Women in Modern Japan

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17607, 24 October 1931, Page 10

Women in Modern Japan

'J’IIE day of woman has dawned in old-fashioned- Japan, it was explained by Miss Michfko Kawai, principal of the Keisen Girls’ Bcho.ol. and only woman member of the teaching staff, in an address to the Oriental Culture Summer College, of Toltio. “Times have changed, and women have changed,” she daicl. “It is inaccurate to think of Japanese women as shy maidens standing, a spray of cherry blossoms -in one hand, gazing at kit. Fujiama,• the sacred mountain, and dreaming of ghostly lovers, i ‘They still venerate Mt. Fujiama, but they are quite capable of climbing it with knapsacks on thoir backs. Here may be seen the same process of change in woman's status known in other lands, but it has not yet gone so far as in the 1 west, where I was educated. Equality in civil rights and pay is still denied, and the change has not affected all Women. Mirny are still untouched by modern Japan in their homes, whore patriarchal authority is supreme and the virtues are the negative one of the feudal days.” This change in outlook started as far back as 1871, when feudalism was abolished in name in Japan, though man was considered as the embodiment of light and, therefore, a sacred being, whilo woman was shadow and a defiled being. “It was the trials following the disastrous Japanese earthquake and f L ro of 1923 which revealed to the nation and to the Women thcnisolves thoir ability and power,” explained Miss Kawai; “this disaster did for Japanese women -whitt.i the war: did in the West, arousing tiio confidence ahd determination of women to loud fuller lives. 9 9 1 ' \t .*■ • ' / <• •• Miss Kawai also explained that the economic factor hlUl played a big part in breaking down tlic old system, for with the inability of man tO support all their female rdlhtivcs it was necessary to find vocations for women. THE arrival of the bustle continues 1 to agitate- the dress’world in Paris and London, and the cash for and against the return, oi this typical and- much-eritieia'oti Victorian dreS)S accessory is arghed With much vigor. Homo of the new gowns do, indeed, show the real thing iii bustles, though minus the stiffening jjind- whale-boning of earlier periods. - Mdf.h 6ftctt, however, tho so-calledl busdlo is best described as a ‘' nidvhmerit ” in -back flounces which simulate the pull-back bustle effect. ./ r