Lost Leaves

Chapter One Educating the Modern Murasaki Jogaku Zasshi; and the Woman Writer

Chapter One Educating the Modern Murasaki Jogaku Zasshi and the Woman Writer Where is the Modern Murasaki hiding? Where the Meiji Shōnagon? Eagerly I await your appearance. Nay, even more than I, our very society longs for your arrival. —Shimizu Shikin, 1890 The men of new Japan, to whom the opinions and customs of the western world are becoming daily more familiar, while they shrink aghast, in many cases, at the thought that their women may ever become like the forward, self-assertive, half-masculine women of the West, show a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with the smallness and narrowness of the lives of their wives and daughters—a growing belief that better-educated women would make better homes, and that the ideal home of Europe and America is the product of a more advanced civilization than that of Japan. —Alice Mabel Bacon, Japanese Girls and Women, 1902 Miyake Kaho’s literary debut in 1888 was the catalyst that roused aspiring women authors from their “centuries of silence.”1 After Kaho opened the gates, works by women trickled out yearly: eleven in 1889; thirteen in 1891; and finally, in a relative deluge of activity, twenty-four in 1895.2 Most notable among these early writers were, in addition to Kaho, Wakamatsu Shizuko, Nakajima Shōen, Shimizu Shikin, Koganei Kimiko, Kitada Usurai, and, of course, Higuchi Ichiyō. As diverse as these women were—hailing from different classes, regions, and economic situations—almost all, with the exception of Usurai and Ichiyō, shared one thing in common. Either they had attended Christian schools or they had associated with Jogaku zasshi (Woman’s Education Magazine). 7 Education, most literary historians agree, particularly Western-flavored mission-sponsored education, was the single most important factor leading to the renewal of writing by women in the modern era.3 To understand the reemergence of women as writers, therefore, one must consider their educational opportunities. Since education for women in the Meiji period (1868–1912) is entwined with social, religious, political, and economic concerns , it is difficult to speak of one without engaging all the others. It is also impossible, as well as distracting, to address all these concerns in a study that proposes to discuss female literary franchise.4 To explore the various checks and balances that simultaneously inspired and constrained the Meiji woman writer, I will use Jogaku zasshi as the stage upon which to present my study. This journal, founded and managed by men, was intensely devoted to raising the level of a woman’s education and incorporated over the course of its twenty-year history a wealth of essays and articles concerning female literacy , education, and social roles. Inaugurated in 1885, a highly significant year in Japanese history for a variety of reasons,5 Jogaku zasshi employed literature and literary-minded individuals in its efforts to encourage women to participate more actively in society. Equally responsible for fostering literary ambitions among its female readers, the journal provides a rich environment for an exploration of this emergence of women’s writing in Meiji Japan. Sōma Kokkō (1876–1955), an avid Jogaku zasshi fan, offers one of the more incisive histories of the journal and the social climate that produced it in her autobiographical account Mokui—Meiji, Taishō bungakushi kaisō (Silent Changes: Literary Reminiscences of the Meiji and Taishō Periods, 1961). Kokkō charts her own coming-of-age as a Meiji woman, and aspiring writer, alongside the developments in the journal and thus provides a rare window into the world of the Jogaku reader. She indicates that the journal was required reading among enlightened Meiji youth—both male and female.6 She has described how, as a girl, she managed to acquire nearly every issue, though she lived a great distance from Tokyo where Jogaku was published . Some issues she received secondhand from friends and some from her aunt, Sasaki Toyosu (1853–1901, also known as Toyoju or Toyoshi), an outspoken member of the Tokyo Women’s Reform Society, who brought copies to the city of Sendai whenever she paid her niece a visit. Jogaku zasshi offered the young Kokkō example after vibrant example of intelligent and active women. Journal entries included biographies of pioneering women from both Japan and the West as well as interviews with and articles about contemporary female leaders such as Atomi Kakei (1840–1926), founder of one of the first academies of higher learning for women, or Ogino Gin (1851–1913), Japan’s first licensed female physician. But more...