| NOTA |
(★)(「Without being asked, Sachi indicated that she had been born in the year of ´hinoe-uma (a certain year of the horse in the Chinese zodiac system that returns in a sixty-year cycle)´. The hinoe-uma year is associated in folklore with the birth of husband-killers and known, therefore, in Japan for an abrupt drop in birth rate... Not that Sachi accepted this belief as being true, but nonetheless she felt her life doomed by this prejudice, since ´no man would like to have a hinoe-uma woman for a wife.´To be self-supporting was the main goal she had set herself since childhood. There were suggestions that she unwittingly fell into the trap of believing the folktale, considered herself to be more like a male than a female, and wished to outdo male rivals in whatever occupation she would undertake.」 1.Some observers contend that the male-female dichotomy is sharper in Japan than in the United States ; others believe the reverse to be true. Some deplore that in Japan women are pathetically subordinated to men, whereas others claim that they are matriarchs quite enviable to Western women. In ´Japanese Women : Constraint and Fulfillment,´ Takie Sugiyama Lebra dispels these contradictory images of Japanese women by presenting an alternative view. Dr.Lebra presents a wealth of data gathered during lengthy fieldwork in a tourist town of central Japan, primarily through participant observation and in-depth interview. After providing an ethnographic sketch of the local setting, she leads us into an intimate world of women through oral autobiographies. The book reveals how contemporary Japanese women have persevered and have or have not attained personal fulfillment as daughters, bridal candidates, wives, daughters-in-law, mothers, mothers-in-law, grandmothers, and aged widows. Meshed with these are a diversity of occupational careers including those of pharmacist, hairdresser, businesswoman, farmer, geisha, civil servant, and college professor. The author analyzes how women manage their double careers --domestic and professional. This book is an objective account of women´s life experiences, and in the concluding chapter it suggests new career alternatives for young women today and tomorrow as befit changing Japan. ´Japanese Women : Constraint and Fulfillment´is about Japanese women in Japanese society as a whole. This book also contributes to the cross-cultural understanding of sex roles, women´s issues, socialization, aging, the life cycle, and family dynamics. 2.Takie Sugiyama Lebra was born in Japan and received her college education there. She did her graduate work in the United States and got her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of ´Japanese Patterns of behavior´and coeditor of ´Japanese Culture and Behavior : Selected Readings.´ Since 1976 Professor Lebra has been intensively involved in research on women, and her publications on this subject including ´Japanese Women and Marital Strain´,´The Dilemma and Strategies of Aging among Contemporary Japanese Women´, and ´Japanese Women in Male-Dominant Careers´. She is a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
Print Page