Family, women, and gender in medieval societyBuddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahăyăna Tradition. Other sample titles include: Edward Kamens, The
Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess: Daisaiin Senshi and Hosshin Wakashū; Yung- Hee Kim, Songs to
Make the Dust Dance: The Ryōjin Hishō of Twelfth- Century Japan; Bernard Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist
Approaches to Sexuality and The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender; Rajyashree Pandey, “Review:
Medieval Experience, Modern Visions,” “Poetry, Sex, and Salvation: The ‘Courtesan’ and the Noble
Woman in Medieval Japanese Narratives,” and Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair: Body, Woman, and Desire
in Medieval Japanese Naratives; Ikumi Kaminishi, Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling
in Japan; Rachel Dumas, “Historicizing Japan’s Abject Femininity: Reading Women’s Bodies in ‘Nihon
ryōiki’ ”; James C. Dobbins, Letters of the Nun Eshinni: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan; Max
D. Moerman, Localizing Paradise: Kumano Pilgrimage and the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan; Lori
Meeks, Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan; R. Keller Kimbrough,
Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way: Izumi Shikibu and the Buddhist Literature of Medieval Japan; Mori Ichiu,
“Nichiren’s View of Women”; Hank Glassman, The Face of Jizō: Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Bud-
dhism. A new, useful general survey is Barbara Ambrose, Women in Japanese Religions; and for the sixteenth
century, Haruko Nawata Ward, Women Religious Leaders in Japan’s Christian Century, 1549–1650.
54 Work on female entertainers includes Jacqueline Pigeot, Femmes galantes, femmes artistes dans le Japan
ancient, XIe–XIIIe siècle; Janet R. Goodwin, Selling Songs and Smiles: The Sex Trade in Heian and Kamakura
Japan and “Shadows of Transgression: Heian and Kamakura Constructions of Prostitution”; Michele
Marra, Representations of Power: The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan; Terry Kawashima, Writing Margins:
The Textual Construction of Gender in Heian and Kamakura Japan; Steven T. Brown, “From Woman
Warrior to Peripatetic Entertainer: The Multiple Histories of Tomoe; Yung- Hee Kim Kwon. “The
Female Entertainment Tradition in Medieval Japan: The Case of ‘Asobi’ ”; William MacDuff, “Beauti-
ful Boys in Nô Drama: The Idealization of Homoerotic Desire”; Eric C. Rath, “Challenging the Old
Men: A Brief History of Women in Noh Theater.”
55 Christina Laffin, Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life
of Nun Abutsu. Karen Brazell, tr, The Confessions of Lady Nijō; Margaret H. Childs, “The Value of Vul-
nerability: Sexual Coercion and the Nature of Love in Japanese Court Literature”; Hitomi Tonomura,
“Coercive Sex in the Medieval Japanese Court: Lady Nijō’s Memoir.” Kimura Saeko views The Confes-
sion as a story of salvation (see Kimura, “Regenerating Narratives: The Confessions of Lady Nijō as a
Story of Women’s Salvation”): Edith Sara examines Lady Nijō as a daughter in “Towazugatari: Unruly
Tales from a Dutiful Daughter.”
56 For select aspects of Takemukigaki, see Tonomura, “Re- envisioning”; for translation, see Royall Tyler’s
Fourteenth- Century Voices I: From the Bamboo- View Pavilion, Takemukigaki. Written in kana script, Oyudono
no ue no nikki and other documents transmitted by ladies- in-waiting to male officials destabilize the com-
monly held equation of the masculine Chinese script with official business. Sōgō joseishi kenkyūkai,
Nihon josei no rekishi: onna no hataraki 100–2. Wakita, Women in Medieval Japan, ch. 5.
57 Steven D. Carter, Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History; Regent Redux: A Life of the Statesman-
Scholar Ichijō Kaneyoshi, 180–182.
58 Tonomura et al., Women and Class, Appendix, 310.
59 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” 1056; Ueno Chizuko explains the
problems that prevail in Japanese women’s history, clarifies the meaning of gender and the concept’s
utility, and advocates its incorporation into the current academic fields. She emphasizes that no histor-
ical study is possible without considering gender. See Ueno, “Rekishigaku to feminizumu: ‘joseishi’ o
koete,” esp. 178–179.
60 Ogino Miho, “Joseishi ni okeru ‘josei’ towa dareka: Jendā gainen o meguru saikin no giron kara.”
61 Sakai Kimi. “Nihon chūsei ni okeru onna no yume, otoko no yume.”
62 Ōguchi Yūjirō et al., Jendāshi, i. The quoted passage appears on p. 114. The ie–centered interpretive
structure makes it difficult to innovate a new periodization. Accordingly, the book traces historical
transformations through the rise of the ie society out of the archaic state system of uji (elite lineage),
growth of the patrilineal descent system and the formation of patriarchal family, with the “establish-
ment of the ie” in the fourteenth century, characterized by the diminution of women’s authority. An
entirely different approach to gender is Thomas Keirstead’s “The Gendering and Regendering of Medi-
eval Japan,” which explores how Japan’s historical periods have been gendered.
63 The precise analysis of terms is the method used by historians such as Amino Yoshihiko. See his Rethink-
ing Japanese History. This method was visible in the 1980s, in a delightful collection of essays, Kotoba no
bunkashi, 4 vols. In one of the essays, Kurushima Noriko analyzes the term “goke,” and discovers that it
did not always mean “a widow.” See her “Goke to yamome,” vol. 3, pp. 165–196.