Women's Roles During The Tokagawa Period

Women’s lives changed drastically between the Kamakura and Tokagawa period. Women in the Kamakura enjoyed much more freedom, from education to having a say in who they married. As time passed and the Tokagawa period approached, women’s roles changed significantly. Women were expected to stay home and not get an education. There is a lot of literature that sheds some light into how women lived in different time periods. Using these sources it is clear that there was a transformation of women's roles and rights throughout Japanese history. During the Tokugawa period, women of samurai, also known as bushi, households enjoyed far more rights and privileges than at other points of Japanese history. Yamakawa’s books, Women of the Mito Domain describes many aspects of these women’s lives using the account of her own mother, who was born in …show more content…
Despite many people, including intellectuals, at this time believing that higher education for women isn’t necessary, Raicho disagrees. She argues that in order for women to fully enjoy liberation, they must be able to become educated just as men are. She advocates for women freeing themselves via education that will unlock their hidden talents and potential that had been locked away for many generations before her. Raicho is trying to establish the fact that women had been held back for many years and that they should become liberated again as they were in “the beginning”. She uses the metaphor comparing women to the sun and moon to show that women weren’t always seen as lesser than men, “In the beginning, woman was truly the sun, and a true being. Now woman is the moon, she lives by others, and shines through the light of others”. She uses this to explain that women used to be free and educated, but now they are just followers to men that need to relearn how to become sun