Japanese Girls and Women, Alice Mabel Bacon [ebook reader library TXT] 📗

Japan fully recognizes the right of married women to hold property, although only in exceptional cases are they allowed the management of their own holdings. The law also regards the wife, in household matters, as her husband's agent.

In actual practice, it is not uncommon for the wife to manage the entire income of the family, receiving it from her husband and acting as his treasurer. The wife's own earnings are seldom given to the husband, and her position is one of entire independence in the disposal of whatever she adds to the family revenue. But should the wife bring into the family at marriage property which passes into the husband's management, the chances are that, unless a divorce should occur, she will never lay any claim to the principal, or think of it again as her own. While her husband cannot actually dispose of it without her consent, she is pretty certain to give her consent should he ask it, and he may do very nearly anything that he chooses with it. We thus see that the tendency is to give the management of the income, as a part of the management of the household, to the woman, and leave the disposal of the principal, as a part of the outside business, to the care of the man. This system of domestic finance seems not unlike the common practice in thrifty and well-managed homes in America, and shows that a spirit of mutual confidence between husband and wife belongs to Japan as to Western nations. As the result of my own observation in a number of homes, I should say that the judgment of the wife in money matters is quite as much trusted in Japan as in America, and that, in this one respect at least, her place in the home is as responsible a one as that of the Western housekeeper. One instance may be cited of a woman whose business ability is so well known as to have a national reputation. By birth a member of a family which is remarkable for its success in all financial undertakings, she has inherited a large share of the family characteristic, and is credited with the personal management of a large bank, as well as other successful business undertakings. Her husband's name and not her own appears on the prospectuses and in the newspapers, but unless report is very far astray, she is the business man of the family, and her sound sense and good judgment have built up the fortune which is their common possession.

In the educational system of Japan, schools for girls are provided by the government, but no provision for studies more advanced than those of the middle schools for boys is included in the scheme, with the single exception of the Higher Normal School in Tōkyō, in which a limited number of young women are trained to take positions as teachers in the ordinary normal schools for girls. To quote from the Annual Report of the Minister of Education for the year 1898, the latest to which I have access, "Higher female schools are institutions designed to give instruction in such higher subjects of general education as are necessary for females." This shows with considerable completeness the idea that dominates all government and much private effort for the education of women in Japan. The schools are to teach simply such subjects as are necessary for females; anything more would be superfluous, possibly dangerous. The thought of women as individuals, with minds and souls to be trained and developed to their highest possibilities, is still somewhat foreign to the mind of the average Japanese man. In its stead is the idea that females must be instructed in such subjects as are necessary for a proper understanding of their duties as wives and mothers. But if Japan to-day is where England and America were in the first half of the nineteenth century, the country is certainly moving forward, as the statistics in regard to education for the three successive years 1896, 1897, and 1898 show. Great efforts are being made to increase the attendance of girls at the common schools, and with gratifying results.[43]

As we advance into the higher schools, the discrepancy in numbers between the two sexes grows greater. In the kindergartens the attendance of girls is nearly equal to that of boys; in the elementary schools there are three boys to two girls; in the higher elementary schools, seven boys to two girls. The boys' middle schools, which are equivalent in grade to the girls' high schools, have fourteen boys taking their courses to every two girls in the high schools. In the apprentice and technical schools, there are fifteen men to every two women. Even the normal schools, which in our own country are almost given over to women, in Japan have six male students to every female. The "special schools," mainly professional, have, to 11,069 men, 73 women, all enrolled in private schools, and presumably taking medical courses. Beyond this point women have no opportunities offered to them. In the higher schools, equivalent to the college and graduate courses given by universities in America, 7,224 young men are given opportunities that women must go abroad to obtain.

These figures are, as I have said, for the year 1898. The year 1901 sees two hopeful movements well begun. One of these is the opening of an institution bearing the title of "Female University," endowed and supported by Japanese, through the strenuous efforts of Mr. Jinzo Naruse, a prominent Christian who has spent some time in America. At its opening, five hundred girls were glad to enter, but of these very few are ready for college work. Mr. Naruse, however, believes that in time he will be able to enlarge his college department and diminish the preparatory, which is now almost the whole of the school. He has the support and encouragement of many wealthy and influential Japanese, among them Count Okuma, the well-known progressive statesman. On the day of the opening of the school, Count Okuma, in a speech from the platform, said that the nation would be twice as strong if its women were well educated. This he called "setting up a double standard." He pointed out that Turkey, Egypt, Persia, and China were countries which had tried to get along with a "single standard," and which had fallen conspicuously behind. He called attention to the fact that Japan's primitive religion had for its central figure the Goddess of Light, but that, unfortunately for the well-being of the state, woman had been gradually dethroned and thrust down into a low place. After speaking of the debt that Japan owed to China for the civilization and the ethical system that had stood her so long in good stead, the veteran statesman went on to say that society in Japan was disfigured by abuses which were beyond any simple remedy. The only effective medicine was to be found in a radical reform of the ideals of family life, and this could only be effected by an improvement in the status of woman,—an improvement which such institutions as the one that day opened would greatly aid in bringing about.

These words from one of the most honored leaders of Japanese thought voice the feeling that is prevalent throughout Japan in this thirty-fourth year of Méiji. That it is actually moving both government and people is shown by the words of Mr. Kikuchi, Minister of Education, to the Council of Provincial Governors held in Tōkyō in June, 1901. In speaking of the progress of education throughout the country, he stated his intention to push forward the work of secondary education for girls, saying that a prefecture which refused to make provision for such education by 1903 might be compelled to do so by the government.

The other hopeful educational effort to which I have alluded is a school started on a small scale, but with a high standard, by a Japanese woman whose name is almost as well known in America as in Japan, as an educator of great ability and earnestness of purpose. After many years of work as a teacher in the Peeresses' School, a place of great honor from the Japanese standpoint, she has resigned her position to carry out a long-cherished plan. With the pecuniary aid of friends in America, she has founded a school for the preparation of young women who have finished the courses heretofore open to them, and who wish to become teachers of English in the Government schools. The examinations for such positions have always been open to women, but, because of the difficulty in securing proper preparation, there are few who pass them. Since its opening in September, 1900, the school has been crowded with promising pupils, and the small accommodations with which it began, although already once enlarged, are stretched to the uttermost. The girls come from the government high schools and from the mission schools, and the course offered to them of three years of study in English literature, composition, translation, and methods of teaching has proved a strong attraction. In recognition, perhaps, of this effort on behalf of her countrywomen, certainly, of her position at the head of her profession, this same woman has this year been appointed on the examining committee for the government English examinations, an honor never before given to one of her sex,—in itself a sign of the change in thought that the last few years have wrought.

There can be no doubt that the education of women is moving forward, pushed by the leading men of the country and aided by the earnest work of the women themselves. It is still far behind the education offered to men, and the ideal of most of its promoters is limited to the purely utilitarian; but as long as it moves forward and not backward, and as long as the years of work show an increased number of women fitted to meet the changing conditions of the time, we do well to approve rather than criticise, remembering that the problem is an exceedingly intricate one, and one of which even the best-instructed foreigner can see only a small part of the difficulty.

The year 1901 sees the printing-press almost as much of a power in Japan as in the Western world, and it is interesting to notice that among the innumerable newspapers and magazines now published in the country there are some twenty or more devoted exclusively to the interests of women. To be sure, these women's magazines do not undertake to furnish the loftiest intellectual pabulum, the best of them covering, perhaps, the same range of subjects that is included in "Woman's Journals" in the United States. They devote themselves largely to lectures on morals and manners, and instruction as to how best to perform the duties of the home. These magazines are for the most part written and edited by men, many of them very young men, and serve to show rather what men desire that women should think and do, than to give any insight into the minds of the women themselves. With a combined circulation of perhaps 40,000, they enter many homes, and do something, at least, toward the general enlightening and quickening of the feminine mind that is so noticeable in the Japan of to-day. In regard to the general reading of Japanese women who have had the new education, my own observation leads me to believe that they keep themselves well informed of what is going on in their own country, and of the outside world so far as it affects their own country; but that their interest in the world at large is less than that of American women, and only in exceptional cases