Here’s my copy of the early eighteenth-century classic The Greater Learning for Women (Onna daigaku). (Don’t believe the modern cover - it’s almost certainly not the work of the famous Confucian scholar Kaibara Ekken)

This book was a didactic text for women that was reprinted constantly during the Edo period - I have a nineteenth century copy, which I bought at a used book fair for about a hundred dollars.

Onna Daigaku was vehemently criticized in the modern period for its exhortations for women to be modest, virtuous, and quiet - and to obey their husbands. The first line of the main text says “To be a woman is to grow up and enter another household”

But as other scholars - including Yokota Fuyuhiko and Yabuta Yutaka - have argued that there’s much more here than a set of oppressive patriarchal exhortations. For example . . .

Look at the actual first page of the printed book, before the main text begins. This is a lavishly illustrated celebration of the work of both male and female peasants.

Also, see how dirty it is? As Yabuta as observed, copies of Onna Daigaku are among the dirtiest early modern books he encounters - a testament to generations of enthusiastic and messy little readers.

This is followed by an illustrated series of poems for every season (again, dirty with what looks like water or tea stains)

Then we have scenes from the 11th century classic The Tale of Genji

Above the main text, we have charming images of women teaching children to read and write

And sewing

And laundry

Lists of vocabulary (characters and their readings) about thread and textiles

Pictures of women hanging noodles to dry

Raking salt from the seashore

And diving!

And if the reader is interested in other good books for young ladies, here’s a convenient list of other volumes you can buy

This is why having and looking at actual books is so important - with this context, you see much more than a stodgy didactic text. You see a celebration of women and their labor - artistic, creative, productive, and reproductive work.

And you can also understand why generations of children might have loved it, despite the forbidding main text.

This appears briefly in my book, but the go-to in English is Marcia Yonemoto, The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan