electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies (ejcjs)
Conference and Seminar Papers in 2002

KenkyuProceedings of a Postgraduate Research Seminar in Japanese Studiesth

Oxford Brookes University Research Centre, Oxford Brookes University, UK, Saturday 28 July, 2001
Post-Graduate Network in Japanese Studies (PGN)

Iratsume and Journals for Women in the Early Meiji Period
Mara Patessio
Ph.D candidate
Trinity College, Cambridge
mp298@cam.ac.uk
The first few years following the Meiji Restoration saw the launch of a number of newspapers;
many of them were established on the premise that by describing contemporary events they had
a social value for Japanese citizens. This opinion was also influenced by thinkers such as
Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834-1901) and Fukuchi Gen’ichirō (1841-1906) who had learnt from theirstudy tours to Europe the importance of the media in the Western world (Altman 1988).
Moreover, with a new postal system and the growing ease of gathering information fromdifferent parts of the country, even those places a long way from Tokyo, the media also served
as means of facilitating the uniform spread of information on a national level.
Newspapers were used in an ambivalent way, for the government saw them as a tool for
disseminating information about its policies and goals to the population at large and later usedthem as a direct source of information on international matters, as in the case of the
Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5. On the other hand, since it had never been a simple matter ofdefining and controlling the power and influence of the new media, private newspapers enjoyedrelative freedom in what they were allowed to publish, being freely able to express opinions
against the new government (Huffman 1997, Ch. 2). This situation came to an end with the
Daijōkan decrees of 1868, the Shinbunshi inkō law of 1869 and the Shinbunshi jōrei in 1871
which proscribed the limitations of the rights of press freedom and effectively transformed thepress into a tool of government. If these strict regulations were applied to newspapers withgathering pace, suggesting their great importance at the same time as their potential threat,magazines were treated with greater leniency.
This period was also characterised by a general rise in women’s literacy thanks to their
participation in public and private education, which meant that they too could enjoy reading
works published in magazines and journals. Hirata (1999) has showed that magazines were notthe only place in which women could read news and fiction and publish their own writings. The
development of koshinbun (‘small newspapers’) during the 1870s has to be included in thisbackground. The fact that they published news and creative writing in simple colloquial
language with only a few kanji enhanced their reputation as newspapers for children and women.

19

They were important also because they invited readers to contribute so that women could see
their novels and short stories in print. However, Hirata considers that after 1884 the use ofcolloquial language in the koshinbun declined due to a decline in editorial interest, but this isexactly the period when women magazines started to be published, and so they can be regarded
as having carried on where the koshinbun had left off (Hirata, Ch. 1).
This article focuses on a particular genre of Japanese magazine published in the early Meiji Era,
those aimed at women but written by men, and specifically on Iratsume (以良都女), edited by
Yamada Bimyō (1868-1910).1 Many of these magazines were of the opinion that from 1885 to1887 Western countries and their customs had been highly admired and copied by Japanesepeople, but that from 1887 a new conservative movement had become dominant, and indeed
many of the young men who wrote for these magazines were in favour of a revaluation ofJapanese uniqueness and customs, which they considered should not be seen as antique or
uncivilised in comparison with the West.2 They emphasised the importance of family values tobe transmitted by mothers to children in order to make them good and valuable citizens. Thus,
if ‘women’s education’ and ‘female’ are the two most recurrent words in the magazines’ titles,
a lot of the titles also conveyed nationalistic imagery through words such as ‘Japan’, ‘Tokyo’and ‘Great Japan’. This is the case with the magazine Nihon no jogaku zasshi (‘Japanesewomen’s education journal’), published from 1887 to 1889.
One of the most widely debated issues of the period was the theory of equality between men andwomen, but Nihon no jogaku zasshi was against the notion of equality, arguing that it was aWestern theory not applicable to Japan. The concept was reinforced in the first issue, where thewriter argued that the nature of males and females was different and therefore that theireducation also had to be different, and in the second number, where it was suggested thatwomen were supposed to look after the house while men had to work outside the home.3
Of particular interest also is the magazine Nihon shinfujin zasshi (‘New Japanese housewife’),published from 1887, where it was argued that the degree of a country’s level of civilisation
could be ascertained from the role of women in that society. It was necessary - in order todevelop Japanese civilization - to give women an education, since they would be the ones
responsible for transmitting the new arts and sciences to the next generation. Many Japanesewriters, though, were aware of the fact that some common social attitudes had to be changed,
the tolerance of prostitution for example. In 1888, Iwamoto Yoshiharu (1863-1942) launchedTokyo fujin kyōfū zasshi (‘Journal for the moral reform of Tokyo women’), where the stress was,to be sure, on ‘women’ and ‘Tokyo’, but also on kyōfū, ‘moral reform’. Japanese women wereinvited to protect their families from bad habits which could be fought with the virtue ofmoderation, the formation of nuclear families and the prohibition of prostitution. This was not
the first time that Japanese public figures had dealt with the problem of prostitution and the ideaof a family where there was just one woman, as the articles in Meiroku zasshi (i.e. ‘Meiji 6(1874) journal’) show, but while the latter had a small readership, the former was circulated
throughout Japan.
Prostitution was not the only evil that had to be abolished, since many of the writers werestrongly opposed to the model of the Japanese woman as it had been presented hitherto. The
government itself started to challenge the status quo in 1871, when five young women,
Yoshimasu Ryō, Tsuda Ume, Yamakawa Suematsu, Ueda Tei and Nagai Shige departed with
the Iwakura Mission on a period of ten years’ study in the United States. They were supposed to
grow up in a different environment and then to go back to Japan to apply the knowledge they
had acquired during their stay, although the only one who eventually obtained a high position
was Tsuda Ume with the opening in 1900 of her own college. When they got back, the20

government seemed unable to recall precisely what the purpose of their journey had been, while
when male students were sent to Europe to study they were automatically supposed to comeback to Japan and work for the government (Sievers 1983: 12).4 The young women left Japan
at a time when Japanese laws were relatively free and the feeling that the country was
undergoing change was strong. By the time they returned, the Imperial Constitution (1889) had
been promulgated and strict laws concerning many spheres of social and political life
introduced.
Nevertheless, it was not the case that the government was entirely neglecting the issue of theplace of women in the new Japan. In December 1872 the Ministry of Education promulgated‘the regulation on attendance at elementary school’, in which it was decreed that males had toattend school from the age of eight to fifteen and females from eight to twelve, and a few
months later ‘the regulation on attendance at girls’ schools’, where the minimum leaving age
was raised to fifteen.5 In the same year then, the first government-operated school for women,
Tokyo Jogakkō, was opened; its closure only five years later was probably due to economic
factors, since the government was preoccupied with the Satsuma Rebellion, and in fact at thistime, two boys’ schools, the Shihan Gakkō and the Gaikokugo Gakkō were also closed.
There is a distinction to be made here between magazines for women written by men and thosewritten by women. As far as I know, in the early Meiji Era there are no magazines written andpublished entirely by women,6 and even in cases of women writing for male-edited magazines,
they do not perform a significant role. This also means that, although it is clear that a major partof the readership was female, we cannot be sure that the articles published in these magazines
were exactly what women wanted to read, nor can we extrapolate their opinions of Japanesesociety.
Imparting a formal education to women implied discussing the role they had to perform within
Japanese society, which was at the same time coming to terms with a wide range of new
developments. Jogaku zasshi, which is probably the most famous magazine for womenpublished during early Meiji, took it upon itself to tackle the question of the role of women in
Japanese society. The founder and editor was a Christian, Iwamoto Yoshiharu, who thought thatwomen could be defined as equal to men as creatures of God, but that since women were weaker
than men their place should be in the home.7 Women had the responsibility of raising children,and to improve their skill at doing so it was necessary to give them an education according toChristian principles appropriate to their role and duties. The articles in Jogaku zasshi, then,dealt with household management, and included various columns and pieces of informationconsidered useful for women, but also literary works and articles on literary issues. Iwamoto, in
fact, held that, in order to give a good education to their children, women had to read not only
articles but also literary works. He thought that there was no better person to speak and to write
for women than a woman, that she had the inner qualities to write good novels, but that the only
way to learn how to do this was to read other writers’ novels. This did not mean that they should
be reading novels all day long, since the place where women could do this was the house andonly after finishing their household duties. Thus, many famous names in the literary world
published short pieces in Jogaku zasshi, like Hoshino Tenchi (1862-1950), Shimazaki Tōson(1872-1943), Kitamura Tōkoku (1868-1894) and Ishibashi Ningetsu (1865-1926), but once canalso find work by a small group of female writers, namely Nakashima Shōen (1863-1901),
Shimizu Fumiko (1868-1933), Miyake Kaho (1868-1943) and Iwamoto’s wife, Wakamatsu
Shizuko (1864-1896) (Brownstein 1980).
It was in this context that, two years after the launch of Jogaku zasshi, a new magazine wasproduced, Iratsume, which was published from July 1887 to June 1891, with a total of21

eighty-four issues; the first thirteen issues went through a number of editors and publishers but
from the fourteenth issue (15th August, 1888) it was edited by Yamada Bimyō, who was alreadywell known as a novelist. From its beginning the magazine sold more or less one hundred copies
per issue, and this was partly because they did not have the means to advertise it and partly
because of competition from other magazines. As a result, many of the founders started to lose
interest and from the twenty-fifth issue onwards, it was published in Bimyō’s own home
(Yamada 1983: 8).
The introduction to the first issue explained that women’s education was closely related to theconditions and culture of the country as a whole. Women’s education and national progress had
a reciprocal influence upon each other, and so if the people wanted a better Japan, they had to
educate their women. Japan would gain from the education of women, who were supposed toraise their children as potential heroes. The theory of the equality of men and women was
important in the West where women were not highly esteemed, but that was not the case inJapan, where men and women shared their duties and where marriage was meant to be pacificand harmonious.8 Therefore, since the whole society was based on the concept of the family, thetheory of equality, if adopted, would destroy the happiness and harmony of society. The same
opinion is given in another article, where the family was described as a group of people which
cooperated with each other. If the husband or wife followed only his or her own will, then it was
impossible to be happy and that state of affairs could not be called a family. It was men’s duty
to make their wives as happy as possible and to satisfy their needs but, if women did not obey
their husband’s will, their disobedience could end up destroying the family. Women had to telltheir husbands if they were not behaving in the right way, but if husbands thought their
behaviour was correct, then, provided that they were not acting against civil or moral laws,
women had to follow their husband’s will. Even in Europe, the writer argued, the situation was
the same. Joan of Arc and Roland were to be treated as special cases; they were not symbols of
virtue. What Japanese women were expected to be was good wives and wise mothers, notstrong and brave women.9
What, then, were the duties of women? They had to promote happiness between husband andwife, raise the children, cook and manage the household economy so that men could workoutside the home. But the reality of women’s lives at this time was completely different fromthe ideal, and it was the duty of men to help them achieve it. They did not have to import allWestern customs to do so, since even though there were many good habits in the West, there
where also many bad ones, and the fact that Japanese people were looking at Western examples
for all areas of life was an error. They had to join the good customs of Japan and the West inorder to create a better society and give women the possibility of satisfying their position within
it. The author concludes his article by directly addressing his female readers: it did not matter ifthey were already married or still young girls; what the writers wished for them was to find in
Iratsume some kind of personal benefit, since its authors were using all their energies for the
purpose of educating female readers.10
The whole article takes ‘women’ as its object, while the last sentence is written directly to thefemale readership. Brownstein (1980: 322) deduces that there were two different groups ofreaders of Jogaku zasshi, one formed of women and the other of progressive men sympathetic
to their cause, and the same can be said of Iratsume. Many of the articles are intended to makesuggestions to women, as on how to cook good meals, to have nice hair, clean dirt away fromclothes and so on, but there is also a large number of articles related to the condition of women,
which (one can suppose) were also intended for a male readership interested in the evolution of
the image of Japanese women. If Iratsume had been meant as a magazine only for women, thenthe authors could have addressed their articles directly to them, while in reality they wrote about
22them. Moreover, in almost all the articles it is said that the number of people interested in
describing and judging social conditions and the role of women was growing.
The six founders of Iratsume came from quite different backgrounds: Nakagawa Kojūrō(1867-1944) was the founder of Ritsumeikan University and a member of the House of Peers,
Okada Ryōhei, a student at Teikoku University and later a Privy Councillor, Ichiki Kitokurō, astudent with Okada and later Chairman of the Privy Council, Masaki Naohiko (1862-1940), thedirector of the Tokyo School of Arts, Shinbo Iwatsugu, who later worked at the publishinghouse Kinkōdō,11 and Yamada Bimyō. The involvement of such an élite group of well-educatedmen suggests that the condition of the Japanese woman was a much-debated issue in the early
Meiji period, and it is therefore appropriate to suppose that a sizable group of Japanese men wasinterested in giving their opinions on this subject and reading about it in Iratsume.
But who were the women they were publishing it for? In an article on women and newspapers,
it was observed that women had ‘thousands’ of things to do every day - clean the house, run the
kitchen, make kimono, take care of the children, husband and servants, receive guests, and manyother things besides - and so it was quite comprehensible that they did not have time to have alook at the newspapers. Iratsume was not interested in those women who had a little educationand could read newspapers, but in those who did not have any idea of what was happening insociety; the magazine’s writers wanted such writers to make a little time each day to readnewspapers.
Even if we do not know who read Iratsume, in the introduction Ichiki says they were notinterested in lower-class women, so we may suppose that the intended female readership was
made up of the middle and upper classes, who were conceived as leading busy lives but who
also needed to find the time to get an education.12 Therefore, we find articles dealing with homemanagement, child-rearing, the pros and cons of Western fashion, and general knowledge. Heretoo, Ichiki gives us to understand that the magazine was supposed to be read by young girls or
by married women. This means that there were two different groups of women they werethinking of: those who did not have a family and those who already had one. While those who
were mothers and wives had already received an education before the spread of the newperception of women’s role and learning, girls who still had to marry had the time to become thewomen depicted in Iratsume.
The very fact that Iratsume, Jogaku zasshi and the other women’s magazines publicized eachother and the associations that were related to them shows that they were truly concerned withthese girls and their future.13 Moreover, if the duties of women and role they had to play inJapanese society seem antiquated and retrograde nowadays, we also have to recognize that despite this image - women in the West were not considered so very differently at this time
(Osborne 1979; West and Blumberg 1990). If young Japanese women were expected to be good
wives and wise mothers, know how to cook a variety of dishes and entertain guests, or to learn
etiquette, they also had the chance, through these magazines, to read literary works, to learn
more about other cultures, music, science, and schools and meetings at which they could contact
other women.14 The fact that most of these magazines sold only a few copies is not important
here - as I am interested in the perception Japanese males had of women - but it is useful tostress that the government, as far as I know, never took any measures against the magazines,
showing in this way its tacit approval of their themes and the goals they were pursuing.
Yet there were still some matters of potential concern to parents. Once a young girl had finishedelementary school at the age of twelve, she would normally have been considered ready for
marriage, but in this age the knowledge she had gained was considered inadequate for her to23become a good wife, and it was thought better to give her some further schooling. The problem
was that female students of those days were impertinent, and they were neither able to cook nor
to do needlework. Since they were discovering the world, they did not want to be happy inside
the home; they wanted to be the equal of men, to have the same rights, to start associations formusic or for women, leaving babies and the home to the maidservants. And then they wanted tolearn English, but what use was English? Being fluent in English was not good at all if, when
guests came to their houses, the girls looked at them with a superior air. With regard to their
future, their parents could not hope for a good son-in-law.
Such is the account given by a certain Ms. Shizuoka Take, and it demonstrates two points: even
if they were a minority, there were women writing for Iratsume, one of them actually describing
a society in which the older generation, mothers in particular, was trying to prevent a dangerous
situation from occurring. Mothers were generally not happy to see what their daughters wereachieving, since the new environment could lead to a destabilization of the old values and theirmothers’ values, through the emergence of new lifestyles which (at worst) were understood to
be completely wrong. English was good for nothing, let alone an education, when theirdaughters could not accomplish those simple duties that were the basis of the family and society.
What good could this situation bring to Japan? The author answers that the problem was not theeducation given to girls, which was a good thing, but the fact that at school they no longer
received moral or religious education. In the West the situation was different since they had
Christian morals, but in Japan Buddhism and Confucianism were too far from people’s minds
to be any good at all, and so it was the responsibility of families to teach their daughters morality.
Women were women on account of their virtues, namely elegance, compassion and honesty,
those qualities which made their children and husbands happy, not mathematics or English.
Heaven ordained women to make their families happy, and this could be achieved by a goodnature, not the acquisition of knowledge. So what was the solution? Parents had to give theirdaughters moral and household education, and then send them to schools where they could learn
other subjects, which were not dangerous or useless unless learned in the wrong way. In
Shizuoka’s opinion, what was dangerous for the new generation was not the new learning but
the fact that moral values were not considered important anymore. If parents were able to directa daughter’s virtue and values, together with her learning, then Japanese women would achieve
an ideal training for life.
This article was written by a woman, talking to women of the old generation about those of thenew, in a magazine where the prevalent voice was a male one,15 but Shizuoka was not the only
woman to appear in the magazine. From the twenty-second their number increased considerably.
They did not sign with their full name, but normally just with their given name and the place
where they lived, making it difficult to identify them. This is the case of Ms. Kinsui from Osaka,
who wrote many times in the ‘contributed articles’ and ‘criticism’ sections, Ms. Misako, whopublished a long account of Mozart’s life in the ‘miscellaneous’ section, and Ms. Kimiko from
Koganei, who wrote in the ‘literature and art’ section. One of the most interesting sections wasthe ‘literary prize’, started in the twentieth number, where shōka, waka and haiku poetry
together with prose compositions were requested on a given theme; the winning poems were
published in the next number, with the names of their authors, and the winning compositions
were published in other issues. Not only was this a way of discovering new writers and making
Iratsume a literary magazine rather than just one interested in the situation of women, but also
many of the winners were women themselves. If women were unable to join the staff of themagazine, they were still interested in becoming a part of it; they were not solely interested inhousehold matters, but evidently belonged to families that could afford to give them an
instruction good enough to study Mozart, read foreign novels and write their own compositions.

24

Female names are also to be found in abundance in the ‘question and answer’ column. This wasanother place where readers could express their views (besides being a testing ground for reader
opinion). Besides those short answers where it is too difficult to guess the original question,
there are a number of interesting contributions of the type where the writer gave female readers
a number of foreign titles that they could purchase almost anywhere in Japan as a present for afriend. For example, in the twenty-third number there is a list of ‘books that are not harmful andcan be bought in Tokyo’, consisting of Ernest Maltravers (1837) by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1803), Rip van Winkle by Irving Washington and
Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820), while in the twenty-sixth number the author suggested The Witness of
the Sun (1889) by Amelie Rives, Marriage and Divorce in the United States by Convers, Jerry(1891) by the Duchess (Sarah Barnwell Elliott) and Guilderoy (1889) by Ouida. All these titles
are in English and untranslated from the original, and the books suggested were not written byparticularly well-known writers, showing that the staff of the magazine wanted their readershipto have channels different from the common ones to get information on what to read.
The articles just mentioned appeared after Bimyō became the editor. What was a writer like
Bimyō, with his interests in the reform of the written language and the gembun’itchi movement,
doing in a magazine for women? Iratsume is interesting not only as a mirror of society and thecondition of women in early Meiji, but it has also been described as ‘Bimyō’s magazine’.
Nakagawa Kojūrō, in an article written many years after Iratsume ceased publication, explained
the reasons why it had first been published and what kind of relationship he had with Bimyō.
He argued that they wanted to oppose the movement in favour of the globalized adoption ofWestern culture, which in 1887 reached its apex, with ‘the new conservatism movement thatdebated the condition of Japanese women as a way of raising national consciousness andopposed the idea that everything Japanese was inferior. This opposition was formed mainly ofyoung men like Bimyō and Nakagawa, but also of those who were part of the magazine
Nihonjin.16
Iratsume was also a magazine that discussed women’s education from the point of view ofsocial issues, and the place where the gembun’itchi style (tai) was diffused through the mediumof shōsetsu (novels).17 It was not completely misleading, therefore, to regard Iratsume as theplatform for Bimyō’s gembun’itchi, and the very fact that the members of Iratsume publishedshōsetsu using the gembun’itchi tai was a consequence of it. Therefore, the greatest
achievement, they thought, was to develop gembun’itchi tai through shōsetsu, and to makeJapanese people understand and accept the theories and views they were discussing in themagazine. The difficulty in accomplishing this was that, whatever great hopes they may have
had to begin with, Iratsume only ever sold only about one hundred copies per issue (Nakagawa
1934). It is impossible to prove, therefore, whether Bimyō’s views on the Japanese language
and those of his colleagues, as expressed in the magazine, reached a wide audience, but if one
considers the fact that he wrote many articles for other magazines too, then Iratsume becomespart of a bigger plan to propagate a new agenda for the national language among his readers.
Contemporary scholars seem to have given gembun’itchi tai the function of a literary stylewhich only later developed into other fields, or at least from their studies it seems that Bimyōand his colleagues were trying to find a different style for the novel merely for the sake of doing
so and without any other aim.18 According to Nakagawa, it is instead clear that most of themused the novel to test a new style, which had to be experimented within the field of literature inorder to be used elsewhere. Novels and literary works in early Meiji tended to be considered asmere entertainment or as ways of spreading moral teachings and political beliefs, but in thiscase the novel was being used to develop a certain style. Its aim was to serve as the vehicle ofa group of people who thought they could change the national language, and demonstrate the25benefits of their proposals, through the novel. The fact that the first issue started with ‘Fūjin
shirabe no hitofushi’, which is preceded by a preface supporting the use of gembun’itchi tai, andthat the whole magazine is full of other works experimenting with the new style, as well as
articles praising its usefulness, must be understood in this wider context.
But if the involvement of such a group of well-educated men from the elite suggests that thecondition of Japanese women was of particular concern in the early Meiji period, what did thishave to do with the Japanese language? Why should Japanese women have been so interested in
the problems of the Japanese language as to spend money on a magazine where the issue wasdiscussed? And if the new style had to be employed by everybody, why specifically a magazine
for women? Nakagawa in his article mentioned that he met Bimyō in 1887 after he, Nakagawa,had won a prize, together with Masaki, for a competition organized by Mori Arinori, thenMinister of Education. The subject they chose for the competition was how to find a way ofmaking the written languages of men and women the same. They hypothesized that, in order tocreate a single buntai (‘literary style’) for both, it was necessary to create a single written andspoken language, to teach it at school in composition lessons, and write textbooks using it. In
that way, both the written and the spoken language, together with the male and female written
languages, would become one. If women had to use men language, it could surely not to be adifficult form of the language, since women would not understand it, but rather it had to be
based on the simple style they were proposing.
From these two statements, we can conclude that Iratsume was the combination of two factors.
First, it was published by a group of journalists and writers who believed that one of the mostimportant aims in the development of the gembun’itchi tai was to prove its validity, and whochose the novel as the means to achieve this. Secondly, they were in favour of womeneducation as imparted through a new school system, but since women were still the least welleducated part of the population, writing in gembun itchi tai in a magazine published especiallyfor them meant also proving its validity through its use for that portion of the population who
most needed its simplicity and comprehensibility. Conversely, women had the possibility oflearning new and different things from the magazine which they could not have learnt at school.

Notes
1

Yamada Bimyō is regarded by contemporary scholars as a writer who achieved fame in the last years of the 1880s
but whose fame declined after that period due to the mediocrity of his later works. His name is linked to thegembun’itchi movement of the early years of the Meiji period, as one of the scholars who promoted its development.
He asserted the three fundamental characteristics of gembun’itchi tai (‘style’) to be the avoidance of vulgar
language, making words and sentences understandable, and, as much as possible, the use of everyday words;
gembun’itchi means ‘integration of literary and colloquial language’. Bimyō, 1891, p. 6.

2‘Nihon no jogaku hatsu no omomuki’ [‘The meaning of the new women’s education in Japan’], in Nihon nojogaku 1 (August 1887), and ‘Iratsume hakkō no shushi ’ [‘The aim of Iratsume’], in Iratsume 1 (June 1887).

3‘Nihon no jogaku hatsu no omomuki’ (op. cit.) and ‘Fujin shokugyō ron’ [‘Arguments on vocational education for
women’], in Nihon no jogaku 2 (September 1887).

4

See, for examples, Theory of wives and concubines by Mori Arinori (1847-89), On concubines by Sakatani
Satoshi (1822-81) and On the creation of good mothers by Nakamura Masanao (1832-?). Nakamura’s article
introduced the concept of ‘good wife and wise mother’. All these articles are translated in Braisted 1976.
5

For a detailed account of Tsuda’s life and achievements, see Furuki 1991.

26

6

Rubinger (2000), for example, has shown that school attendance was not as high as the figures suggest, and yethere I am interested in the way that the government and magazines dealt with the problem of women’s education,and not with the effects of the law.

7

The only one I have come across is Fujin eiseikai zasshi, the organ of the association Shiritsu dai Nihon fujin eiseikai (‘Municipal association for the health of Japanese women’), published from 1888 to 1926, and whose editor(until the fortieth issue) was Iwamoto Yoshiharu. The promoter was Katō Reiko and a group of twelve women, and
it is said that there were another twenty-eight women as supporters. Yet it was not a magazine run entirely by
women, even though the men involved were in a minority, among them Katō Hiroyuki, Kumatani Kotarō, andKikuchi Shōtei.
8

Previously, Iwamoto, together with Kondō Kenzō (?-1886), had already published Jogaku shinshi (‘New journal
for women’s education’), between June 1884 and May 1885. Iwamoto saw Japanese society from a Christianperspective: women had to be assisted in understanding their role and to seek marriages that were based on love andnot self-interest. A similar idea is to be found in Jogaku zasshi, which is why Jogaku shinshi is considered to be its
precursor.

9

The marriage had to be more than ‘pacific and harmonious’ according to one article. The house was where thehusband went when everything outside was dark, while inside the sun was shining, where the sun was indeed thewoman and the atmosphere she was able to create inside. Even if outside there was discord, inside the house abreeze blew with the scent of flowers. It was impossible to go home and not feel peace talking to one’s wife andseeing the children happy with their good grades. ‘Tsumarashii tsuma’ (‘The qualities of housewifes’), in Iratsume
16 (October 1887).

10‘Fujin no jūjun’ [‘Obedience in women’], in Iratsume 22 (April 1889).

11‘Iratsume hakkō no shushi’, in Iratsume 1 (June 1887). The editorial was unsigned but according to Nakagawa
was written by Ichiki Kitokurō (1867-1944) and revised by Okada Ryōhei (1864-1934).

12

The Kinkōdō was an important institution in the spread of the colloquial language as a standard language,especially in school textbooks.
13‘Fujin to shinbunshi’ [‘The new literary education of women’], in Iratsume 8 (February 1888).

14

One example is an editorial in Iratsume in which the author praised the work done by the magazines Kijo no tomo(‘The lady’s friend’) and Jogaku sōshi (‘General journal for women’s education’), hoping that their future issues
would help Japanese society further; such editorials are included in almost every issue. ‘Shinnen wo shukusu’[‘Greeting the New Year’], in Iratsume 7 (January 1888).

15

Bimyō, for example, published his first novels in Iratsume, and in every issue there was a column in the monthly
review section, normally four or five lines long, regarding schools or associations that promoted the education of
women. One example is the opening of a school for women in Nagoya, reported in ‘Nagoya seiryū jogakkō nosetsuritsu’, in Iratsume 15 (September 1988).

16‘Ikani joshi o kyōiku subeki ka’ [‘How women should be educated’], in Iratsume 17 (November 1888), 19(January 1889) and 20 (February 1889). This long three-part article was published in the ‘contributed articles’
section, denoting the importance the staff gave to this particular reader’s opinion and to those of other readers.

17‘Magazine of the society for political education’, founded in 1888. Its leading thinkers were Shiga Shigetaka(1863-1927), Miyake Setsurei (1860-1945), and Kuga Katsunan (1857-1907).

18

In this period the word gembun’itchi tai was used to refer to a new written style where the stress was on its
simplicity in comparison with other styles. Although the supporters of the movement each had their own separate
opinions on its development, the one common goal was the formation of a written language based on a simple
spoken language which everyone could understand and be able to use. For example, Iwaki (1926: 119) has argued
that the colloquial language was first used in shōsetsu, then in criticism and essays, and then in poetry.

References27

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