Developments in female education of Meiji Japan as seen from Jogaku Zasshi's editorials by Iwamoto Yoshiharu (original) (raw)

WOMEN'S LIBERATION IN MEIJI JAPAN: RUPTURES IN CULTURAL CONCEPTIONS OF FEMALE EDUCATION, SOCIAL ROLES, AND POLITICAL RIGHTS

Intercultural Relations, 4(2(8), 2020

In 1872, the Meiji government issued the Education Act aiming to provide basic public education for boys and girls. The clash between Confucian ideals of women and the recently introduced Western literature on female liberation divided opinions among scholars. Having been influenced by the writings of British thinkers such as John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer, Japanese male and female thinkers proceeded to enlist various arguments in favor of female schooling and equal rights. Despite their advocating the right of women to attend schools, as well as their general agreement regarding the favorable results that girls' education could bring to the nation, it is possible to identify key differences among scholars concerning the content of girls' education and the nature of women's rights. This paper focuses on Kishida Toshiko, an important female figure in Meiji politics who not only fought for female education but also emerged at the forefront of activism in her advocacy of women's political rights and universal suffrage, showing the clear influence of British suffragette Millicent Garret Fawcett.

The State of Women and Women’s Education at the Beginning of Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1651)

IZUMI

This study attempted to draw a more critical analysis of women and their education at the beginning of the Tokugawa period. Tokugawa, or the Edo period in Japan, was a warrior society. It is one of the most studied fields for many scholars as it highlighted the feature of Japanese culture until today. In Japan, women’s studies began in the 1970s, which is considered late than Western. Recently, there is still limited research regarding women’s education activities being conducted under the Tokugawa shogunate. This study engaged historical methods, namely heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and historiography. At the beginning of the Tokugawa era, women’s education was varied based on social status and families’ occupation. The gap of education between men and women and noblewomen and commoners is a mystifying matter as some historical accounts address the contrary facts. Many historical writings indicate that women at the beginning of the Tokugawa period experienced great repress...

Shizuko KOYAMA translated by Stephen FILLER. Ryosai Kenbo: The Educational Ideal of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’ in Modern Japan(The Intimate and the Public in Asian and Global Perspectives.)

Educational Studies in Japan, 2014

According to Dr. Shizuko Koyama, the word ryousai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) in the title of this book refers, in a narrow sense, to the ideal of Japanese women's education before World War II, and it was established through promulgation of the Ordinance on Girls' High Schools in 1899. In other words, it is the paragon of an education that inseparably links to the idea of the Japanese National Polity and the ideology of the Family Nation, which is a characteristic of prewar Japan, and the ideas of Confucianism existed in its roots. Against such conventional interpretations as mentioned above, the author proposes a paradigm shift of the ideal of ryousai kenbo. That is, the ideal of ryousai kenbo was an ideology that justified and rationalized the division of labor by gender in the manner of "men work while women do housework and raise children," and this existed not only in prewar Japan, but also in postwar Japanese society. Furthermore, this was something that existed in modern western societies as well. When perceiving through such a perspective, the ideal of women's education referred to as ryousai kenbo requires an even broader as well as elaborate interpretation. Firstly, the ideal of ryousai kenbo should be "examined as a way of thinking that is inseparable from such issues as the formation of the modern citizen-state and the formation of the 'modern family'." (p. 7.) Secondly, how the principle of ryousai kenbo, which was once established in the Meiji period, transformed along with changes in social conditions after the Meiji period must be pursued. The book begins with the preface that shows the author's approach to the issues regarding ryousai kenbo. Next, in Chapter One, the author explores the type of ideal image of women that was mentioned in the Jokunsho (instructional textbooks that inculcated moral codes for women) of the Edo period. This chapter also includes a fascinating section that theories of "kenbo" (wise mother) that appear in various educational textbooks (Oraimono) in the Meiji

Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan: The Development of the Feminist Movement. By Mara Patessio. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2011. viii, 232 pp. 65.00(cloth);65.00 (cloth); 65.00(cloth);25.00 (paper)

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2012

In addition, Laver's main thesis-that the Tokugawa goal in foreign relations centered on counteracting the power of daimyo in the Kyushu region-deals with a fascinating aspect of foreign relations early in the Edo period that has not been comprehensively explored in English. Nonetheless Laver tells us little about how Kyushu domains themselves actually viewed and executed the 1635 edicts to help us determine how, as he asserts, Tokugawa leaders gained the upper hand in supervising foreign relations for the Japanese state. He instead provides discussions of events in and around Nagasaki, such the Dutch move from Hirado and the Shimabara Rebellion. We therefore learn much about these important events and relations with outside parties more generally, but do not gain a firm understanding of the interplay between the bakufu and Kyushu domains. Overall this book offers an accessible overview of foreign relations in the first half of the seventeenth century and therefore would be useful in an undergraduate survey if a more reasonably priced paperback edition becomes available. But unfortunately it falls short in shedding new light on the course of foreign relations in the early Edo period.

IGSA @ND19 - Girls between Education and Emerging Awareness in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973), one of the most successful modern Japanese women writers, has recently been re-evaluated for her role in building the so-called shōjo bunka (girl's culture) in the early twentieth century. As Michiko Suzuki (2006) pointed out, she "developed the genre of girls' fiction and brought a feminist perspective to the family romance in the genre of popular fiction". In particular, in her collection of short stories titled Hana Monogatari​ (Flower Tales, 1916-1924)-that quickly became very popular among female students-most of the stories depict female-female desire or love in an almost dreamy and melancholic way: Yoshiya celebrates romantic friendship as an unparalleled love that defines the unique space of girlhood, separate from the outside adult world (Suzuki 2006). The purpose of the present paper is to focus on the setting of almost all the relationships, the higher girl's schools (the typical plot features a student's crush on another student or young teacher) and to reflect on the connection between the emergence of same-sex love between girls as educational value (Yoshiya 1923) and the new education system established by the Ministry of Education in 1872.

Women's Education at Meiji Jogakkō and Martial Arts

Asian Studies, 2018

The topic of bushidō in education has recently been explored by Gainty (2013), Benesch (2014), and several Japanese historians in Japan, such as Sōgawa (2017). However, martial arts and bushidō, as found in the education for women, remains a largely untreated issue, despite the great attention women and their physical education received in the discourses regarding the creation of a healthy modern nation that took place during and after the Meiji period (1868–1912). By looking at numerous primary sources, this paper, building upon Lukminaitė (2018), focuses on Meiji Jogakkō's instruction of budō as a modern means of physical education. It aims to provide new insights into how budō was perceived, treated in writing, and functionally put into practice.

The Quest for Women\u27s Rights in Turn-of-the-Century Japan

2005

This chapter will discuss the goals of women\u27s rights advocates and the meaning of their demands in the context of turn-of-the-century state and society formation. It examines women\u27s rights discourses in late nineteenth-century periodicals, some of them directed to a female readership and some directed to a general, often male, audience. Sources include journals like Meiroku zasshi, Jogaku zasshi, Joken, Tokyo fujin kyofukai zasshi, and some regional publications. 25 Nineteenth-century advocates for women were, of course, of varying minds about the definition of “women’s rights,” but all agreed that women did not have rights at that time. Some argued for a communitarian inclusiveness reminiscent of the Rousseauian ideas espoused in the 1870s when neither ordinary men nor women had political rights. Others, inspired by Mill, stressed improved education as a way for women to gain the subjectivity (personhood or identity) that would make them eligible for rights. There were also...