The shrine constructed in 1498 to the faithful widow Qian of Changshu county (modern Jiangsu province) gave her a place in local history that no woman had occupied before. Though the ideal of widow-fidelity was nearly two millennia old and was understood to be part of “Confucian” (ru) teaching, it had always been expressed more as precept than as practice. Earlier communities rarely congratulated themselves on their faithful widows; even widows whom the emperor had honored were generally recorded in the dynastic rather than the local histories. But the widow Qian, who committed suicide in 1435 upon the death of her husband, was celebrated in prose and poetry, written up in the county history, and granted a shrine with the same spring and autumn sacrifices that the government accorded enshrined men. Now she was a visible part of the ritual landscape, with a corresponding multiplier effect on her iconic power.

Here are two passages chosen from a genre of Bengali domestic science/advice manuals for women in late-nineteenth-century Bengal. The first passage is from Strir sahit kathopakathan [“Conversations with the Wife”], one of the most popular of all advice manuals, first published in 1884 and reissued eight subsequent times, the last in 1909. Its author was Dhirendranath Pal, a prolific writer who published seven books in Bengali and eleven in English between the 1880s and the early twentieth century. The second passage is from Nari dharma [“Woman's Dharma”], a manual of advice for women written by Nagendrabala (Mustaphi) Dasi in 1900, and one of only two advice manuals authored by women I have found in this period. Its author was born in 1878, and, by her death in 1906 at the age of twenty-eight, she had published numerous collections of poetry, two books of advice for women, and one novel.

At age 47, Ishida Haruo is at the point of no return. A Shinto priest for seventeen years, he knows that at this stage there will be no career change, no drastic improvement in his life-style, and certainly no promotion to head or even associate head priest. And yet, when listening to him discuss his work and career, one does not hear complaints. “When I come to the shrine in the mornings, I have a secure feeling. I know what I am supposed to do and I know how to do it with a minimum of effort and stress. Not too many Japanese can say that about their jobs! I certainly won't die of overwork (karōshi)!” he says with a laugh. He parks his aging Toyota in the same spot as always, enters the shrine's back door by the kitchen, and goes into a four-mat tatami room to change into the white samue-style work garments if office work or grounds maintenance is scheduled, or pale blue hakama bloomers if dealing with the public or participating in a ritual is on the agenda.

In April of 1748 the Xiaoxian empress, first wife of Qianlong, died of a malarial fever. In the months that followed, a scandal erupted that shook the bureaucracy and left several officials dead. Their crime was shaving themselves before the expiration of the hundred days of declared state mourning. The case was an important moment in Qing rule, showing a very saddened and still-learning emperor grappling with different methods and models of governing, questioning his role as a specifically Manchu leader, and struggling with the place that law would occupy in his reign. He emerges from mourning his wife, and from the scandals that ensued, with a changed sense of how to govern that would have long-term consequences for the Qing government. Before turning to our story, it is best to begin with a context for the issues.

In his Quirky First novel, The Prevalence of Witches, originally published in 1947, Aubrey Menen tells the story of an Education Officer posted to Limbo, “six hundred and fifty miles of clumsy hills and jungle” in British India. Here, “for a thousand years the inhabitants had shot at everybody who came into it with arrows and their aim was usually adequate to their purpose of keeping people out; where the bowmen failed to get home, the mosquitoes did not” (Menen 1989,1). Soon after the Education Officer's arrival, the village chief kills his wife's paramour. The chief does not consider himself responsible for the act; he feels that he has been pushed into it by a witch. The rest of the story skittles around the funny and increasingly improbable efforts of the Political Agent (Catallus), the Education Officer, and two others to save the chief, awaiting trial in prison, from being sentenced for this crime. They arrange a miracle to convince the Judge that what the Limbodians practice is a religion and that the chief should be let off since he was only practicing his religion. But the Judge, a Mr. Chandra Bose, is a member of the Rationalist Press Association and treats the miracle merely as an interesting case of mass hysteria. Eventually, Catallus slips the key to the jail to the chief, who then escapes from prison.