H. Tonomura
author’s service as a lady- in-waiting and her subsequent travels, available in Karen Brazell’s
translation. Margaret H. Childs and I have both interpreted Confessions, focusing on her experi-
ence of coercive sex, a unique personal voice among aristocrats’ writings.^55 Waiting for analysis
are the last extant medieval woman’s diary, Takemukigaki (“Writing from a Room Facing the
Bamboo”) a mid- fourteenth century work by Hino Meishi (?–1358), and the remarkable official
log of the emperor’s daily movement, Oyudono no ue no nikki (“Journal from the Room Adjoining
the Bath”), kept by the court’s ladies- in-waiting from 1477 to 1828.^56
Works that cross the divide between literature and history also include Steven D. Carter’s
Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History, which offers a multi- generational study of an
aristocratic family. His translation of Kaneyoshi’s poem, “Awake in the night” (Sayo no nezame,
c.1469–1486) in Regent Redux also illuminates a particular medieval construction of women in
powerful positions: “this land of Japan is ... a place that should be governed by women.” Meant
for Hino Tomiko, the wife of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the poem cites the precedents of Amaterasu
(the Sun Goddess), Empress Jingū, and Hōjō Masako and commends, “Therefore, if a wise person
(woman) should appear, she should rule the nation.”^57
Gender history
Without abandoning the women- centered approach, scholars in the fields of women’s studies
(joseigaku) began incorporating some of the language, methods, and perspectives of gender studies
in the 1990s. The transition was, however, neither quick nor simple. The historiographical
appendix to Women and Class in Japanese History (1999) explains the process. The book was based
on a conference titled “Male and Female Role Sharing,” held with the hope to promote a gen-
dered approach by explicitly departing from the ghettoization of “women’s history.” As the
book’s title indicates, the initial hope to include more gendered perspectives ultimately fell
short.^58 In other books as well, the use of “gender” was often more superficial than substantive,
and the focus on women continued without attention to gendered methods or implications.
As in the field of Amer ican history, Japanese women’s history often simply “substituted
gender for women in their titles” without necessarily retooling their interpretive approaches to
accommodate new questions regarding relational dynamic of women and men, men as a gen-
dered subject, or existing gender as a constructed category. A debate ensued as to the value and
validity of gender history, often embroiled in the method’s relationship to the Marxian- based
notion of release from discrimination, and a question regarding the virtue of linear progression
from women’s history to gender history.^59
Nonetheless, books with the word “jendā” in the title began to fill bookstores in the new
century. For example, Jendā to josei (“Gender and Women”), compiled by the Society for Com-
parative Family History, offers several articles on medieval Japan, along with theoretical reflec-
tions on “what is ‘women’ in women’s history?” by Ogino Miho.^60 Esunishitī, jendā kara miru
Nihon no rekishi (“Japanese History Viewed from Ethnicity and Gender”), published in 2002, for
example, contains a delightful article by Sakai Kimi, which offers a gendered analysis of social
and political implications embedded in medieval dreams, dreamt by women and men, and reinter-
preted by people who hear about them.^61
The year 2014 saw the publication of a grand narrative of Japanese history, Jendāshi (“Gender
History”). It sought to “recapture the objects of investigation previously taken by women’s
history, now from the perspective of gender, that is, socially and culturally shaped sexual differ-
ences.” It also sought to “provide a narrative that unites the entire history of Japan, along with a
new periodization scheme that replaces the traditional divisions based on political shifts.” The
book offers a detailed and valuable comparison of the roles played by men and women, observing