著者

岡 ヤス子

出版者

広島文化女子短期大学

雑誌

広島文化女子短期大学紀要 (ISSN:09137068)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.6, pp.59-65, 1973-03-15

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The Study on the Education of Girls - The second Report - The Mode of Marriage and the Education of Girls in Heian Dynasty In my first report I described the ideal and system of the education of aristocratic girls appeared in the literature of Heian period. Now I want to examine the girl's education of the same period emphasizing the mode of marriage and other matters connected with it. 1. In Nara period a husband used to visit his wife living in a different house. In the middle of Heian period this custom still existed, but the case of taking a husband into the family of this wife was more aod more introduced. Toward the end of Heian period the aristocratic government of Fujiwara clan was suddenly replaced by the militarist one. Since this period the custom of marriage, taking the wife into her husband's family, began to be in vogue. The Heian mode of marriage appears in many stories in classic literature in this period. The husband-visiting form of marriage tended to be polygamous, the married life was unstable and only the wife's family was responsible for the raising of children. The wife had to succeed the properties of the family. As the marriage was started by the exchange of short poems between a man and a lady, it was natural that girls were educated, since their chiedhood to have many accomplishments. 2. In the middle of Heian period most husbands were taken into the wives' families. The sons of a family usually moved into other families. Therefore the development of a family depended on how good a son-in-law was taken into it. Thus even Fujiwara clan could not thrive without a powerful guardian. Even the emperor could not get along well without influential, high ranked government officials among maternal relatives. In order to have excellent sons-in-law, daughters were carefully educated to be beautiful and charming and to have better learning and accomplishments. 3. Thus to become the maternal relation of the emperor, the high-class aristocrat eagerly tried to send his daughter to the court to be the consort of the emperor. More and more emphasis was placed on the daughter's education, so that she might be a pretty, intelligent lady to be chosen as the empress. Encouraged by this tendency daughters of local governors were also trained to have literary talent. On the other hand, the contrivance of Kana-letters out of Kanji characters made it easy for girls to be educated. Consequently there are a lot of famous woman writers in the literary history of Heian period.