Paper short abstract:

This paper studies the construction of gender roles in a Japanese new religion by analyzing the miraculous stories published in Konkokyo's journal in the late Meiji period. Against the background of modernization, gender roles transforms through the interaction with modern ideologies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes the construction of the discourse on gender roles in a Japanese new religion by studying Konkokyo's publication for women in the late Meiji period. Japanese new religions have been viewed by the post-war Marxist historians, as a site of "popular thought（民衆思想）" that manifested the autonomous agency of people at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Yet the extraction of "thought" from the "religion" was possible only after all the transcendental and corporeal elements were stripped away from the lives and sayings of the founders, who were considered to be the source of originality and creativity. As a result, even though many of the founders and early disciples of the new religions were female, their gender and religious practice, which often included miraculous healings, possession, or clairvoyance, were disregarded in the narratives constructed by the historians, and the female gender of the agency was considered simply a sign of low status if any significance was attached to it at all.

The disregarding of supernatural and corporeal elements was also a part of the process of modernizing the institution. In the case of Konkokyo, around the founder, Akazawa Bunji, were women and men who also practiced shamanism to intervene and control the power of the supernatural. After the death of the founder in 1883, however, the institutionalization of Konkokyo was undertaken by male successors, concurrent with the Japan's modern nation building. As regards gender roles, the government's education bureau promoted the slogan "good wife, wise mother", which was the application of the model presented by modern European nations. In that context, the women's magazine was published aimed at female followers of Konkokyo. This magazine became an arena for the ideologies promoted by the modern nation-state, Confucius worldview of early modern, and their religious beliefs.

In modern media, whose aim was the education of women, stories of miraculous healings, or clairvoyance, that were once disregarded, reemerges. This paper analyzes these texts published in this magazine, juxtaposed with other discourses for the construction of gender role in the worldviews presented.