Gender History in China presents for the first time in English the work of leading Japanese scholars in the fields of archaeology, history, literature, sociology, and law who examine the gender dynamics that have shaped and changed Chinese society over several thousand years. The eighteen chapters and six columns look at the ways gender norms and customary legal practices shaped the family, kinship, and the social order, and how those norms were reflected in work patterns, inheritance, daily life, and literary works. Attention is given to the fundamental principle of qi (material essence) as a building block in cosmology, as well as in legal understandings of family relations. The second part of the volume turns to the dramatic changes in gender patterns from the late nineteenth century, looking at the inflow of new ideas, the struggle for political rights and economic equality, and the institution of new gender norms in socialist and reform-era China. The authors take up such topics as the view of the body in relation to Chinese cosmology, the incorporation of the military man into China’s model of hegemonic masculinity, the household registration system as a means of control, the appraisal of ‘talented women’, and the intersection of gender norms and nationalism.
Figures
Contributors
Acknowledgement
Preface: Gender Order in Chinese History
– KOHAMA Masako

PART I

Phase I: Pre-Qin to Sui-Tang: Classical China – The Formation of Patrilineal Society
Introduction
– SHIMOKURA Wataru
1. Gender Structure in Pre-Qin China from an Archaeological Perspective
– UCHIDA Junko
2. The Patrilinealization of Society
– SHIMOKURA Wataru
3. Literature and Women in China
– SATAKE Yasuko
4. The Family in the Tang Period
– WONG Yu-Hsuan
Column 1: Introduction of Historical Materials: Wives’ Divorce and Daughters’
Inheritance of Property, Seen in Dunhuang Documents
– ARAKAWA Masaharu
Column 2: Empress Wu Zetian and Thereafter
– KANEKO Shūichi

Phase II: Song to Ming-Qing: Traditional China – The Strengthening of Gender Norms
Introduction
– SASAKI Megumi
5. Livelihood and Gender in the Tang and Song Dynasties
– ŌSAWA Masaaki
Focal Point: An Overview of Shiga Shūzō’s Principles of Chinese Family Law
– SASAKI Megumi
6. Traditional Family Ideology and the Chen-Zhu School
– SASAKI Megumi
7. Marriage and ‘Chastity’: Structure and Change
– GOMI Tomoko
8. The Sense of Social Status and Gender
– KISHIMOTO Mio
Column 3: Court Ladies and Gender
– OGAWA Yoshiyuki

Phase III: Modern and Contemporary China – Changing Gender Order
Introduction
– TAKASHIMA Kō
9. Nationalism and Gender
– SAKAMOTO Hiroko
10. Masculinity in Modern China
– TAKASHIMA Kō
11. Discourses on the Family, Love and Sex in Modern China
– EGAMI Sachiko
12. Women’s Labor in Modern and Contemporary China
– Linda GROVE
13. The Founding of the People’s Republic of China and the Transformation of
Gender Order
– KOHAMA Masako
14. Rearrangement of Gender Order in Post-Mao China:
Changing Networks of Women’s Federations
– OHASHI Fumie
Column 4: Two Histories of Women in Modern China
– SUDŌ Mizuyo

PART II

15. The Household Register and the Family in Ancient China
– WASHIO Yūko
16. Perceptions of ‘Talented Women’
– ITAHASHI Akiko
17. Healthcare, the Body and Gender in Chinese Medicine
– YAO Yi
18. The History of Women’s/Gender Studies and Feminism in China
– AKIYAMA Yōko
Column 5: Sexual Minorities
– TŌYAMA Hideya
Column 6: Theatre and Gender
– NAKAYAMA Fumi

Bibliography
Index