Kaibara Ekiken’s Thoughts on Girls’ Education

摘要

With the acceptance of Confucian thought during the Edo period, there was a shift in the role of Confucianism from being a tool of the state to being a social and ethical system that gave detailed rules of conduct and defined family ethics. Women were especially affected by this shift. In literature, the training books for girls that were imported from China at the end of the 9th century became widely accepted only in the patriarchal Edo period. As Neo Confucianism developed in Japan, the “Three Obediences”（三従） became expected of women. The obedience of women toward father, husband and son became the main objective of a woman’s education. Many of these texts, based on a Chinese original, were compiled and published in Japan. These works often contained uniquely Japanese ideas and attitudes towards women. This paper will discuss Kaibara Ekiken’s（1630-1714） “How to Train Girls”（Joshi o oshieyuruho）, which influenced later developments in the philosophy of women’s education in Japan, and will also examine the relationship of Ekiken’s writings to Japanese women.