Amy Stanley Selling Women Summary

According to the tittle, Selling Women is a well-researched book of the Japanese women’s status in early modern Japan known as the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Amy Stanley, a professor at Northwestern University specializing in early modern and modern Japan, provides a deep historical background of prostitution and its impacts to the economy, society, and household. The book reflects not only the role of women but also the officials, elites, brothel keepers and families in the sex trade. The author shows that the Tokugawa period determined women’s bodies as a commodity that could be sent to different areas with a high sex services demand and as an alienate property of men, both husband and father. It is common for women to stay in a transaction

Stanley explains detailed economic situations in many parts of her book. Her narrative acts as a voice for the prostitutes who had no choice. Her work raises a question of women value in the prosperous and remarkable Tokugawa period regardless of their status as daughters and or wives. She argues that women had endured hardship just as much as men during the war era. Even though they did not go into battle, their lives were treated as merchandises and properties of men. For example, it was a report that a man pawned his wife to pay for his father-in-law’s debt (Stanley 2012, 34). As a feminist scholar, Stanley offers perspectives of women who were in the sex trade that no one else could. She emphasizes the significant role of these women at that time as Stanley stated in her book, “ She (the prostitute) symbolizes both economic and cultural dynamism of the shogunate’s great cities and the subjugation of women during a period of intense social repression”. Raising a new aspect of history makes her work become a great and a unique source of knowledge. The author makes her work strong and reliable by adding court records throughout her book to support her arguments. In spite of her detailed information and well-organized work, her writing is somewhat missing the expressions and emotions of the prostitutes. The readers can acknowledge from her work that many women entered the sex trade as daughters supporting their parents, but we do not know their actual feeling. The environments of brothels were described by the law and in general. The readers cannot know the condition of the prostitutes during their