The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 17 (2006)

Men, Women, and Temperance in Meiji Japan:
Engendering WCTU Activism
from a Transnational Perspective

Rumi YASUTAKE*

In 1894, Kate Bushnell, a round-the-world-missionary from the World
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (the World WCTU), pointed outthat the efforts of other World WCTU workers who had preceded her inpromoting temperance among Japanese Christians were under the management of “heathen” men, and as a result the very title of the WCTU
became “a misnomer.” Bushnell wrote;
It is exceedingly difﬁcult to make a whole convert to Christianity out of aheathen man. The truth is he would rather hold back that part of the comingof the kingdom described as the realm where “there is neither male nor
female.” A Japanese brother (?) professing to be a most earnest Christian said
to us, “Why do you spend time with women, you have only to address themen and when they become temperance men, they go home and tell theirhouseholds what they must do.” How sublimely simple! To his mind, we only
need to do half the amount of temperance preaching, and exalt the virtue ofobedience and servility in the other half who do not hear!1

The World WCTU was the international body of the Woman’s ChristianTemperance Union (the WCTU), which was organized in 1874 by
American middle class Protestant churchwomen, many of whom had
Copyright © 2006 Rumi Yasutake. All rights reserved. This work may be used,with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work
may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without
permission from the author.
*Professor, Konan University

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been active in church-related activities, most noticeably, women’s homeand foreign missionary movements. The WCTU came into being in the1870s when temperance, the most popular cause in America through thenineteenth century, captured women’s zeal. Under the skilful leadershipof its second president, Frances E. Willard, the WCTU mobilized a massof grassroots churchwomen under the banner of temperance and engaged
in social activism to achieve various women’s causes.2 Propelled by anevangelistic impulse, the WCTU under Willard’s leadership soon set its
hand to the global expansion of its movement. In 1883 the World WCTU,
the international body, was established, and its organizers, mostly
American women, began to travel to or reside in various corners of theworld.3 Between 1886 and 1913, there were at least twelve women withWorld WCTU titles who toured or lived in Japan. These were Mary C.
Leavitt (visited Japan in 1886), Pandita Ramabai and Dr. Emma B. Ryder(1888), Jessie A. Ackerman (1890 and 1900), Mary A. West (1892, diedin Japan), and Elizabeth W. Andrew and Kate C. Bushnell (1894), all ofwhom traveled through Japan for short periods of time; and Clara Parrish(worked in Japan from 1896 to 1898), Eliza Spencer-Large (1898–1901),
Kara G. Smart (1902–1906); Flora E. Strout (1908–1910); and Ruth F.
Davis (1909–1913), each of whom resided in Japan for a few years.4
Implanted in Japan, WCTU’s gender-speciﬁc movement under thebanner of temperance found different venues for its women’s movement
and temperance movement.5 The visit of the World WCTU’s ﬁrst roundthe-world-organizer, Mary Leavitt, to Japan in 1886 provided the impetus for establishing a few Japanese women’s local unions among
Japanese protégées of American missionary women. One of the local
unions which resulted from Leavitt’s effort was Tokyo Fujin Kyofukai(, the Tokyo WCTU), which along with other women’s
unions coalesced into Japan’s ﬁrst voluntary women’s national organization, Nihon Fujin Kyofukai (, the Japan WCTU) in
1893. Japanese women’s WCTU activism in Meiji Japan, however,placed utmost importance on the correction of sexual double standards.6
The temperance cause, advocated by the World WCTU organizers, wasleft to Japanese Christian, non-Christian, and anti-Christian men, who
enthusiastically led a temperance movement to support Japan’s modernization and economic development.7 Ironically, as Kate Bushnell
reported, early World WCTU organizers were more successful in forming a network and spreading the temperance cause among Japanese men
than women. What caused this transformation to take place? Why did

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN93

the WCTU’s movement modify its “Woman’s” and “Christian” nature
in Meiji Japan? To ﬁnd the answers to these questions, this article treatsgender as one parameter of a hierarchical relationship, which was entangled with other factors such as race, class, and nation. Focusing on theactivities of World WCTU organizers who visited Japan between 1886
and 1898, namely Leavitt, Ackerman, West, Bushnell, and Parrish, thisarticle examines the transformation of the WCTU brand of temperance
movement as it expanded from late nineteenth-century America to early
Meiji Japan.
I TEMPERANCE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA AND THE
WCTUDuring the last quarter of the nineteenth century in the United States,
women were the dominant force in promoting temperance, but publicawareness of problems caused by overdrinking was ﬁrst propagated bymen in the early part of that century. In colonial America, temperance
from excessive drinking was a respectable cause but drinking liquor constituted a part of daily life. In the early nineteenth century, however, therapid increase in consumption of cheap distilled spirits with high alcohol content, especially among laboring men, alarmed entrepreneurs aswell as the clergy. Led by men for the improvement of self, community,
and the nation, the temperance movement in antebellum America signiﬁcantly reduced alcohol consumption and passed, though they were
not well-enforced, state prohibition laws in eleven states and two territories by the eve of the Civil War. In the process, the goal of temperance,
initially abstinence from hard liquor, shifted to total abstinence from any
intoxicating beverages, and its approach, originally social persuasion,
took the form of legal coercion.8
Women participated in this effort from the beginning as fundraisers
and auxiliary members of male-led temperance organizations, but soon
developed a gender-speciﬁc temperance movement promoting total
abstinence for the lives of women in particular. In fact, women had a
special stake in temperance, as intemperate men were a real threat to theirwives and families. As the Victorian ideology of separate spheres took
hold, relegating women to the role of unpaid workers as a wife and amother within the conﬁned space of a home, women became increasingly
vulnerable to men’s drinking. Drunkenness turned their husbands into
irresponsible breadwinners, wife beaters, and child abusers. Although

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most states had passed some kind of legislation to recognize the right ofmarried women to own property by 1850, women still had no control
over their own wages and had no claim on their husbands’ earnings in
the 1870s. At the same time, voting and drinking were male prerogatives. While the ballot poll was the site for a male citizen to exercise his
privileged duty, the saloon was the place to emancipate his masculinityfrom social restraint, and middle class wives and daughters were barredfrom both places. As the number of saloons increased rapidly in postbellum America, especially in gender-imbalanced immigrant communities, native-born middle class women could not ignore the possibility thatthose saloons were housing gambling and prostitution. They came toview saloons as the antithesis of the middle class Victorian home wherea pure and pious wife, freed from the bread-winning task, was responsible for the moral progress of her family members.9
As women were subjugated to men in the male-led temperance organizations and encountered frustrating experiences, they began to form
separate women’s organizations as early as the 1840s. In 1852 Susan B.
Anthony, an active member of the Daughters of Temperance, was forbidden to speak at a meeting of its male organization, the Sons of Temperance, because of her gender. Then, Anthony and her suffrage cohort,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, formed the ﬁrst women’s state temperanceorganization, the New York State Women’s Temperance Society. Theirdemands for woman suffrage to pass dry laws and for liberalized divorce
to free women from drunkard husbands, however, were still too radical
for the majority of female temperance activists of the time. Stanton andAnthony soon left the organization to devote themselves to the suffrage
movement. However, temperance and prohibition remained the causesthat drew the widest support from the broad spectrum of women withdifferent political orientations. In fact, when the male-led Anti-Saloon
League of America became the most visible instigator of prohibition in
the early twentieth century, prohibition rather than woman suffrageremained the cause that drew support from the largest mass of women.
Consequently, women’s political campaigns constituted a noticeable
force for the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments,
which respectively achieved prohibition and woman suffrage.10
It was the WCTU that successfully used the popular and respectablecause of temperance to shield women’s social activism from public criticism and successfully turned a mass of churchwomen into a force torecreate their society in line with women’s causes. The WCTU came into

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN95

being in 1874, when exhilaration stemming from woman crusaders’unprecedented success still lingered in the air. From 1873 to 1874, theWoman’s Crusade of praying and marching for the closing of saloons
spread through Middle-Atlantic and Midwestern local communities.
Mobilizing hundreds of thousands of churchwomen, the Crusade shut
down thirty thousand grogshops in their neighborhoods.11 Encouragedby this splendid achievement, churchwomen activists, who had alreadybeen engaged in benevolent, evangelical, and reform activities, formed
the WCTU, a national women’s organization, under the banner of temperance. Drawing its leadership from “distinguished” women “wellknown in church circles,” the WCTU successfully united grassroots
churchwomen, who recognized their power in social activism for temperance, and grew into the largest women’s organization in late nineteenth-century America.12
The WCTU started as a gender speciﬁc women’s and Christian organization and developed into the most conspicuous women’s organizationin late nineteenth-century America. Importantly, the inception of the
WCTU in 1874 was founded upon the bitter experiences of American
churchwomen who had based their social activism in denominational
churches.13 Since the founding days of the United States, women andchurches, both of which were excluded from politics, collaborated witheach other in order to gain inﬂuence over the course of their new republic. In the feminization of religion by which women became the mainclients and supporters of denominational churches, churchwomenstretched their assigned role and sphere by engaging in church-basedsocial activism outside of their homes.14 Claiming that their work wasconsecrated to God, women successfully protected their social activism
from public accusation. By working within denominational church
structures, however, these churchwomen placed their activism under not
only the protection of but also the supervision of clergymen. To reducethe clergy’s control, the WCTU emphasized temperance, a secular,
respectable, and patriotic cause since America’s colonial days, andattempted to guard women’s social and political activism from public
reproach. Furthermore, to transcend the gender hierarchy of denominational churches, where women were subjugated to clergymen who weredivided by theological differences along denominational lines, the
WCTU became an interdenominational and ecumenical women’s organization. With Anne Wittenmyer, a founder of the Woman’s Home
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as its ﬁrst

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president, the WCTU was strongly inﬂuenced by Methodist women but
drew support from women of various denominational churches. The
WCTU thus became an interdenominational churchwomen’s organization governed solely by women. In the WCTU, men could address meetings and were encouraged to make ﬁnancial contributions as “honorary
members,” but they could not vote, hold ofﬁce, or participate in ofﬁcial
debates.15
Under the skillful leadership of Frances E. Willard, who assumed thesecond presidency from 1879 to 1898, the WCTU maximized the utilityof temperance to expand the horizon of its movement. For the majorityof its members, temperance was the cause of their movement, but Willard
viewed it also as a good excuse to push her organization to achieve other
women’s causes. Although WCTU women had been willing to engage
in the political act of petitioning for prohibitory legislation since
Wittenmyer’s era, they were reluctant in vocalizing a demand for woman
suffrage that signaled a departure from the conventional role and sphereassigned to women. It was Willard’s “manipulation” of rhetoric thattransformed the radical demand for the vote as a woman’s right into a“safe” and “respectable” cause for women who wanted to pursue theirrole as “guardian of the home.” Willard adopted the phrase “home protection,” that originally alluded to tariffs, to justify woman suffrage, andher call for the “Home Protection Ballot” won the endorsement of the
WCTU by 1881 and gradually drew the support of its rank and ﬁle. At
the same time, Willard evoked the meaning of “self-control” in her callfor temperance. By advocating “White Life” for men and women, shepromoted the single standard of puritanical sexual morality so that morally superior women not only gained authority to control their marital
relationships at home but also were enabled to set the moral standard fortheir fellow American citizens. Under her “Do Everything” policy thatemphasized “temperance,” Willard stretched women’s sphere in every
direction without confronting the Victorian ideology of women’s special abilities and sphere. Consequently, Willard successfully enticed themass of churchwomen into an “army” organized under the banner of temperance and used their energy to advance women’s status and to expand
women’s rights.16
Under the organizational genius of Willard, the WCTU rapidly expanded its size and network even beyond the native-born middle classchurchwomen’s community. Advocating that to “agitate, educate, andorganize” were “the deathless watchwords of success,” Willard exten-

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN97

sively traveled through the United States to attract membership by cutting across sectional, ethnic, and racial lines. Hoisting the banner of temperance, Willard resorted to not only religious but also scientiﬁcdiscourse in a rapidly secularizing, industrializing, and multi-culturalizing late nineteenth-century America. In addition, Willard introduced a
new policy, by which a local union’s representation at the national
convention was based upon its paid membership and each local union
was granted autonomy. This policy not only facilitated the ﬂow ofincome from local unions to the national headquarters but made the organization attractive to a variety of women with different cultural and social
backgrounds. During the ﬁrst decade of her presidency, the WCTU
quadrupled its membership and increased its national budget ten-fold.
Soon separate WCTU unions were formed among black, Indian, immigrant, and foreign churchwomen, who carried out their autonomous
movements under the WCTU’s umbrella. Unlike many of the conventional churchwomen’s activities in which native-born churchwomen’s“selﬂess” contributions supported numerous projects located outside of
their own communities—the frontier, immigrant slums, or foreign
lands—to save “heathen” or less-fortunate sisters, the WCTU left a good
percentage of local members’ dues in each local union so that these
unions could reformulate their own communities and neighborhoods for
women’s beneﬁt. In this manner, the WCTU was more direct in advancing women’s status.17
The WCTU also crossed national boundaries propelled by the samenineteenth-century American women’s evangelism that also generated
home and foreign missionary movements among the mass of churchwomen. As pointed out by historian Ian Tyrrell, the transnational expansion of the WCTU movement owes a great deal to the global network of
Anglo-American Protestant missionaries, who spearheaded trans-cultural exchanges both within and outside of the United States. Since
Wittenmyer’s days, the WCTU had engaged in Anglo-American andtrans-Atlantic cooperation, but Willard looked to the West and acrossthe Paciﬁc and accelerated this expansive trend by forming the WorldWCTU in 1883.18 On her organizing tour to the American Paciﬁc Coast,
Willard visited San Francisco’s Chinatown escorted by the Rev. Otis
Gibson, the Superintendent of the Chinese Mission of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Witnessing opium smoking and prostitution among
Asian immigrants, Willard reported:

98

RUMI YASUTAKEWe there saw the opium den in all its loathsome completeness, and next door
stood the house of shame. Respectable Chinese women were not allowed toaccompany their husbands to California, but here were Chinese girls, one ineach of many small cabins with sliding doors and windows on the street,
constituting the most ﬂagrantly ﬂaunted temptation that we have ever witnessed.19

Willard interpreted the loathsome conditions in Chinatown not as “their”
but as “our” problem and was inspired to extend WCTU inﬂuence acrossthe Paciﬁc to the world. Willard continued:
In presence of these two object lessons, the result of occidental avarice andoriental degradation, there was borne in upon my spirit a distinct illumination
resulting in this solemn vow: But for the intrusion of the sea the shores ofChina and the Far East would be part and parcel of our own. We are one
world of tempted humanity; the mission of the White Ribbon women is toorganize the motherhood of the world for the peace and purity, the protectionand exaltation of its homes. . . . We must be no longer hedged about by theartiﬁcial boundaries of states and nations; we must utter as women what goodand great men long ago declared as their watchword. The whole world is myparish and to do good my religion.20

In her presidential address at the 1883 Annual Convention in Detroit,
Willard proposed the organization of the World WCTU to “belt the globe
and join the East and West.” In Willard’s observation, “our friends” on
the Paciﬁc Coast, who had been working among Asian immigrants, weremore internationally spirited and better informed than Easterners andthey were “not so enlisted in temperance work” but were more willingto aid the new endeavor of the World WCTU.21 To realize Willard’s
vision, Mary C. Leavitt of Boston, a divorced former schoolteacher anda national WCTU organizer who was soon to leave for the Paciﬁc Coast,
was appointed as the World WCTU’s ﬁrst “round-the-world missionary.” By the end of 1883, Leavitt had headed west for the Paciﬁc Coast,and in 1884 she began her westward voyage from San Francisco. Raisingfunds for her trip at each destination, Leavitt continued her organizing
tour for eight years, visiting such places as the Sandwich Islands,
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Thailand, Burma, Singapore,
India, Ceylon, Africa, and Europe before returning to New York in
1891.22

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN99

II MISSIONARY WOMEN, WORLD WCTU ORGANIZERS, AND
JAPANESE WOMEN’S WCTU ACTIVISM IN EARLY MEIJI JAPANWhen the WCTU’s gender-speciﬁc activism that pushed women’scauses under the banner of temperance was transferred to Japan, it split
into two movements: the Japanese churchwomen’s movement and theJapanese men’s temperance movement. One important factor contributing to this phenomenon was that the ﬁrst generation of Japanese womenconverts under the inﬂuence of American missionaries had already determined to tackle the Japanese marriage system by the time of Leavitt’s
arrival. Reaching Yokohama in 1886, Leavitt stayed with American missionaries and approached Japanese women through their connections.23
In the Tokyo-Yokohama area, Presbyterian and Reformed Church
missionary women had been promoting Christian education among middle-class Japanese women since the 1870s, and it was their Japanese
protégées who responded to Leavitt’s call to organize a Japanese women’s union in Tokyo. In fact, American missionary women, who pioneered in interacting with Japanese women in the 1870s, left a strong
imprint in the minds of their Japanese protégées, and Japanese women’s
WCTU activism in the early Meiji era reﬂected this fact.
Although the gender relationship was relatively similar in Japan andthe United States, the difference in the treatment of women at homeloomed large in the minds of American missionary teachers. In fact, they
were horriﬁed by Japanese “ie” system that deﬁned Japanese women as“borrowed wombs” and “obedient daughters-in-law.” For example,
while conducting a female class in Tokyo in the early 1870s, Julia
Carrothers, a Presbyterian missionary wife, reported with astonishmentthat the Japanese language had no word for “home” but only for “house”
or “place of habitation.” In the Japanese house, marriage was still a matter between two houses and was contracted by the parents or go-betweens
for the prosperity of the two houses. Thus, a son and a daughter married
without love or even previous knowledge of each other. Furthermore,when the wife failed to bear a male child, the husband’s extramarital relationship in the form of concubinage was regarded as a legitimate means
to secure a male heir. From the viewpoint of American missionaries,
Japanese women, who were so easily divorced and who had to endure
their feudal status as well as the sexual double standard, appeared to be
mere playthings of male desire and licentiousness.24

100

RUMI YASUTAKEIn the minds of American missionary women, women’s status, civilization, and Christianity were intricately entangled with each other.
They saw Japanese marriage customs and conjugal relationships as “heathen” and uncivilized, and endeavored to “purify” the Japanese houseand “uplift” it to the condition of a “Christian home.” In the minds of the
U.S. missionary women of the time, the marriage bond, into which a wife
and a husband entered of their own free will, was sacred and life-long.
It was also the place where the more pious and pure wife gained moral
authority.25 For this purpose, they believed, Japanese women must be
converted to Christianity so that they would understand the importanceof purity and the sacredness of marriage. They also believed thatJapanese women had to be converted to Christianity in order to become“noble consecrated women with strong will and self-control.” By assisting Japanese women to know “Him as Savior” and “to have experienceof His power working in them,” American missionary women assumed
that they could make their students “strong and assertive” in pursuing
divine causes with the conviction of God’s truth.26 Their deep sense ofreligious mission propelled American women to engage in social
activism that they believed was altruistic. At the same time, by claimingthat they were conducting selﬂess efforts for the sake of God, American
churchwomen successfully expanded women’s sphere in predominantly
Protestant nineteenth-century America. There, being a Christian gave
women a deep sense of responsibility for social activism and a good
excuse to leave their homes to engage in activities consecrated to God.
In anti-Christian early Meiji Japan, however, becoming a Christianrequired one to rebel against conventional society and thus Japanesewomen had to be “strong-willed” to convert to Christianity as well as toremain a Christian. In the early 1870s, Julia Carrothers was well awareof the trouble her students would face when “the seed sown in the girls’
hearts . . . sprung up and bore fruit.” Those students who sought baptism
received strong opposition from their fathers, families, and relatives.
Julia refrained from advising “the girls to go contrary to their fathers,”
but did not hide her joy in seeing them baptized since she had a conviction that she was spreading “the truth” of God.27 Thus, under the inﬂuence of Christian missionary teachers, some Japanese women learned
how to be strong-willed in their action and even to rebel against the ordersof their parents, husbands, and teachers, as well as the social constraintsof Japanese womanhood. The ﬁrst generation of Japanese women converts were ready to challenge the Japanese system to uplift not only them-

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN101

selves but also their nation to attain a higher status in the world hierarchy of civilization.
While arousing Japanese women’s feminist consciousness, however,missionary women of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches working in
the Tokyo-Yokohama area fell short in providing their students with aclear model of women’s social activism to change Japanese society for
women’s beneﬁt. Working within the male-controlled denominational
missionary enterprises, American missionary women were discouraged
from ordination and preaching and were assigned only to assist clergymen who dominated “true missionary work” in Christianizing the world.
Directing their extra-domestic activities in the secular realm among
women and children, American missionary women sought clients in theworld by crossing the boundaries of race, class, culture, and nation, but
not of gender. While the feminization of Protestant churches had progressed in the United States, in early Meiji Japan where anti-Christiansentiment ran deep among the public, American churchwomen’s secular efforts in promoting Christian education among women made a phenomenal success. This achievement, however, made missionary womeneven more cautious about not provoking male anxiety over the everincreasing presence of women in their denominational missionary enterprises. To assure the approval of clergymen for the swift progress in theirprojects, missionary women were reluctant to confront the male authority and the gender hierarchy. Indeed, they were extremely prudent inchanging their own society for the beneﬁt of women, and were willingto stretch but not to break the separate sphere of women.28
The WCTU pursued the same separate sphere strategy, but did notintend to limit their activities only among women. By successfully eliminating clergymen’s control as an interdenominational women’s organization hoisting the secular cause of temperance, the WCTU was readyto inﬂuence male behavior to reformulate the world in line with theirvision. In the Tokyo-Yokohama area, this difference in approach between the missionary women and the World WCTU organizers became
most evident over the Apostle Paul’s injunction which prohibited womenfrom talking in churches. On the one hand, Presbyterian and Reformed
missionary women, who were concerned about the scrutiny of clergymen
and conservatives, were reluctant to speak in public, especially to gender-mixed audiences.29 On the other hand, World WCTU organizers
freely talked to male, female, and gender-mixed audiences composed offoreign and Japanese nationals. In fact, after observing missionary

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RUMI YASUTAKE

women’s activities in Yokohama, Leavitt commented that their efforts
to make a speech “ought to have more encouragement . . . from their
missionary brethren than they (got),”30 and she attempted to inspire
Japanese women to speak in public. In one of her translated lectures,
Leavitt legitimized women’s speaking in public and encouraged
Japanese women to raise their voices “for God and Home andHumanity.” In a written message sent to the publisher of the magazine
in which her lecture was printed, Leavitt argued that Providence does
not require a woman to ask for male approval to use her power given by
God in order to be a good wife and mother, and that she should be responsible only to God. Leavitt also insisted that if one interpreted the Bible
properly there was no scripture that prohibited women from speaking inpublic.31
Importantly, Leavitt was successful in promoting social activism but
not the temperance cause among Japanese churchwomen. Inspired by
Leavitt’s words and behavior, a group of Christian women in Tokyo
organized the Tokyo WCTU in 1886. In the highly politicized era on theeve of the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution, the Tokyo WCTU
commenced its activism for the elimination of geishas, concubines, andprostitutes, and its radical wing even demanded women’s economic andpolitical rights. It was the former that gathered the widest support fromJapanese churchwomen. Inculcated with American Protestant missionary’s views against the extramarital relationships widely-practiced by
Japanese husbands, the Tokyo WCTU placed utmost importance on thecorrection of the sexual double standard. Tokyo WCTU members began
petitioning the government to establish a legal system that criminalized
not only a wife’s but also a husband’s extramarital affairs, to abolish thelicensed system of prostitution, and to ban overseas emigration ofJapanese prostitutes.32
Ironically, the ﬁrst generation of Japanese women converts did not
attach the same importance to temperance as the shield protecting women’s social activism as their American sisters, although the Japan WCTU
later came to work for temperance as an important cause under the guidance of World WCTU organizers who resided in Japan from the late
1890s to the early 1910s. In fact, temperance, like Christianity, could not
evoke the same assurance or respect in Meiji Japan as in nineteenth-century America. Presumably, drinking was not yet considered to be such aproblem when people drank rice-brewed sake that had less alcohol content than distilled spirits and Japan’s industrialization process was onlyMEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN103

just about to take place. For example, although Anglo-American missionaries and travelers in early Meiji Japan recognized the link between
drinking and poverty, crime, and immorality, they reported that there
was “much less drunkenness in Japan [than] in the White man’s land.”33
Consequently, hoisting temperance was not so effective in guarding
Japanese women’s social activism from public accusation, as claiming
to be “Christian” invited criticism rather than support in the socio-historical context of Japan during the early Meiji era. While embarking onsocial activism for women’s causes modeled after the WCTU, the Tokyo
WCTU, later the Japan WCTU, never made the total abstinence pledge
a requirement for its membership. In fact, Tokyo WCTU members
dropped the word “Temperance” as well as “Christian” from their organization’s name and termed their union in Japanese, Tokyo Fujin
Kyofukai (Tokyo Women’s Reform Society).34
III

WORLD WCTU ORGANIZERS, JAPANESE MEN, AND TEMPERANCEIN EARLY MEIJI JAPANIn the place of Japanese WCTU women, who disregarded temperancein early Meiji Japan, it was Japanese progressive men who became
responsible for popularizing the cause advocated by World WCTU organizers. Temperance had been introduced to Japan before Leavitt’s arrival
by Anglo-American government ofﬁcers and missionaries who wereactive in the cause, as well as by Japanese students who had returned
from their trips to Anglo-American nations. For example, foreign residents in Yokohama formed a temperance society in 1873 to inﬂuence
sailors. In 1875, the pastor and a few members of Japanese Presbyterian
Church in Yokohama formed the ﬁrst Japanese temperance organization. Also in Kyoto, the Christian emphasis on temperance captured theinterest of a young Buddhist student group in the 1870s.35 However, thetemperance cause preached in Christian discourse received only local
and sporadic support, and failed in raising public awareness against
drinking beyond the neighborhoods of these local groups.
It was Mary Leavitt who successfully planted the seed of temperance
among a broad spectrum of Japanese, and other World WCTU organizers who followed her played a major role in generating a temperance
movement in Meiji Japan. In the wake of Leavitt’s organizing tour in
1886, people’s interest in the temperance cause increased and Japan saw
the inception of male-led local temperance societies. In Yokohama, the104

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almost extinct ﬁrst Japanese temperance society was reorganized. In
Sapporo, Leavitt’s tour resulted in the inception of a new temperance
society among Christian men in 1887. Leavitt was also well known
among Buddhist temperance activists who formed a society in Kyoto in
1886.36 This development was further facilitated by subsequent WorldWCTU organizers. In 1890, Jessie Ackerman contributed to the formation of a male-led temperance society in Tokyo, which also saw participation by Tokyo WCTU members. Clara Parrish, in her ﬁrst year ofresidency in Japan, achieved the formation of the Temperance Leagueof Japan (), the national umbrella organization of male-led
Japanese and foreign temperance societies all over Japan.37
One important factor that transformed the gender-speciﬁc temperance
movement of the WCTU into a male-led movement is that American
women were able to transcend both Japanese and American gender hierarchies in Meiji Japan. American WCTU women who advocated theprinciples of an advanced civilization attained at the time the status ofteachers bestowed with authority and accorded respect. The unequallevel in “civilization” and modernization between Japan and the UnitedStates, as well as the difference in physical size between Japanese andAmericans of the time in general, invited the feminization of Japanese
men in the eyes of American World WCTU travelers and the masculinization of American World WCTU women among Japanese. Consequently, American WCTU women, as teachers of modern civilization,
stood on a pedestal above both Japanese men and women.38 A perfect
example is Jessie Ackerman, who wrote about her experience at a train
station in Tokyo in 1890:
Just before the train moved out, one of the young men who had spent sometime in America, explained to the crowd, that it was a custom in America tosend “distinguished persons” on their way with three cheers. He took off hishat, swung it high in (the) air and gave a regular “hip, hip, hurrah,” in true
American style, and just as the train moved out a perfect volley of cheers
ﬁlled the air and I left bearing the prayers and good wishes of that enthusiastic
gathering. I felt that it was worth while to come all the way to Japan just to
hold those meetings in Tokio (Tokyo) and know those little people, amongwhom I stalked like a “giant great and tall.”39

At the same time, American World WCTU women, who represented awomen’s organization, were liberated from the male control of American
gender hierarchy. Thus, unlike Reformed and Presbyterian missionary

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN105

women working in Tokyo, who limited their work in the separate sphereof women and children within the male-controlled denominational missionary enterprises, American World WCTU workers could take fulladvantage of their status in Japan and freely approached not only women
but also men and boys in advocating temperance. In fact, American
World WCTU workers were ambitious in their work and interacted mostclosely with Japanese progressive men, who had more resources, freedom, and command of English than Japanese women. Through theirlecture tours in Japan, American World WCTU women were usuallyaccompanied by Japanese men who served as their interpreters andguides, and successfully enlisted progressive Japanese men into theirtemperance movement. As a result, male-led local temperance societies
were created in the wake of American World WCTU women.40
In many cases, Japanese men who took on leadership roles in the temperance movement advocated by American World WCTU women
believed in the efﬁcacy of temperance to uplift their personal fortunes
as well as Japan’s position in the hierarchy of “civilization.” Amongthem were Taro Ando and Sho Nemoto, who respectively assumed thepresidency and the vice presidency of the Tokyo Temperance Society
after its formation in 1890. Both Ando and Nemoto were ﬁrst exposed
to temperance in America in the 1880s when women were the dominant
force in the movement, which may also explain their willingness to workwith World WCTU organizers in promoting temperance in Meiji Japan.
Taro Ando had previously served as Japan’s Consulate General to the
Hawaiian Islands, and had initiated a temperance movement among
Japanese immigrants. He became acquainted with Jessie Ackerman in
the Islands and assisted her in forming the temperance society in Tokyo.41
Sho Nemoto came under the strong inﬂuence of Methodist Episcopal
home missionaries and their temperance instruction while attending ahigh school in the California Bay Area in the early 1880s. After completing his university education with support from Mr. and Mrs.
Frederick Billings, millionaire philanthropists dedicated to the temperance cause, Nemoto became a temperance activist. Before his return toJapan, Nemoto developed friendships with American male and female
temperance workers.42
Another and perhaps the most important factor that explains the
masculinization of the WCTU’s temperance movement lies in the
WCTU’s strategy that aimed to generate a mass movement. Both in the

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RUMI YASUTAKE

women’s missionary societies of denominational churches and the
WCTU, middle-class churchwomen, who were deprived of their economic, legal, and political rights, attained considerable inﬂuence byenlisting a large number of grassroots churchwomen who were willingto contribute their mites and their services. To gain acceptance among
the mass, both types of organizations used religious discourse in predominantly Protestant nineteenth-century America, but did not refrainfrom accommodating their language to the social trends and political currents of the local region where they were situated. Arriving in Meiji
Japan, where anti-Christian sentiments ran deep but where the people
were eager to learn the spirit of American technological and economic
development, ambitious American World WCTU workers were ready toutilize “scientiﬁc” and empirical rather than religious discourse inpreaching temperance.
Through her ﬁve-month tour in Japan in 1886, Mary Leavitt quickly
realized that Japan was still a “pagan land” despite its “polite culture”
and “rapid progress.” She came to this conclusion because of an experience she had while closing one of her “well-received” speeches on total
abstinence. Leavitt wrote:
Just at the close, I made a personal appeal to all who had not done so to accept
the Christian religion, and the Savior it offers. Though many understood
English, none dissented, but when the interpreter reproduced it, there was avery loud, almost savage “No” from hundreds of throats.43

Rather than being discouraged, Leavitt modiﬁed her lectures to beappealing to Japanese by emphasizing the scientiﬁc aspect of the temperance cause. The ﬁrst Japanese groups she addressed outside of themissionary circle in the Tokyo-Yokohama area were the “Medical Society of Japan” and “a society, or club of naval surgeons and their wives,”44
and in one of her lectures, which was translated and published inJapanese, Leavitt emphasized the hereditary nature of drinking and theillnesses caused by drinking.45 As a consequence, Leavitt’s temperance
lectures were favorably welcomed by Japanese progressive men including Buddhists, who believed that temperance “would bring good health,increased production, a higher education, and a purer morality” throughout the nation.46
By the same token, World WCTU organizers did not miss the ardent
nationalism of the Japanese public in advocating temperance. For example, Mary West, who visited Japan in 1892, emphasized the importanceMEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN107

of total abstinence in order to develop and advance the national interestsof Japan. In Tokyo in 1892, West addressed an audience of two thousand Japanese. While referring to the Biblical ﬁgure Nehemiah as an
example of a “model citizen” who rebuilt the walls around his native city
to protect it from Sanballat’s attack, West urged Japan to build a wallaround itself of total abstinence, temperance education, and national prohibition. Condemning Japan’s unequal treaties with Western nations bywhich Japan could not autonomously set tariffs, West spoke eloquently:
You citizens of Japan, have also a wall to build, not the wall of seclusion,
shutting you out from the world but the new wall of protection against theevils which threaten your nation. . . . I have dwelt upon the danger to yourindustries from the spread of the drink habit, a danger greater in Japan thanelse-where because your distinctive industries require such exactness of
mechanical execution; of its menace to your food supply by destroying annually 4,000,000 koku of rice, the staff of life, here; of the burdens of taxation
it imposes by increasing crime, pauperism, and insanity. . . . America did not
guard against this danger and is now suffering the consequences. The great
liquor interest there is almost exclusively in the hands of foreigners. . . . I
fear the same will be the case in Japan if you do not now stop the vile stream
which has begun to ﬂow into your land. Existing treaties favor this nefarious
trafﬁc; while you must pay 40, 50 or even 60 percent duty to export yourexquisite workmanship to lands fast learning its value and hence desiring topurchase it, the wine-makers of France or California can bring all the wine
they wish into Japan for a maximum duty of 5 percent;. . . . Thus you see thistemperance question is not one of secondary importance; it touches not only
individual life but the well-being of the nation in its industries, its commerce,
its moral and social condition, its international relations.

West reported that her lecture was “listened to (with) breathless interest
and was often applauded with sounds like thunder.”47
Consequently, Japanese progressive men became the most reliable
collaborators with American World WCTU women in promoting temperance in Japan, and they claimed a role in the World WCTU’s transnational temperance movement. For example, Sho Nemoto reported to theWorld WCTU in 1891 that Japanese temperance societies were largelyorganized by men and that they did the equivalent work of the WCTU
in America. Presumably Bushnell’s critical report on this phenomenon,
which was referred to at the beginning of this article, affected the workof Clara Parrish, who arrived in Japan after Bushnell in 1894. Parrish
made renewed efforts in transferring the WCTU methods of coupling

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RUMI YASUTAKE

women’s causes with temperance to Japanese WCTU women, but
Japanese WCTU women continued to take a back seat in the temperance
movement in Meiji Japan. In 1895, even after Japanese women had
established their national organization, which was afﬁliated with theWorld WCTU, Nemoto referred to the Japan WCTU as “the lady’s department” of their male-led temperance movement in his report to theWorld WCTU.48 Like many of her predecessors, Clara Parrish worked
more closely with Japanese progressive men when it comes to advocating temperance. Her effort ultimately led to the inception of the Temperance League of Japan, as mentioned above.
American World WCTU women, who transcended the Japanese as
well as the American gender hierarchy, were ambitious in generating a
mass temperance movement in Meiji Japan. Their pragmatism in adapting the women’s and Christian nature of the WCTU temperance movement to the social currents of Meiji Japan promoted the masculinizationand the secularization of their movement. Consequently, the temperance
movement advocated by ambitious American World WCTU womencame under the leadership of Japanese men, who recognized the urgent
need for modernization and civilization for their nation in order to attaina higher status in the world hierarchy of civilization and to legitimize
Japan’s imperialistic expansion into neighboring Asian nations. Throughthe Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, the temperance
movement in Japan became further secularized and nationalistic andtook on an imperialistic tone.49 Emphasizing the efﬁcacy of non-smoking and non-drinking among minors to produce physically-ﬁt soldiers,
two acts to prohibit minors from smoking and drinking was introduced
by Sho Nemoto, who was then a Lower House representative. Although
Japan never banned the trafﬁcking of liquor and its consumption to theextent of that in the United States, both acts passed the Diet, one in 1905
and the other in 1922.50
NOTES
I would like to expresses my gratitude to Konan Daigaku Sogo Kenkyujo for funding
our group project on religion, morality, and science, to which this article owes greatly.
1
Kate C. Bushnell, “Itinerating in Japan,” Union Signal, 8 November 1894.
2
Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: the Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981; repr. New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 1990); Mary Earhart, Frances Willard: From Prayers to Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN109

Frances E. Willard, Do Everything: A Handbook for the World’s White Ribboners(Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, 1895; repr. New York:
Garland Publishing, 1987); Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World / Woman’s Empire: The
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
4
These World WCTU women were Americans except for Pandita Ramabai, an Indian
educator who received strong support from Frances Willard and American churchwomen for her project of building a school for high-caste Indian widows and who visited Japan for about ten days on her way to India, and Eliza Spencer-Large, a former
Canadian Methodist missionary working in Japan who was hired locally to work in Japanfor the World WCTU.
5
Besides Japanese women’s social activism and male-led temperance movement, theWorld WCTU workers instigated WCTU causes among foreign women residents inJapan. The organization formed by foreign women residents ultimately became theForeign Auxiliary to the Japan WCTU and worked especially for the anti-smoking cause.
Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai ed., Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai hyakunenshi[Centennial History of the Japan WCTU] (Tokyo: Domesu shuppan, 1986), 262–265;
Rumi Yasutake, Transnational Women’s Activism: The United States, Japan, andJapanese Immigrant Communities in California, 1859–1920 (New York: NYU Press,
2004), 80–83, 91–95.
6
Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai ed., Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai
hyakunenshi, 35–49, 93.
7
Ernest H. Cherrington et al. eds., Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem,
vol. 2 (Westerville, Ohio: American Issue Publishing Co, 1924), 1384–1390.
8
Masaru Okamoto, Amerika kinshu undo no kiseki [History of Temperance Movement in America] (Kyoto: Minerva shobo, 1994); Ian R. Tyrrell, Sobering Up: From
Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800–1860 (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1979).
9
Bordin, Woman and Temperance, 3–14; Kenneth D. Ross, American Women andthe Repeal of Prohibition (New York: NYU Press, 1996), 9–33; Catherine Gilbert
Murdock, Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870–1940(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 9–41.
10Ellen C. DuBois ed., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony: Correspondence,
Writings, Speeches (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), 36–43; idem, Woman Suffrage& Women’s Rights (New York: NYU Press, 1998), 30–42; Carol Mattingly, WellTempered Women: Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric (Southern Illinois University Press,
1998), 13–38; Murdock, Domesticating Drink, 9–41; Bordin, Woman and Temperance,
34–51.
11
Jack S. Blocker Jr., Give To the Winds Thy Fears: The Women’s Temperance
Crusade, 1873–1874 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).
12
While Patricia Hill argued that Protestant female foreign missionary societies, taken
together, encompassed more women than the WCTU, Anne F. Scott conﬁrmed that the
WCTU was the biggest single organization of women in the late nineteenth century. See
Patricia R. Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Missionary Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1985), 8; Ann F. Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in
American History (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 213. note 41.
13
Scott, Natural Allies, 85.
14
Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the NineteenthCentury (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1976), 83–102.
3

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Bordin, Woman and Temperance, 34–51.
Earhart, Frances Willard, 173–192; Bordin, Woman and Temperance, 117–139;
Dubois, Woman Suffrage & Women’s Rights, 30–42. Willard’s legitimization of woman
suffrage shifted from the protection of home (vote only for the protection of home) in
1881, to natural rights by 1892.
17
Frances E. Willard, Do Everything, 35; idem, Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publication Association, 1889), 368–374; Bordin, Woman and Temperance, 72–94.
18
Tyrrell, Woman’s World / Woman’s Empire, 19–23.
19
Willard, Do Everything, 7–18.
20
Ibid.
21
Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years, 430–436.
22
Willard, Do Everything, 7–18.
23
Mary C. Leavitt, “Our Round-the-World Missionary,” Union Signal, 5 August 1886.
24
Julia Carrothers, The Sunrise Kingdom (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1879), 72–74.
25
Barbara L. Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University
Press, 1981); Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral
Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990);
Rui Kohiyama, Amerika fujin senkyoshi: rainichi no haikei to sono eikyo [As Our God
Alone Will Lead Us: The Nineteenth-entury American Women’s Foreign Mission
Enterprise and Its Encounter with Meiji Japan] (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1992).
26
Paper presented by Miss. Susan A. Searle in Proceedings of the General Conferenceof Protestant Missionaries in Japan Held in Tokyo, October 24–31, 1900 (Tokyo:
Methodist Publishing House, 1901), 253–270.
27
Carrothers, The Sunrise Kingdom, 190–191, 219–226, 234–245.
28
There was a variation in the relationship between the general board and women’sboards among different denominational churches. See for example Kohiyama, Amerika
fujin senkyoshi; Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their
Thought and Practice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997); Noriko Kawamura
Ishii, American Women Missionaries at Kobe College, 1873–1909: New Dimensions in
Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004); Barbara Brown Zikmund and Sally A. Dries,“Women’s Work and Woman’s Boards” in Barbara Brown Zikmund ed., Hidden
Histories in the United Church of Christ (New York: United Church Press, 1987).
29
Rumi Yasutake, “Fujin genron no jiyu: senkyoshi to WCTU to Tokyo Fujin
Kyofukai [Women’s Freedom of Speech: Protestant Missionaries, the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union, and Japanese Church Men and Women],” Nihon kenkyu,
no. 30 (March 2005): 133–148.
30
Mary C. Leavitt, “Our Round-the-World Missionary,” Union Signal, 5 August 1886.
31
Mary C. Leavitt, “Nihon no shimai ni tsugu [To Japanese Sisters],” Jogaku zasshi,
no. 36 (25 September 1886): 111–112; no. 37 (5 October 1886): 131–132; no. 39 (25October 1886): 171–172.
32
Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai ed., Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai
hyakunenshi, 62–80.
33
Cherrington et al. eds. Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, 1379–1382.
34
Although Clara Parrish reported that the Japan WCTU agreed to recover the phrase“Christian” in its Japanese name in 1897, this action did not take place until 1905 when
Japan WCTU’s support for the Russo-Japanese War established the reputation that its
social activism was acceptable and respectable to the nation.
15
16

MEN, WOMEN, AND TEMPERANCE IN MEIJI JAPAN111

Cherrington et al. eds., Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, 1384–1391;
Katsusaburo Matsumoto, Toyo kinshu taikan [Overview of Prohibition in the East](Osaka: Kinki Kinshu Renmei, 1935).
36
Hanseikai zasshi, (October 1890): 25.
37
Cherrington et al. eds., Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, 1384–1391.
38
Jane Hunter, in her study on American Protestant missionary women in China also
argued that American missionary women viewed Chinese men as “effeminate,” becauseof their physical and cultural characteristics in comparison with Americans. Hunter, The
Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1984).
39
Jessie Ackerman, “Our Second Round-The-World Missionary in Japan,” Union
Signal, 24 July 1890.
40
Yasutake, Transnational Women’s Activism, 83–88, 91–98.
41
Ryo Yoshida, “Iminshakai to kirisutokyo: Miyama Kanichi no Hawai nihonjin imin
dendo [Immigrant Society and Christianity: Kanichi Miyama’s Evangelical Work
among Japanese Immigrants in Hawaii],” Kirisutokyo shakai mondai kenkyu, no. 31(March 1993): 141–188; Taro Ando, “Kinshuron [Prohibition Theory],” Jogaku Zasshi,
no. 161 (11 May 1889): 49–54.
42
Mary A. West, “Work in Japan,” Union Signal, 29 December 1892; “Hon. Sho
Nemoto,” Japan Evangelist 7, no.10 (October 1900); Nihon kirisutokyo rekishi daijiten[Encyclopedia of the History of Japanese Christianity] (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1988), 626.
43
Mary C. Leavitt, “Our Round-the-World Missionary,” Union Signal, 26 August1886.
44
Ibid., 2 September 1886.
45
Mary C. Leavitt, “Shudoku no iden [Heredity of Liquor Poison],” Jogaku Zasshi,
no. 28 (5 July 1886): 257–259; no. 29 (15 July 1886): 273–274.
46“WCTU in Japan,” Union Signal, 26 May 1887.
47
Mary A. West, “Citizenship,” in Parmly Billings Leaﬂets for World Temperance,
no.17, ed. Sho Nemoto (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1893), 29–41.
48“Good News From Japan,” Union Signal, 14 November 1895.
49
Yasutake, Transnational Women’s Activism, 95–103.
50
Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai ed., Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai
hyakunenshi, 169, 395–407.
35