“Exemplary Women” (Lienü) versus “Worthy Ladies” (Xianyuan): Two Traditions of Writing Women’s History in Tokugawa- and Meiji-Japan

• In Event: Signifiers in Motion: The Transmutation of Chinese Texts in Early Modern East Asia

Abstract

Two genres of writing women’s history are found in the Chinese tradition: namely, “Exemplary Women” (Lienü) and “Worthy Ladies” (Xianyuan). Both originated from the Han Confucian Liu Xiang’s (77-6 BCE) Biographies of Exemplary Women. Each, however, inaugurated new traditions that represented women’s lives and guided their behavior. “Exemplary Women,” having been incorporated into the official histories, became increasingly defined by Confucian norms, whereas “Worthy Ladies,” rooted in the free-spirited Wei-Jin (220-420) intellectual aura and written by private scholars, featured strong-minded, talented, and self-sufficient literary women. The two genres also generated numerous similar works in other areas of the Sinosphere (Japan, Korea, and Vietnam). A close reading of these works will show the existence of different voices on women’s lives, rescuing the relatively obscure “Worthy Ladies” from the dominant historical discourse of “Exemplary Women.” This paper focuses on the transmission and evolution of two genres in Tokugawa- and Meiji-Japan. It will subvert the longstanding Sinocentrism of East Asian Studies, showing that once cultural products travel to other cultural contexts, they quickly become embedded in that space and evolve into new species of literary life that exhibit local qualities and features. Additionally, this study demonstrates how “domesticated” cultural products, when repatriated, interact with the “original” discourses to further generate new variations.

Author

• Nanxiu Qian, Rice University