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Robert Townsend
Goldin
World Literature
11/28/12
Ailing’s “Sealed Off” and Ichiyo’s “Separate Ways”
Society’s Effect on Gender, Power, and Morality
Higuchi Ichiyo’s “Separate Ways” and Zhang Ailing’s “Sealed Off” were written in
similar cultures, but at very different times. Higuchi Ichiyo published “Separate Ways” in Japan
in the final years of the 1800s, when the country was quickly modernizing. On the other hand,
Ailing published “Sealed Off” in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China, during both the SinoJapanese and Second World Wars. While they were by no means contemporaries, the effects of
being a woman in this period of East Asian modernization clearly paralleled each other. By
analyzing the author’s lives and the similarities in the two stories’ structures, a deeper
connection can be formed based on the common theme of how gender roles and societal
expectations in these times affected both men and women’s perceptions of power and
morality.
In order to understand the role of the female characters in “Sealed Off” and “Separate
Ways,” it’s necessary to understand how Zhang Ailing and Higuchi Ichiyo’s lives were clearly
inspirations for their respective work. Higuchi Ichiyo, born in 1872, had a fine childhood until
1889 when her father passed away and became the head of the household, supporting her mother
and sister. Although she struggled financially, she denied a proposal to marriage in order to
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preserve her career as a writer (Tanaka 175). These experiences of taking the place of her father
in the role of the patriarch of her family and denying a request of marriage clearly had an effect
on her. Through her writings, her belief that women didn’t need to be relegated to the role of
mother and caretaker often shown through. Living in poverty and near the “pleasure district” of
Japan, however, she also understood the plight of some women who were forced to prostitute
themselves in order to support themselves and/or their family.
Zhang Ailing lived a much longer life than Ichiyo, but she experienced many relatable
hardships as well. Born in 1921, she shot to fame in China and internationally to a lesser extent
in the mid-1940s. Just as quickly as she became famous, however, she fell back in to obscurity,
as many critics “labeled [her] a cultural traitor and was subsequently repeatedly singled out for
‘treason’,” forcing her to move away from Shanghai, eventually landing in America (Ma 37).
Zuqiong Ma asserts that the accusations of treachery were raised because Zhang’s writing
contained feminist and sexualized analyses of gender roles, as well as controversial discussions
of infidelity and other immoral actions (40). It can be assumed that Zhang’s assertions were too
close to factual for comfort in the eyes of those who wanted to bring her down. By understanding
the amount of relation the two authors have to their subject matter, and the parallels between the
two author’s relations, their similar desire to tear down, or at least blur, the division between
male and female gender roles becomes increasingly pertinent.
Women in Chinese and Japanese societies, at the time of the authors’ lives, had
seemingly very little control over their lives, and this inner desire for having some power over
their lives often created dichotomies controlled many of the actions of both characters, for better
and worse. In “Sealed Off,” Okyo initially appears to be a matriarchal character; her sewing is
emphasized early on, and she treats Kichizo in a motherly way. On the other hand, she also gains
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power that is generally preserved for the men in the society through the pitiful character of
Kichizo.
The expectation of women in those days was to get married off to a man who would
control the rest of her life, financially and otherwise. However, Okyo exhibits the more
masculine expectations of this male-female relationship when dealing with Kichizo. Firstly, she
has power through her intelligence. When Kichizo asks to wear an outfit Okyo is making for
someone else, she scolds him, saying, “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you know what they say?”
(908). Okyo was clearly exhibiting knowledge that Kichizo simply doesn’t have, even though
they are almost equal in age. Okyo also has control of the future of Kichizo, when he says
“Remember what you promised once? When your luck changes, you said you’d make me a good
kimono. Will you really?” (908). Generally it would be expected that the young woman would
be looking forward to what a male would give them in terms of financial success. This flip in the
husband-wife dichotomy was very unique to female works, and literature in general, in the time
that Ichiyo wrote her stories.
Through the extremely intelligent and cognizant Wu Cuiyuan, Zhang creates another rundown character like Okyo who constantly blurs the line between masculinity and femininity.
Cuiyuan’s intelligence and position as a very young female professor is one of the largest
conflicts in gender roles. This issue was in fact a common one in this time, when the traditional
family structure of the males working and females housekeeping was being constantly
challenged by the increasing modernity of the East Asian world, and threatened males attempted
to keep women in their place (Liu 148). Cuiyuan, according to the narrator, experienced these
attempts at being put down constantly. “Cuiyuan always felt that no one at school respected
her… Cuiyuan took abuse at school, took abuse at home,” (Zhang 501). Her parents held
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unattainable and contradictory expectations for her as well because of her womanhood and the
modernization of Chinese society. Her oppression was so deep that she gave one student’s
horrible paper an A simply because “he treated her like an intelligent, sophisticated person; as if
she were a man,” (501).
Cuiyuan’s unhappiness stemmed from the fact that she was so well aware of the horrible
treatment women received from society, much like Okyo being uncomfortable with her situation
as a poor seamstress. These feelings of oppression were accentuated by the juxtaposition of their
positions as feminine women and the small amounts of masculine power that each of them were
given through Cuiyuan’s student and the pitiful Kichizo. By writing stories with women holding
masculine characteristics, the two authors were already being controversial (Mitsutani 55).
However, the ways the two female characters decided to act upon this knowledge of their own
subjugation made “Separate Ways” and “Sealed Off” even more controversial to publish at their
times.
The main male character in “Sealed Off” has a very relatable loss of certain masculine
qualities when compared to Kichizo in “Separate Ways.” Cuiyuan always seemed one step ahead
of his thought process, like when she says he’s going to complain about his wife not
understanding immediately before he does exactly that. Zongzhen is also used by Zhang to
emphasize the idea of males being “castrated” in a way by the strict expectations put on men to
marry the perfect wife and work at the perfect job, etc. (Chown 2007). Zongzhen mentions a
number of times that he felt like a true man for the first time in a long time when he was
speaking with Cuiyuan. While it didn’t seem to be as important of a theme of Ichizo’s “Separate
Ways,” she furthers this idea of male castration in society by showing, through Kichizo, what
happens when men don’t follow the expected masculine norms. As mentioned earlier, Okyo
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often took the male role in her relationship with Kichizo. Because of this fact, the other boys
made fun of Kichizo, comparing him to the female character in a classic Chinese play (Ichiyo
911).
As a result of these blurred lines between and reversal of masculine dominance and
feminine subjugation within the two stories, societal expectations of morality became blurred as
well. In “Separate Ways,” Okyo was clearly growing very tired of her job that wasn’t going to
have any upward mobility, much like the plight Ichiyo herself experienced as a struggling novel
writer. In order to break free of this poor lifestyle, she made a choice to move away and become
someone’s mistress, where she will live a more lavish life, and as Okyo herself states, “Wear a
crepe kimono too, for a change – even if it’s tainted,” (Ichiyo 912). Clearly this is considered an
immoral and almost reprehensible act, especially in the young eyes of Kichizo. Nevertheless, she
goes through with it even after the intense protesting of Kichizo.
Through Zongzhen, a less educated married man, Cuiyuan is given an opportunity to free
herself, in a way, from the oppression of her society. When Zongzhen first mentions how he
wants to take another wife, Cuiyuan seems disgusted at first, although she seems to take pity on
him when he says that he was forced in to the marriage. This disgust slowly turns in to interest as
she began to think about her family and “how she hated them all. They had cheated her long
enough… Zongzhen didn’t have money, but he did have a wife – that would make them good
and angry! It would serve them right!” (Zhang 505). Clearly Cuiyuan is extremely conscious of
the subjugation of women and men in her society. Even though she was aware that having (and
being) a concubine was a serious negative in the eyes of society, her disdain for this society
made her tempted to go against her morality to the point where she even gave Zongzhen her
phone number to speak to again later. While she ended up believing that the time talking with
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Zongzhen was almost like a dream, and nothing will come of it, the fact that Cuiyuan was
willing to consider giving up all of her University studies and professional experience, as well as
the chance of being a good wife, was serious enough for the readers at the time to take it very
seriously, and for Zhang herself to be considered a traitor to her society, as mentioned earlier by
Zuqiong Ma (40).
Although Okyo and Cuiyuan came from very different levels of success in society, their
final decisions in the stories were shockingly similar. Cuiyuan was not poor or destitute, but she
still clearly wanted to escape her life with her oppressive family, just as Okyo wanted to escape
her job as a seamstress. Obviously becoming a mistress or concubine in and of itself is not really
escaping the feminine roles of women. But only looking at the fact that they became or
considered becoming a mistress wasn’t the important point for Ichiyo and Zhang. Instead, it’s the
fact that these two women were choosing their own destiny. Cuiyuan knew that her parents
wanted desperately for her to marry a man they approved of. In the same vein, Okyo’s choice to
be a mistress freed her from the work of a seamstress, where she had to please her landlord by
telling the workers of the umbrella shop “bring over your mending anytime, boys. I don’t care
what condition it’s in… I’m always sewing anyway,” (Ichiyo 910). By choosing not to continue
doing all of the boys’ sewing, and ending her relationship as the pseudo-mother figure of
Kichizo, Okyo is given at least a moment of freedom and sovereignty from the male dominated
society she resided in, just as Cuiyuan got to enjoy the freedom of considering an alternate
lifestyle during the brief moments of becoming sealed off from the rest of the outside world.
Much like Kate Chopin in late 1800s and early 1900s America, Higuchi Ichiyo and
Zhang Ailing were both ahead of the feminist movement that they can best be compared to
because of their challenges to the patriarchal structure and deep analysis of the issues that arise
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from this oppressive society. Being women themselves, Zhang and Ichiyo clearly showed a focus
on the plight of the female characters within their story. However, the main male characters of
Kichizo and Lu Zongzhen experience suffering and a blurred masculinity in comparison to their
female counterparts as well, showing how a society with strict gender roles doesn’t only harm
women, but subjugates the men in to inappropriate and suffocating roles as well.
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Works Cited
Chown, Lim Chin. "Castration Parody and Male 'Castration': Eileen Chang's Female Writing and
Her Anti-Patriarchal Strategy." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism 184 (2007).
Ichiyo, Higuchi. "Separate Ways." Translated by Robert Lyons Danly. The Norton Anthology
World Literature E. New York: Norton & Company, 2012. 907-913.
Liu, Joyce Chi-Hui. "Filmic Transposition of the Roses: Stanley Kwan’s Feminine Response to
Eileen Chang’s Women." Feminism/Femininity in Chinese Literature (2002): 145-158.
Ma, Zuqiong. "New South, New China, and the Refashioning of Womanhood." Interdisciplinary
Humanities (2010): 37-46.
Tanaka, Hisako. "Higuchi Ichiyo." Monumenta Nipponica 12.3/4 (1956): 171-194.
Zhang, Ailing. "Sealed Off." Translated by Robert Lyons Danly. The Norton Anthology World
Literature F. New York: Norton & Company, 2012. 498-506.