture). Despite initial language barriers and my inability to sit seiza (sitting with the knees and tops of the feet flat on the floor, legs tucked underneath you) for very long, we somehow muddled through. My host father encouraged my interest in Japanese culture beyond the tearoom, helping me with calligraphy and answering my questions about Japanese history and Buddhism. When I returned home to Sydney, Australia, these interests compelled me to ma- jor in Japanese studies and history at the University of Sydney and to continue my tea lessons with Suzuki sensei, the representative of the Urasenke tea school in Sydney. Over the years as I moved between cities and countries for work and research, I have made many tea friends and studied with several teachers. They have all helped me learn about the practice of chanoyu (tea culture), and I thank them for that, as well as for many delicious bowls of tea. I would like to thank in particular Co- lette Morin, Tamako Matsuo, and Nancy Hamilton, who have been friends and teachers in the tearoom and have also shown an interest in my research and assisted me with it in various ways. One thing that immediately struck me when I began practicing tea was the feminine image of tea culture, and the dominance of women as practitioners and teachers. Yet, as I began to read more and more histories of tea culture, I wondered where all the women were. My interest in women’s history and feminist theory as a university student, combined with vii viii Acknowledgments these questions about tea history, presented me with a natural topic for PhD research. Elise Tipton, at the University of Sydney, helped me explore these topics through an honours year and then a PhD thesis. She mentored me from a keen undergraduate student in her Tokugawa history class through many more years of study. Her continual encouragement that I think about the implications of my research into pre-Meiji women’s tea practice helped me formulate the central arguments of this book, which has also benefited from her thorough reading of the full manuscript. My PhD research was funded by an Australian Postdoctoral Award and by one year as a Japan Foundation research fellow, which I spent at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). I first encountered many of the primary sources that I used in this study during that year. At the University of Sydney, Olivier Ansart and Matthew Stavros provided advice and encouragement, always cheer- fully answering my many questions. My fellow students Amelia Carlin and Rhiannon Paget became great friends who then and now have offered support whenever needed. At Nichibunken, Patricia Fister pointed me in the direction of several invaluable sources. Andrew Gerstle sug- gested I look at the edification guides for women that form the basis of the discussion in chapter 4. Tanimura Reiko helped me with my inqui- ries into the tea practice of women in the Ii household and helped me obtain copies of important sources. Tani Akira at Nomura Bijutsukan was also generous with his assistance in accessing sources. The staff at the Nichibunken Library were particularly helpful with obtaining copies of key sources, including the manuscript I discuss in chapter 2. I first met Morgan Pitelka at Nichibunken, when he came for a short conference. His work on Japanese tea culture set a new standard for those of us working in English, and he has been a generous mentor to me. To con- tact Stephanie Chun at the University of Hawai‘i Press was one of the excellent pieces of advice he has given me over the years. Stephanie has been a pleasure to work with on this project, as has the whole team at UHP and my copy editor, Rosemary Wetherold. This book was largely written while I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), Stanford University. I cannot thank CEAS staff members John Groschwitz, Kristin Kutella Boyd, and Marna Romanoff enough for creating such a welcoming and comfort- able environment in which to work for nearly two and a half years. To the center’s director, Gordon Chang, and the East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) faculty who chose to award me the fellowship, I extend my sincerest thanks. This book would not have been possible Acknowledgments ix without it. CEAS gave me a forum to present my ideas on several occa- sions, and I am particularly indebted to Kären Wigen for sharing her thoughtful insights. My faculty mentor at Stanford, Steven Carter, was generous with his time and knowledge. Friday afternoons spent reading and discussing premodern Japanese poetry and prose in his office were among the high- lights of my time at Stanford, and indeed my life in academia thus far. His assistance with reading the manuscript discussed in chapter 2 greatly enhanced my understanding of this source, and our discussions on a wide range of topics helped me think about my research in new ways. I was also fortunate to meet Christina Laffin on the first Friday afternoon in Professor Carter’s office and was excited to learn that she would be a visiting scholar at Stanford that year. I thank her for her mentorship and friendship. She has been tireless in her encouragement of this book, including reading and commenting on early drafts of several chapters and providing me with advice on the publishing process. Her invitation to speak at the University of British Columbia in 2015 helped me think about how to present my arguments in the book. My time at Stanford was happy and productive, and for that I would like to thank my fellow CEAS postdocs Kevin Carrico, LeRon Harrison, and Cyrus Chen. Sharing an office with Cyrus, and many pots of tea over which we had long conversations, was a delight. Many friends among the broader postdoc community, as well as the CEAS and EALC student body, offered welcome distraction from my work, and the challenge of explaining my research to people from fields as different from my own as plant biology. Cheryl and Daniel Lilienstein provided me with a wonderful place to live and an extended family in California. My own family cannot be thanked enough. My father, Ken, first piqued my interest in Japan when he was traveling there frequently for business while I was a child and a teenager. My mother, Wendy, filled our house with books when I was young, and let me follow my passion for studying history as a determined sixteen-year-old who declared that I did not need to study mathematics or science anymore. She allowed my brother, Lee, and me to follow our own interests and always supported me when I continually moved back and forth between Australia, Japan, and California, more often than not ending up living in her house. Over the years many people I have worked with or asked for advice have helped me write this book, in ways small and large.

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