An analysis of social norms within Japan and the United Kingdom, and how they relate to the ghost stories we have found concerning the Lady in White and female Japanese ghosts.
How Women Become Ghosts
The Mistreatment of Prostitutes in Japan
宿場女郎図ーwhy female ghosts?
This ghostly depiction of a woman shows the hard life and suffering of a Japanese prostitute.
Yujo or Joro (遊女、女郎) means women who perform sexual services for men. There was a hierarchy within this system; some women were seen as more beautiful, and were drawn on Ukiyo-e, as they were popular with the people who saw them as beautiful.
Prostitutes were often dressed lavishly in beautiful kimonos, but in contrast, lived impoverished lives full of hardship. For example, parents of low-income families, such as rural areas and fishing villages, often sold their daughters to a gyoji for their living difficulties. Parents of poor samurai sold their daughters to procurers because of their living problems. A merchant’s parent who is not successful due to depression or business failure etc. may sell his daughter to procurers as collateral. A young daughter may be sold to procurers after being raped. At this time, prostitutes were victims of human trafficking. Furthermore, leaving the brothel was prohibited, so prostitutes lived lives similar to birds in cages.
Prostitutes were also required to pay for their own garments and other necessary items. Therefore, they could not save money, because they were first expected to pay off their debts. The women could only work for a certain period of time, because as they got older they were not considered desirable. But there was another way to be free- to die.
At the time, there were no contraceptive devices like the modern day, so the prostitute had sex acts without the unspecified number of male customers and contraceptive devices (As a contraceptive method, it is also said that putting soft Japanese traditional paper into the vagina.)
Of course, they become sick very easily and they cannot go to the clinic.
Moreover, it was not possible to cure it entirely even though pain could be relieved with Chinese herbal medicine, etc. in the days without adequate treatment. Therefore, it seems that many prostitutes died of syphilis. Apart from syphilis, it was also caused by other diseases, and the body was destroyed by abortion that is repeated.
To understand this situation, this drawing is suggestive that the prostitute woman is drawn like a ghost even though she is alive.
Woman as “Dirty”: Misogynous Attitudes in a Patriarchal Society
Women were not allowed to enter the “Pure Land” in Buddhism unless they were reborn as men. Women were often prohibited from entering places of religious practice because monks believed that women should not be able to practice religion. In Japan, there was a system in the Hiei-
Men believed that women were troublesome because they innately arouse lust. There was a concept that there were no females in the “Pure Land.”
A woman was not believed to be qualified enough to receive the happiness and fulfillment from Buddhism. From this misogynistic lens, woman were considered unclean.
What about Christianity?
Why do so many people and various religious organizations resist women’s religious leadership? One of the possible reasons is the social and cultural conventions and gender stereotypes of these societies. Social and culturally rooted customs and images are by no means limited to religious organizations, as are various other “male” occupations. In particular, in economic, political and religious areas women were often considered not to be capable of professional leadership. One of the most significant factors of resistance of female religious leadership is the canonized doctrine. In the case of Christianity, interpretation of the Bible controversially leads directly to religious leadership. For example, some people argue that women are not suitable for religious administration because Jesus did not choose women as apostles.
English Feminists
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter is Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, who wrote the novel “Frankenstein.”
At the age of 32, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” even before the women’s rights revolution. At that time, it was too advanced a perspective and too insistent for current ideologies. She doubted the ideal image of a woman without an independent moral entity, a woman expected to be obediently dependent on her husband, in the Jewish-Christian cultural tradition. She asserted that “inalienable rights” recognized in humans should, of course, be given to women and convicted a double criterion in men’s social and political women’s value judgment, as stated in her book.
Writers who dealt with women’s education and courtesy as a subject regarding the existence of women as having artificial and fragile character rather than their own thoughts and values
Wollstonecraft declared that everyone has the right to an independent spirit. She described a society in which women received a reasonable education and were able to work in an equivalent positions to men. Wollstonecraft insisted on equal rights of men and women, equality of opportunity, improving the status of women through education, honoring the value of women’s existence as social beings, and established women as morally responsible entities.
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
We would like to highlight Woolf ‘s “A Room of One’s Own,” particularly the third chapter. To summarize; the narrator Shakespeare’s sister Judith has the same talent for writing
The narrator states that genius is not born out of uncultured people, and the genius of women of that time was treated as a witch and executed, and the author is anonymous, there is a high possibility of hiding things created by women. Besides, the narrator asks the question “What is the most positive state of mind for the act of creation” and observes how various crowds of the general public are contrary to it. It asks how difficult it is for women. As long as parents are not exceptionally wealthy, it was nearly impossible for women to have their own rooms, and if they are not wealthy, money and time that women can freely use are left to the discretion of others. As women continue to be told about the disqualification for various things of “women”, women at that time may have certainly internalized their beliefs.
The life of Judith, which Woolf explained here, can only be destroyed by refusing the social role required of a woman, the social system itself, as a woman lives as a single person is really challenging at this time.
Women in both Japan and the United Kingdom have been underestimated, dehumanized, and oppressed. We believe that this may be a reason for the victimized tropes of female Japanese ghosts and “White Women” within folklore. However, we have shown that women in these societies resisted the beliefs and values of their time. We believe that the power of female ghosts within these cultures was a way for disadvantaged women to gain agency and control in death that they did not have in life.
Bibliography
Johnston, William. Geisha, Harlot, Strangler,
Goodwin, Janet R. Selling Songs and
Nenzi, Laura. Excursions in
Seigle, Cecilia Segawa.
Yamazaki, Tomoko, and Karen Colligan-Taylor. Sandakan Brothel No.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, Ruth Abbey, Norma Clarke, Madeline Cronin, and Virginia Sapiro. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Edited by Eileen Hunt Botting. Rethinking the Western Tradition. New Haven Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2014. 2014.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1st ed. An Hbj Modern Classic. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.
image Bibliography
Tsukioka, Yoshitoshi. n.d. Geisha at Roadside Inn. Japanese Ghost Paintings: The Sanyutei Encho Collection at Zensho-An. Perikansha Publishing, Inc.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797. Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft. https://library-artstor-org.ezproxy.guilford.edu/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822001651270.
Woolf, Virginia 1882-1941. Portrait of the Writer. https://library-artstor-org.ezproxy.guilford.edu/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822001793163.
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