The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-26
NEW DAY DAWNS FOR WOMAN IN
 ORIENTAL LANDS
Japanese And Korean Girls Become DevOtees
 Of Athletic Sports

NEW YORK Dec. 25-The Meth odist Episcopal board Of forelgn ms s;ons comb their church for candidates to fill their foreign missionary posts. and then sift them again to see which is the more fit, one believes, when you look into the unswerving great, gray eyes of Herbert Welch, resident Dlsnop of Japan and Korea, on leave Ill thls country. Time was when Korea led the orient ,n culture. The Koreans were the first people to make and use movaDle metal type instead of always cutting out new wooden blocks. In the Brit. isb museum there is on view set oi these ancient metal types that would have delighted the soul of Gutenberg, if he could have seen them when he set up the first printing press. !hVas- ions, subjection to conquerors, 1aihine anC pestilence were the spirit or the Koreans, until today little IS le1c or that ancient glory which excavatlons are bringing to light. but Plshop Welch sees signs of promise for Korea thai have their roots in education and the lifting of women to an equal stand ard that inevitable indicator of any civilization.
 New Day Dawning
 ssThe. dawn of new day IS break ing for women in the orient, especially the women of Japan and Korea, he said. 1.-The great ranks of oriental womanhood are stirring, and tneir emancipation appears to be coming through education. Their status is ranidly changing. Their position has been one of decided subordinaiton and inferiority. In Japan, even with the educational progress of the, past Q, years, education for oirls lags behino that provided for boys, and It IS onl! recently that higher educational oppor tunities for women have been perml! ted at all. In the last few years Il has become a not uncommon sight te see the wives of business men and of ficials at public banquets, where formerly the dancing girl acted as the social companion.
 "In Japan." continued BishoI Welch. "there is a new woman's move ment on. And strange as 1t may seem it is the Japanese newspaper me1 who have favored it most. The na tional congress of women's assocla tions. which met last year, was at tended by 4,000 delegates and stud ents from all parts of the country and was held in the building of al Osaka newspaper, and its edlto1 opened the congress by a speech. On' recent stand of Japanese journalists o1 this question was that taken by th' Tokyo Asahi in favor of woman. auffrage and also the abolition Of Il censed quarters. ., ,
 "Woman's suffrage is still a Ion, way off in the dim and hazy future for Japan has not yet acquired uni yersal manhood suffrage. Only abou one-third of the male population hay the electorate, and the right to VOL is still based on property qualiflca tion."
 Bishop Welch nodded his approva a. be told of ho woriental women ha modelled their organizations after thel western sisters.
 Athletics Catch Fancy
 "Athletics have caught their fanc decidedly" he said. And now in tn open places in Japan, the latest wor in sport clothes, golf, tennis and wha not makes splotches of bright colo in the landscape. And the Japanes pirl has no superior in the strons free swing with which she drives he golf ball or the grace of her move ments.
 The gaily-colored, picturesqu kimono, that graceful national dress the Japanese woman, is beginning t be relegated to the past, to join tn days when Japanese women issued n further than the threshold of their ow homes.
 It is such beautiful costume, said Bishop Welch, that l regret se' ing it disappear. This change western mode or dress or semi-wester is beginning in the schools, where un forms are adopted for the girls. l Korea this change of dress has bee carried out only in the kindergartel The little girls of both Japan all Korea, with their hair combed braids and in their little weSter frocks, look pretty much like lit girls of the Occident as they bend ov' their desks or giggle some childish cret behind their books.
 When Korean girls reach woman estate they dress their hair in an el tirely different manner from the w men of Japan, whose intricate col fure is one of the most bewllderlr