WOMEN IN JAPAN.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13509, 26 August 1907, Page 7

WOMEN IN JAPAN.

The opinion formerly held of Japanese women at their best was that they were simple, delightful creatures, whose whole aim in life was to please the other sex ; but that as regards intellect and character they must not be taken too seriously. A more intimate knowledge has enlarged this conception, and the intellectual side of their nature is more clearly recognised. General Colvile remarked to a Japanese on- the ease with which his countrywomen learnt English, and he explained it by saying: "Women are more simple than men," a statement with which, says the writer, "I venture wholly to disagree, but which, nevertheless, bxplains why Japanese women like talking to Europeans." Japanese women have hitherto laboured under great disadvantages. "If we talk we are thought forward by our own people," a Japanese girl said to the English visitor, "and if we cannot talk well we are thought stupid by yours. What are we to do?" As a wife, mother, and teacher of her children, the Japanese woman was, and js, nearly perfect, says General Colvile, but otherwise as a member of society she was wasted. He considers her a more highly evolved human being than j the males of her race; that her intelligence is of the highest order, and that j there are no intellectual heights to which she is incapable of rising. In the matter of morality? he agrees with Lafcadio Hedrn, who writes: — "How frequently has it been asserted" that, as a moral being, the Japanese woman does not seem to belong to the same race as the Japanese man?" How will she adapt herself to the changing conditions of modern Japan? A movement in the direction of emancipation is already taking place. The Japanese women are largely engaged in private and Government schools. They are employed as ticket clerks at railway stations, in post and telephone offices, as typewriters and clerks in hotels and business houses. They manage cheap shows of all sorts, from panoramas and kinematographs to shooting galleries. They are to be seen alone or in parties, in trains and tram cars, and even lunching at European hotels. They are very anxious for the best advice. "I wish England were as near as America is," a Japanese lady said to the visitor; "we get so few of your ideas in comparison." A Japanese, on being asked what the result of this emancipation would be, answered unhesitatingly : ''A great increase in the number of spinsters." On all sides one hears the same story : ' 'Japanese" girls do not want to marry." It is hardly to bo wondered at. Now that they can earn their livings in so many ways, they are not anxious to place themselves in the position of subjection that a Japanese husband requires. This emancipation of t the Japanese woman is due to the introduction of European ideas, a more liberal system of education, the revival of Shintoism, which is more favourable than Buddhism to the weaker sex; but chiefly to the dearth of men caused by the late war. Lafcadio Hearn believed that the woman of old Japan is doomed •to disappear. "Perhaps," he said, "no such type of woman will appear again in this world for a hundred thousand years; the conditions of industrial civilisation will not admit of her existence."