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ABSTRACT
In 1893, Sumiya Koume (1850–1920) wrote an essay for the prominent women’s journal Jogaku zasshi (Women’s Education Magazine) entitled ‘I Recommend Against Becoming a Geisha or Concubine’. In it, she critiqued both roles and exhorted women who were serving as geisha not to become concubines. She did not mention that she herself had worked as both a geisha and a concubine (tekake or mekake). By the time she wrote her essay, she had also served as a political activist as well as a social reformer and missionary. Sumiya’s life sheds light on the transitional nature of the early Meiji era, specifically the period of flux between the formal abolition of concubinage in 1882 and the advent of the state-sponsored ‘good wife, wise mother’ (ryōsai kenbo) paradigm in 1899.
Acknowledgments
I thank Hikari Hori, Ikegawa Reiko, and several anonymous readers for their help. I received valuable feedback from members of the Five College History Seminar and the audiences at University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies Lecture Series and the Yale University Japan Colloquium Series.
Notes
1 Sumiya, ‘Geisha to tekake’. Geisha were entertainers who were indentured to geisha houses through a contract system, whereas concubines had a ‘stable, ongoing sexual relationship’ with a man of the household but occupied a position below the wife. In Japan, concubines were registered as part of the household until 1882. Nagata, ‘Mistress or Wife’, 287–89. Nagata also addresses the challenges of defining terms like ‘concubine’ and ‘mistress’.
2 On concubinage, see Lublin, Reforming Japan; Mihalopoulos, Sex in Japan’s Globalization; and Fuess, Divorce in Japan. For records by former prostitutes and geisha, see Davis, ‘The Unprecedented Views’; and Masuda, Autobiography.
3 Hosoi, Ishii Jūji to Okayama kojiin; Maus, Ishii Jūji.
4 Yoshizaki, ‘Sumiya Koume to Kageyama (Fukuda) Hideko’; Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna’. Yoshizaki is listed as the author of this section of the edited volume. I list her here to highlight her pioneering work on Sumiya. See also Ōta, ‘Nakagawa Yokotarō, Sumiya Koume.’
5 I use the terms ‘activist’ and ‘social reformer’ to describe Sumiya’s work at the Okayama Church and Okayama Orphanage after leaving concubinage. She was a working woman, but it is not clear that she was compensated.
6 Stanley, Selling Women.
7 An exception is Stanley, ‘Enlightenment Geisha’. On prostitution in the Edo period see Stanley, Selling Women. The literature on the anti-prostitution movement is extensive. See Mihalopoulos, Sex in Japan’s Globalization; Lublin, Reforming Japan; and Garon, Molding Japanese Minds.
8 Exceptions include Hayakawa, ‘Sexuality and the State’; and Ishizaki, ‘Kindai’, 162–63. See also brief discussions in Fuess, Divorce in Japan, 56–57; and Burns, ‘Local Courts, National Laws’.
9 Nolte and Hastings, ‘The Meiji’s State’s Policy’, 158. In Japanese, see Koyama, Ryōsai kenbo.
10 See Sekiguchi Sumiko, ‘“Onna”’ to kindai Nihon’, 48, note 13; and Sekiguchi Sumiko, ‘Confucian Morals’, 108. Nakamura’s article appeared in Meiroku zasshi 33 (1875). Examples that attribute the phrase to Nakamura: Sievers, Flowers in Salt, 22 and McClain, Japan, 258.
11 Here I have been inspired by Ryan, ‘The Public’, 16. In Japanese, see Sekiguchi Sumiko, Goisshin to jendā; Sekiguchi Hiroko ed., Kazoku to kekkon; and Sōgō joseishi kenkyūkai, ed., Nihon josei no rekishi.
12 I have in mind women like Masuda Sayo whose life in the 1930s and 1940s was in many ways defined by her work as a geisha: Masuda, Autobiography.
13 Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna ’, 105–17. On Okayama in the early twentieth century, see Young, Beyond the Metropolis.
14 On ryōtei, Dalby, Geisha, 193. Sumiya’s guardian no doubt received a sum of money at the time she was indentured.
15 Ōta, ‘Nakagawa Yokotarō, Sumiya Koume’, 272.
16 Lublin, Reforming Japan, 44.
17 Cary, A History of Christianity, 146.
18 On Nakagawa as an eccentric, see Hōgō, Okayama no kijin henjin, 120–26.
19 Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna ’, 107. It was not unusual for women to leave women’s colleges without graduating. N. Ishii, American Women Missionaries, Chapter 5.
20 Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna ’, 105–06.
21 N. Ishii, American Women Missionaries, 90–92.
22 Ibid. The historian is forced here to rely on missionary records from 17 years after the events to reconstruct her departure.
23 Mackie, Feminism, 17.
24 Her daughter Toyo disappears in most records of Sumiya’s life after this point; they were reunited two years later in 1882. Pettee, ‘Two Personalities, 397–98.
25 Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna ’,108–09.
26 Anderson, ‘Women and Political Life.’
27 Anderson, ‘Women and Political Life.’
28 San’yō shimbunsha, ed., Okayama-ken rekishi, 559.
29 Saitoh, ‘Meiji-ki Okayama-ken’, 1–2; Yoshizaki, ‘Meiji no shijuku’, 28.
30 Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna ’, 111.
31 Ibid., 113.
32 Maus, Ishii Jūji, 238.
33 Onoda, Sumiya Koume shi tsuikairoku (hereafter Tsuikairoku). See especially 63–99.
34 Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna ’, 114.
35 Ibid., 117. She died after becoming ill on a trip to Kyoto.
36 Yoshizaki ‘Sumiya Koume to Kageyama (Fukuda) Hideko’, 367–71.
37 Sotozaki, Ueki Emori, 58–59.
38 On Meiji geisha, see Stanley, ‘Enlightenment Geisha’; and Anderson, ‘Women’s Agency’.
39 Kawata and Katō, ‘Life History of Naitō Masu’.
40 On Yamada, see Rodd, ‘Yosano Akiko’, 176, 195; and Yamazaki, The Story of Yamada Waka.
41 Yamazaki, The Story of Yamada Waka, 146–47.
42 Ibid. For a literary depiction of concubinage, see Enchi Fumiko’s Onnazaka. The novel is set in the Meiji period and discusses the pain that female household members suffer as a result of concubinage.
43 Fuse, Kekkon to kazoku, 58–59; Nagata, ‘Mistress or Wife’, 304–05; Seigle and Chance, Ōoku, 134–135.
44 Walthall, ‘Introducing’, 13.
45 Ōtake, ‘Edo jidai no mekake’, 509–11; Nagata, ‘Mistress or Wife,’ 304–05.
46 Seki, Edo kōki, 30; Formanek, Written Texts, 84.
47 On the code, see Ch’en, The Formation of the Early Meiji Legal Order; Nagata, ‘Mistress or Wife’, 288–89; and Fuse, Kekkon to kazoku, 58–59.
48 Mori, ‘On Wives and Concubines’ (Saishōron).
49 Some officials were concerned that concubinage needed to continue, at least in the case of the emperor, in order to ensure the continuity of the imperial line. Koyama, ‘Meiji keimōki no shōrongi to haishō’; Ishizaki Shōkō, ‘Kindai’, 162.
50 Burns, ‘Local Courts, National Laws’; Fuess, Divorce in Japan, 56–57.
51 Ōtake, Ie to josei no rekishi, 249; Burns, ‘Local Courts, National Laws’, 308.
52 Fuess, ‘Adultery and Gender Equality’, 120, 124. The legal disappearance of concubines in 1882 made it impossible for patrons to sue concubines for infidelity.
53 Ishizaki, ‘Kindai’, 162–63.
54 Changes in social practices followed. Concubinage was no longer practiced in the imperial household and among the peerage after the Meiji era. Morioka, Kazoku shakai, 390. By the 1920s, ‘monogamy within marriage was gaining considerable social leverage’ among the middle class. Tanaka, ‘Don’t Let Geisha Steal’, 123; Michiko Suzuki, ‘The Husband’s Chastity’, 332.
55 Fuess, ‘Adultery and Gender Equality’, 115.
56 Hayakawa, ‘Sexuality’, 34; Fuess, Divorce in Japan, 52.
57 Examples include Mihalopoulos, Sex in Japan’s Globalization, 68; and Lublin, Reforming Japan, 59.
58 This conversation was tied to the debates around classifying children as legitimate or otherwise. Burns, ‘Local Courts, National Laws’, 295–96.
59 Fuess, Divorce in Japan, 56–57.
60 Brownstein, ‘Jogaku Zasshi’, 319; Copeland, Lost Leaves, 24–25.
61 Over 75 percent of the text focuses on concubinage. Scholars have interpreted the title differently. Ōta views the title as a recommendation against geisha becoming concubines, whereas Yoshizaki sees it as critical of geisha and concubines. Ōta, ‘Nakagawa Yokotarō’, 272, 282; Yoshizaki, ‘Hōshi suru onna ’, 114–16.
62 Sumiya, ‘Geisha to tekake’, 6.
63 Molony, ‘Review’. Molony notes exceptions to this trend including Lublin’s book and the work of Manako Ogawa.
64 Compare with the view of WCTU member Yuasa Hatsuko in Lublin, Reforming Japan, 59.
65 Sumiya, ‘Geisha to tekake’, 12.
66 Ibid., 5. Sumiya’s mention of motherhood is noteworthy, for motherhood did not figure prominently in discussions of women’s roles in the preceding Edo period.
67 Sumiya, ‘Geisha to tekake’, 6.
68 Ibid., 12.
69 Ibid., 11.
70 Ibid., 10.
71 Ibid., 7.
72 Ibid., 13.
73 Ibid., 6, 11.
74 Tadano, ‘Solitary Thoughts’, 22.
75 Sumiya, ‘Geisha to tekake’, 5.
76 Ibid., 11.
77 See Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight.
78 Sumiya Koume, ‘Geisha to tekake’, 10.
79 Ibid., 13.
80 Tanaka, ‘“Don’t Let Geisha Steal”’, 134–36.
81 Lublin, Reforming Japan. Even before the JWCTU was formed, activists Kishida Toshiko and Fukuda Hideko critiqued aspects of women’s status. See Sievers, Flowers in Salt.
82 Mihalopoulos, Sex in Japan’s Globalization, 68.
83 Sumiya, ‘Geisha to tekake’, 13.
84 Yoshizaki, ‘Fukuda Hideko to Sumiya Koume’, 370.
85 Onoda, Tsuikairoku, 9–10. This original source uses the term tegirekin which appears to be a mistake since the geisha broke the contract rather than the patron. Instead, the term should be zenshakkin. I thank an anonymous reviewer.
86 Walthall, ‘Masturbation and Discourse’, 11.
87 Iwamoto, ‘Untitled’, 5.
88 On Iwamoto, see Copeland, Lost Leaves, Chapter 1.
89 Lublin, Reforming Japan, 28.
90 Iwamoto,‘Warera no shimai’, 162–64.
91 Horowitz, Rereading Sex, 8. Quoted in Walthall, ‘Masturbation and Discourse’, 2.
92 Karlin, Gender and Nation, 30; Huffman, Creating a Public, 196.
93 ‘Geisha to tekake’. I surmise the author was male given that female reporters were rare during this period.
94 Marran, Poison Woman, 66–67. Zange was used in Christian discourse. Nihon kokugo daijiten, vol. 6, 286.
95 Thanks to an anonymous reader for making this point.
96 Yamakawa, Women of the Mito Domain, 144.
97 Tsurumi, Factory Girls, 28–37.
98 On age as a crucial variable in relation to gender, Walthall, ‘The Life Cycle’, 66; Nenzi, Excursions.
99 On ‘cognitive templates’, see Canning, ‘Introduction’, 18.