The following is from Mr. Sekihei's serial column in the February issue of the December 21 issue of Hanada magazine.
Incredible Japan as Seen from the Perspective of Differences with China and Korea" (Society: Status of Women 《Upper》)
From this month, this column will develop a "Society Edition" with the theme of "Incredible Japan as Seen from the Perspective of Differences with China and Korea."
I will focus on traditional pre-modern society and examine the differences between Japan and China with Korea.
In the first and next installments of the social section, I will first look at "women."
Since human society is composed of men and women, we can naturally understand the nature and superiority of a society by looking at the position and treatment of women in that society.
And from this perspective, traditional Chinese society, especially that of the Ming and Qing dynasties, is genuinely terrible.
Combined, the Ming and Qing dynasties lasted for more than 540 years, and for the women of mainland China who lived during that period, these long years were indeed days of endless hell, the Dark Ages.
As is well known in Japan, Han Chinese women were forced into foot binding in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
When a girl reaches the age of three or four, her toes are bent backward and bound tightly with cloth by her parents, and her development is thoroughly stunted.
By the time the girls reach adulthood, their feet are deformed, and they have difficulty even walking.
This outrageous practice, unique to the Han Chinese, had already begun in the Northern Song Dynasty and became a custom during the 500 years of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The cruel and brutal custom of mutilating women's bodies and deforming their body parts on purpose had taken root for more than 500 years.
It alone is enough to show how perverted and inhuman the dark society of China was at that time.
And in those days, women depended on men for the rest of their lives, living as their slaves.
Before marriage, women had to obey their fathers; after marriage, they had to obey their husbands, and women had no social rights, dignity, or freedom.
The complete social segregation created this total loss of women's dignity and freedom against them.
In the famous book "A History of China from the Perspective of Sex" by American scholar Susan Mann, she describes the "segregation of women" in Chinese society during the Ming and Qing dynasties:
Women (at home) were utterly forbidden to associate with men other than their husbands and young sons. Women could not sit at the same table as men. But, of course, women were also prohibited from visiting temples and watching plays and festivals. All these things were allowed for no outings in early spring, no sightseeing, pleasure-seeking, no visits to friends' houses.
This statement, based on academic research, indicates that women in China during that period were deprived of all freedom and no longer treated as human beings.
Although they were members of the family and society, they were, in fact, kept in social confinement for life, like "prisoners."
In extreme cases, they may even be deprived of their minimum human right to "live."
In the Confucian ethics of the time, a married woman could be divorced at the sole discretion of her husband, but if her husband died and became a widow, she was basically not allowed to remarry.
If her husband dies and she has children, the widowed woman must live in her marital home for the rest of her life, raising her children and serving her husband's parents.
In China, that is called "Shǒujié," and a woman who has led such an unhappy life is called "Jiéfù.
Furthermore, if a woman has no children when her husband dies, there is no longer only one way for her to be allowed to be a wife.
That is to take her own life as a martyr to her husband.
It is called "Xùnjié," and women who die in such a manner are called "Liè fù" and are honored by the imperial court and local government offices.
In fact, modern research has revealed that during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the number of women who became "Jiéfù" and "Liè fù" numbered in the tens of thousands each year.
A simple calculation suggests that more than 5 million women suffered such a harsh fate during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The inhuman treatment of women during the Ming and Qing dynasties suggests that the Chinese society of that era was a mere barbaric society that hardly deserved the name of "civilization." Still, the neighboring Korean peninsula was not much different.
Although the Korean dynasties, roughly contemporaries of China's Ming and Qing dynasties, did not introduce the practice of foot binding from the mainland, their social segregation of women was even more severe than in Ming and Qing China.
The practice of forcing women to perform "Jiéfù" or "Liè fù" was no different from that of the Han Chinese.
Even in the pre-modern era, Japan completely differed from Ming and Qing China and the Korean dynasties.
For example, the status and treatment of women in Japanese society during the Edo period were quite different from those in the Dark Continent and the Dark Peninsula. Still, I will leave the details to the following article.
