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  • Children As Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan
  • L. Halliday Piel
Children As Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan. By Mark A. Jones. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. vii + 407 pp. $45.00 cloth.

In Children As Treasures, Mark Jones shows that modern Japanese childhood was shaped by middle-class ideals arising between 1890 and 1930. His book is a welcome addition to English-language works on Japanese social history because it focuses on childhood. Until now, most English-language scholars of Japan have treated childhood as a parenthetical topic in a discussion of education, women's roles, or some other theme. Focusing on adult views of childhood, Jones identifies constructs of the child in the rhetoric of the middle class. He quotes mothers, journalists, educators, and child experts from sources such as newspapers, advertisements, and women's magazines. He argues that there were three competing visions of the ideal child: The "little citizen" (shōkokumin), the "superior student" (yūtōsei), and the "childlike child" (kodomorashii kodomo). Ultimately the "superior student" triumphed in the postwar period.

Although Jones does not discuss the inspiration for his theory, his bibliography and use of terms like "cultural capital" point to the underlying influence of French cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu, who pioneered a view of culture as a political arena in which producers of art compete to define the art field. A producer's position in the field reflects his social position in society in addition to his "cultural" and "symbolic" capital. Japanese literary theorist Karatani Kōjin, listed in the bibliography, identifies the "childlike child" with Romantic writers aiming to challenge the utilitarian image of "little citizen" in the mass media. Jones' contribution is to connect the literary categories of childhood to class competition. In this scheme, the "little citizen" is a product of the established elite, a term Jones uses for the urban, upper-middle class of the late nineteenth century. The "superior student" is the weapon of the aspiring elite, namely, the upwardly mobile immigrants to the city during the 1910s and 1920s. Finally, the "childlike child" is the embattled response of [End Page 340] the established elite against the rapidly growing aspiring elite and its materialistic ambitions.

Chapter one introduces the voices of the established elite, social reformers from influential families with ties to government bureaucracy who want to accelerate Japan's modernization. Jones frequently quotes Hani Motoko, a pioneering Christian woman who was an educator and magazine editor. Like other reformers of her generation, Hani criticized the Confucian family and advocated the Anglo-American model with its presumed respect for the interests of children and youth. Chapter two discusses the rise of the public professional—child psychologists, pediatricians, and Normal School professors—in the context of a global movement to understand the child scientifically. Quoting Professor Motora Yūjirō and child psychologist Takashima Heizaburō, Jones shows that scientific experts contributed to the commercial success of retailers by serving on advisory boards of companies such as the Mitsukoshi Department Store.

The third chapter focuses on the cult of domesticity within the established elite. The "good wife and wise mother" (ryōsai kenbo) embraced her mandate to cultivate the moral character of the "little citizen" for the good of the nation. To that end, she avidly consumed the advice of scientific experts. This educated mother kept a child-development diary and adopted child-centered, Western ideas, such as the birthday party, the child's private room, and child-size furniture. Jones quotes letters to magazines in which mothers described highly structured routines that they devise for the self-improvement of their children. Chapter four represents the aspiring elite as mid-level salaried clerks investing in their child's education as a step toward upward mobility. Determined mothers bought study guides and exam prep booklets to give the budding "superior student" a head start in a fiercely competitive environment where demand for higher education outstripped supply. However, experts criticized the side effects of "examination hell"—hours of study, heavy book bags, and long commutes to preferred elementary schools—as detrimental to child development.

Chapter five draws a connection between...

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