Birth-giving and Avoidance Taboo: Women's Body versus the Historiography of Ubuya
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The article argues against the widely held modern understanding of birthing practices in premodern Japan: that birth took place in ubuya, or parturition huts, which were constructed away from the home in order to contain birth-related pollution; that this practice finds its historical origin and authentication in the ancient texts, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki; that the practice was universal and continuous from ancient times through the early twentieth century; and that birthing women, polluted and isolated as they were, were miserable and oppressed. Through the examination of writings from ancient through early modern times, we found that the "ubuya trope" proponents had misread and misinterpreted passages in historical texts. The ubuya in the Kojiki did not connote birth pollution. The term ubuya in aristocratic writings did not refer to an isolated birthing hut. The instances of ubuya that can be observed in early modern times were few and located specifically in coastal and mountainous regions. Moreover, far from turning women into passive victims of an oppressive "tradition," the ubuya structure sometimes seemed to have met purposes other than giving birth, such as committing infanticide and sexual liaison, and thus invited the warrior government's censure and order for its removal. Irrespective of ubuya, however, the notion of birth-related pollution developed and expanded in accordance with the evolving power relations of the imperial, aristocratic, religious, and warrior institutions. Not a simple story of female oppression, the actual history of the institution of ubuya points to the misconceived universality in the modernist construction of the "unchanging tradition" and to the need to appreciate women's agency in giving meanings to their birthing process.
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International Research Center for Japanese Studies | 論文
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