The Role of Women in Japan

Melissa Silberman
High School of Telecommunications
Brooklyn, New York City

Aim: How do women's roles in Japan differ from the roles of women in the U.S.?

Duration of Lesson: Three 45-minute periods. This lesson can be taught in a Women's Literature course, a Global Studies course, or a Japanese Literature course.

Rationale: Teenagers are great purveyors of society. Based upon their observations of the role women play in American society, they will utilize their knowledge to compare and contrast the roles women play in the U.S. and in Japan.

Objectives:
1. Students will be able to utilize examples from classic Japanese fiction and compare them to observations they make about women in the U.S.
2. Students will analyze quotes from two works of Japanese fiction to develop a thesis about the role women play in Japanese society.

Procedure:

DAY 1
1. Motivation: Journal entry
Are women equal to men in this county? Why or why not? If they are not, what needs to happen for equality to be obtained?

Discuss students' responses.

2. Establish prior knowledge:
Create a T-chart on the blackboard with one column being Role of American Women and the other column - Role of Japanese Women. Elicit answers from the class. (It is alright if the Japanese side is less developed; the class will revisit the list as a post-activity.)

3. Hand out summaries of The Waiting Years and The Doctor's Wife. Ask students to read the summaries in class and to write a response about Japanese society on the topic "What observations can one make about Japanese culture based upon the information provided in the summaries?"

DAY 2
Divide the class in groups of three or four. Distribute the enclosed worksheet of quotes, and have students read and analyze them. After the students have written down their responses to each quote, discuss with the entire class what they have learned about the treatment of Japanese women.

Homework: Interview a woman in your family on any of the following themes:
1. American women sacrifice for their men and children.
2. American women put men first.
3. American men see women as their servants.
4. American women hide their feelings from men and share them with other women only.

DAY 3
1. As a warm-up exercise, share the homework interviews with the class.

2. Return to the T-chart constructed in Day 1. Ask the students to revisit it and to add their new findings.

3. Student assignment: Using the themes listed below, choose tow that Japanese and American women share and in a paragraph for each one explain why you believe they share these two roles.

- Patience and virtue are a woman's most valuable traits, and silent suffering connotes grace and good bearing.
- Suffering silently is admirable, expected, and a sign of a worthy Japanese woman.
- Women lead a secret life of feelings that men are excluded from witnessing.
- Intimacy between husband and wife is generally neither acceptable nor necessary for the running of the household.
- Women as domestic samurai: many silent battles are fought inside the home.
- The intimacy between women supplants the natural intimacy between men and women.
- Daughters-in-law are at the whims and mercy of their mothers-in-law.
- Women who marry into a family are seen as useless additions with limited rights.