Japanese Society Series. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press; Portland, OR: Exclusively distributed by International Specialized Book Services, 2010. xiii, 178 pp. (Tables, B&W photos.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-92090-128-8.
A friend told me about her grandmother who was widowed in her late twenties in rural Shimane prefecture. The oldest child of a “good” family, her parents made her return to her natal home and remarry. It was understood that she would leave her two young children behind in her husband’s family. She never saw them again.
Deborah McDowell Aoki’s comprehensive study of Japanese widows brings into focus the complex, ambiguous, often tragic history of the impact of spousal death on Japanese women. Her eight years of research from 1996 included 58 interviews with women from urban and rural areas. She states the themes in the introduction: “the fetishism of female bodies to protect and embody family honor, the historical role of state formation in creating family and kinship systems, and the integrative functions provided by women” (1).
After a survey of the anthropological literature on women and widowhood in world history, including the Confucian ideology in which patriarchal families became the model of how societies should be organized, Aoki turns to the history of widows in Japan. Japanese women in the Heian period had considerable freedom in choosing a partner, even after widowhood, primarily due to the prevalence of matrilocal marriage residences. The Meiji period, the low point in women’s legal status and family role, saw the institutionalization of the patriarchal family system (ie seido). Aoki traces these changes through the various words used to describe widows historically: kafu, yamome, goke and from late Meiji, mibojin, which connotes “one who should have died with her husband, but has not yet died” (34).
The next three chapters draw on the author’s ethnographic interviews. Chapter 4 describes the situation of war widows, their poverty, activism and identity. One interviewee says, “People have forgotten now, but in those days, widows were called the ‘white lilies,’ the ‘beautiful reeds’ or the ‘blue orchids,’ we were the wives of the spirits of dead soldiers” (53). However, at the end of the war the full extent of widows’ poverty and suffering became clear. The author blames the government’s weak safety net but also the failure of many families to provide support, sometimes because of discrimination against widows, but primarily because their families were also poor and had little to offer in concrete help. In 1948, the proportion of single mothers receiving public assistance reached 60 percent (60). Widows began to organize themselves; by 1949 there were more than 2000 widows’ groups. Aoki’s interviewees eloquently express the pathos of their situation. A widow from a family that made charcoal: “Sometimes the wood doesn’t become charcoal; it just rots. I was like that too. I couldn’t become charcoal but I became like rotten wood and then dirt. That’s how I feel about my life” (70).
Chapter 5 is an ethnographic account of an upper-class widow organizing the memorial ceremony on the second anniversary after death. Through participant observation the author conveys the crucial role of widows in mediating between the real world of living people and the spirit world of the ancestors. Women provide the structure of the rituals, the care and nourishment of the dead, and the maintenance of family continuity.
The final two chapters highlight the feminization of poverty, which has belatedly received more attention in Japan. Women held only 15 percent of full-time jobs in 2006 and continue to fill the temporary, part-time ranks. The daily life of the widow is also described, especially the phenomenon of widow watching. “Even now I get tired of being watched all the time,” one woman complains. “We are suspected of trying to take the man in their life even though we have no interest.”
The author emphasizes there is no archetypal widow. The strength of her study lies in the narrative of widows’ roles in the family and society, past and present, with stigmatization and a lack of support. The apt quotations from her interviews vividly evoke the women’s voices, enriching the book and enhancing our pleasure in reading it.
My main concern is the discussion of caregiving. Aoki writes that woman should not be considered the sole caregivers and there should be a national program similar to national health care that would relieve women caring for both children and the elderly. But caregiving is changing; men, particularly husbands, are increasing as caregivers and the national long-term care program which Aoki briefly describes, is a significant attempt by the government to share the burden of care for the elderly. I also wonder, didn’t any of her interviewees remark on the satisfactions of caring for a spouse? Other researchers report that quite a few caregivers find this a positive experience.
Her conclusion that the legacy of single female-headed households in poverty is still a fact of life for widows is accurate. Aoki is optimistic that women are taking the lead in pushing society to redefine marriage. Her book should provide powerful ammunition for doing that.
Ruth Campbell
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
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