It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and engagement rings are everywhere!

Will he propose? Will she say yes?

And if the marriage doesn’t last, divorce rings are now in vogue.

Women, primarily, celebrate divorce. They upcycle their old rings, refashioning them into something even better, something to commemorate their survival.

The marriage failed, but she’s still here, and stronger as a result.

Divorce rings aren’t new, though.

In 1891 Meiji woman writer, Shimizu Shikin told of just such an accessory in her debut piece “Koware yubiwa” (The Broken Ring). The story opens as follows (in Rebecca Jennison’s translation):

I know you are bothered by this ring of mine with no stone. A broken ring like this is not, as you say, very becoming. Perhaps you think I should put in a new one—anything would do. But this broken ring is a kind of remembrance for me, and I cannot possibly change it…

Published in Jogaku zasshi (or Women’s Education Magazine) using the penname “Tsuyuko,” the story shows the way a young woman grows, from an obedient and sheep-like daughter, into a courageous and determined advocate of women’s rights.  Before reaching this state, she must endure a humiliating marriage—a mandated marriage (or kyōhaku kekkon)—to a man who treats her with cold condescension.

Fortified by the offerings of progressive journals like Jogaku zasshi, the heroine is soon brave enough to initiate a divorce.  When she does, she removes the gemstone from her ring as a symbol to herself and to the world of the devaluation of women in mandated marriages.

The ring in this story, the narrator tells us, “was not what is known these days as a wedding ring.  [My husband] just bought it for me for no particular reason.” The heroine’s ring is just as devoid of meaning, as her marriage.  And like the marriage, the ring is given meaning only when it is broken. By destroying the ring, the narrator renders it significant.

For me there can be no greater inspiration than this ring.  It has called forth my spirit and multiplied my courage…When others look at this ring, I suppose they see something unsightly.  But to me it is priceless, not to be exchanged for a million dollars…my life resembles this broken ring…

Valueless as it may appear, the broken ring also symbolizes the woman’s determination to seek her own value elsewhere, to mend her own broken state.

The broken ring thus represents her freedom and self-establishment, qualities that can only be gained through the woman’s willingness to deny the social and financial comforts of matrimony.

Understanding this point helps in reading the final and somewhat perplexing statement in the story:

“I have but one more wish, that the one who gave me this ring might make it new again.  But at this late date, I wonder if…”

The story ends with an ellipsis.

A narrative that began with a woman’s voice breaking an ancient silence, ends with a broken sentence, as the woman’s resolve trails off, or so it would seem.

It is tempting to read the conclusion as a retraction of the narrator’s earlier feminist stance.  Just when the woman seemed certain of her own voice, that voice falters, and the story sighs into silence.

I see the closure as an opening.

The narrator remains open to love. She despaired of her marriage, not because her husband was insensitive, but because it had never been premised on love (or, ren’ai).

“When I see the modern couples today [who can marry for love] I wonder why my husband had not loved me nor I him.  And my broken ring gives evidence to my feelings.”

Marriage, for this Meiji woman, is possible only through love. She is waiting to be fulfilled by love.  She is willing to sacrifice herself for love.

And so was Shikin.

Shikin Shimizu

Like the heroine in her story, Shikin divorced her husband and left her loveless marriage. She moved to Tokyo to work for Jogaku zasshi (the main venue at the time for discussions of love, marriage, and individual rights), and just when it seemed she had settled into singlehood, love walked through the door!

Shikin met Kozai Yoshinao, a professor with the Tokyo School of Agriculture.  He was smitten with the lady editor and began corresponding with her.

In his letters he confessed that she was the first woman he had ever “looked up to,” or “felt respect for.”

In an era when “revere men; despise women” (danson johi) was still a guiding mantra, Yoshinao’s declaration was shocking.

Shikin was moved by the depth of his love but also alarmed.  She was a woman “with a past,” and Yoshinao was most definitely a man with a future.  (He would eventually become the president of Tokyo Imperial University.)

“My body is damaged, my name soiled,” she confessed to him.

She assumed that once he learned of her past marriage (as well as an affair she had had with activist and ladies’ man Ōi Kentarō, that ended with the birth of a child out of wedlock), he would have nothing more to do with her.

But Yoshinao’s respect for Shikin only multiplied.

Later years of Dr. Kozai

He was drawn to her honesty and strength and with the way she had borne her trials with integrity and grace.  He countered her confession with a long letter of his own in which he reminded her that he had fallen in love with the woman she was now and was not interested in marrying whomever she might have once been.

Yoshinao’s romantic pursuit inspired Shikin’s next literary work, “Ichi seinen iyō no jukkai” (A Young Man’s Surprising Reminiscences, 1892) which she also published in Jogaku zasshi.

Significantly, where “The Broken Ring” described a woman wrestling with the absence of love; this story portrays a man trying to grapple with the presence of love.  The reminiscence opens with a preface signed by “Tsuyuko” (Shikin’s penname):

Most who write of love [ren’ai] have never experienced it for themselves.  They are like amateur pilots guiding their hapless readers along the channels and currents of their imaginations.  How much more true this is when a man writes of a woman’s love, or a woman of a man’s.  If the pilot makes an error in guiding his ship it could result in the loss of life. If the writer makes a mistake, he earns the laughter of his readers. But I shall make bold and proceed all the same with my account. I do not propose to discourse on love in all its manifestations. I will offer what little I have discovered in my own experiences, and I will leave it to my readers to conclude whether I am right or wrong.

After her humble disclaimer, Shikin allows her narrator, the young man, to speak.

Why is it that my heart is so completely captivated by her?  It has been but days since first we met, and yet she is all I think about…Up to this point, I had thought myself a stalwart man, yet in her presence I become a quivering maiden.  I can only long for her to give me a command, for I would offer her my life.  For her I would consign my character and conceit to the fires of destruction…

Most critics believe the narrator of this story is modeled on Kozai Yoshinao. Surely Shikin culled her account from the letters he had sent her, but she imbues this compilation with her own wishful longings, and her readings from Western romances.

Shikin’s narrator turns his paramour into a virtual goddess, speaking of her with religious adoration:

“Her person admits a radiant light. She purifies others, transforms them into gentle creatures.”

Wow!

Talk about a romantic Valentine!

He goes even further, claiming he would gladly humble himself before her.

“Indeed, worthless though I am, I feel I have already died and am now re-born, particle by particle, in her love.  Because of her and her alone I am allowed to live.”

No “revere men; despise women” here!

Shikin is bold!

Her hero manifests a love that supersedes the flesh.  His goal is not so much to break through barriers and possess the woman as it is to commune with her on a deeply spiritual level.

Shikin’s creation of an ideal love has much in common with the dialogue on love and spirituality found in the pages of Jogaku zasshi.

Many of her contemporaries penned stories about men and women who fall in love without the intercession of meddling go-betweens. Miyake Kaho’s debut work, “Warbler in the Grove” (Yabu no uguisu, 1888) ends in a magnificent love match that completely tears asunder the paternal authority’s plans for an arranged marriage. One year later Kaho’s contemporary, Wakamatsu Shizuko published Sumire (Violet), featuring a very self-assured woman who resists an unwanted suitor. As cool as a cucumber, she rebuffs his proposal in no uncertain terms:

“My dear Mr. Sawabe, I hold you in such high esteem, I cannot begin to express how very grateful I am that you would even consider spending a lifetime with someone such as myself.  When a man asks a woman to be his wife, he speaks from his heart, granting that woman the highest honor by placing her first before the world.  How could I make light of such a proposal? … Indeed, this relationship is most important to me, and that is why I must refuse your offer. I trust we can continue to enjoy one another’s company, as we have until now. I shall be ever vigilant not to mar the happy friendship we have nurtured…Please let us not discuss it further.”

Sumire’s reasons for declining Sawabe’s proposal are never made clear, and perhaps purposefully so. Shizuko’s focus in the story is on choice and not on motivation.  Whatever her reason, Sumire said no.  And it is her ability to do so that Shizuko celebrates. By saying no, by establishing her own volition, Sumire represents a new type of woman. A woman who is feminine, virtuous, and pure yet independent of men.

Unlike male poets at the time, who tended to write of the virginal woman, Shikin, Shizuko, and other women portray a purity that is divorced from physicality.

Indeed, the more wounded Shikin’s heroines, the purer they appear. Their purity is intensified by the fact that they are willing to embrace their very abjectness, to own it, and confess it—not out of shame—for they have nothing to repent, but out of a selfless concern for their lovers.

Interestingly, in her creation of a hero who adores his lover all the more for those very factors that others would despise, Shikin absolves herself of her own “past.”  By revealing herself to Yoshinao as a woman worthy of love, indeed a woman worthy of worship, she also shows herself to be a woman capable of love.

When “The Broken Ring” concluded, the narrator despaired of ever knowing “love.”  Indeed, the entire story had been a discourse on the brokenness of a loveless marriage and the emptiness in the traditional marital system.  “Reminiscences” on the other hand, makes true the promise of the broken ring by restoring to it the gemstone of love.

Importantly, it is a love realized through a willingness to take chances in the face of social pressure.

For Shikin this was ren’ai.  Love.

What’s love got to do with it?   Everything.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

For more information on Shimizu Shikin, please see my work Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2000).

To access translations of her works by Rebecca Jennison see The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan, co-edited by Rebecca Copeland and Melek Ortabasi (University of Columbia Press, 2006).