During the Meiji and Showa periods of imperial rule, 1868-1945, Japan underwent a number of changes as it emerged from three hundred years of closed-border, feudal government under the Tokugawa Shogunate. Part and parcel of those changes was the transition of Japanese gender ideology from an anti-woman, Confucian model (Nolte, p. 5) to a mid-World War II idealization of woman as "the mother of the nation" (Miyake, p. 277). On the surface, it was a very drastic about-face in terms of the role women played in Japanese society. Ironically, though, Confucian ideals were cited to legitimize both schools of thinking (Moser, p. 32) - which brings to the fore this question: Did the role of women in Japanese society really change during the Meiji and Showa periods up to the Second World War, or were the articulated ideals of change merely political demagoguery?
As a prelude to further examination, it should be noted that one group will always be under-represented in this type of discussion: the men and women of the agricultural sector. As normal in discussions of a society's articulated ideals, the illiterate portion of the population - even if it constitutes a majority, as did the Japanese peasantry - rarely has a spokesperson from within the group to represent their case. The Japanese peasantry apparently did not share the same preoccupations with male-female relationships as represented by the urban and/or educated experts on the issue during the periods under discussion. As chief perpetuators of the "pure" Shinto tradition, Japanese peasants until this century practiced religious, social and sexual customs centered around the earthy traditions surrounding the sun goddess Amaterasu and her fellow deities (Smith, p. 201). It was an indigenous, agricultural-oriented set of customs, replete with straightforward sexual mythology, practical attitudes toward family (i.e., farming as a cooperative effort), and a casually sensual approa...