This paper is highlights three issues in the study of women's issues in Japanese history, as identified in the introduction to Women and Class in Japanese History, edited by Hitomi Tonomura and Anne Walthall. The first is the literary movement which experienced a rebirth during the nineteenth century and was typified in some ways by the career of Matsuo Taseko, whom Walthall explores in depth in her history, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman. The second is the issue of prostitution in Japan, which culminated in the enforced enlistment of "comfort women" to serve Allied occupation forces following World War II, which Yuki Tanaka discusses in some depth in Japan's Comfort Women. The third issue is the role of samurai women, which Yamakawa Kikue touches on in "Women in Samurai Family." These three subjects provide interesting areas for examining and researching the changing role of women in Japanese history.
Tonomura and Walthall ( ) write, "The nineteenth century marked the return of women writers to an expanded literary public sphere, although women had continued to write since the Heian period" (p. 13). One of the important women of this time was Matsuo Taseko (1811-94), who they describe as a rural entrepreneur, poet, and political activist" (p. 13). According to Walthall's biography, Taseko was an influential figure in bringing about the Meiji Restoration, and her influence was due in part to her gender. As Walthall (1998) writes, "Had she been a man, her deeds would have drawn less notice" (p. 1). Being female helped her advance her cause at the time, and it also helps contemporary scholars looking at Japan's history now to understand the role that women played in critical political movements through their actions and their writings.
Most telling is the conflict over what she actually accomplished and how she should be remembered. Walthall argues that her initial fame was the result of a search for historical model...