Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan

256 Pages·1983·17.846 MB·English

by  Sharon Sievers

Sharon L. Sievers
FLOWERS IN SALT
The Beginnings of
Feminist Consciousness
in Modern japan
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Stanford, California
1983

Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 1983 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-8047-1165-8
LC 82-60104

For M u RAT A s H I z u K 0 ' GERDA LE RN ER '
and all the women whose work has brought closer
us
to the realization of a common language

Acknowledgments
In the early, discouraging days of my research on the his­
tory of Meiji women, I began reading Murata Shizuko and
Gerda Lerner together. It was a good thing to do, and in
the end, I think the one convinced me that I could do the
work, the other that I should do it. Since then I have accu­
mulated a rather large intellectual debt to a number of
people, but I continue to be impressed by the perceptions
and commitments of these two women, who do women's
history so well.
I am also in the debt of a number of people and institu­
tions for their help. The Japan Foundation, through a
1977-78 grant in Tokyo, made it possible for me to do a
major part of the research for this book, and the Founda­
tion staff, particularly Nogami Kazuko, was extremely
helpful. Morisaki Fuji of the National Diet Library, and
the staff members of Tokyo University's Meiji Newspaper
and Periodical Library gave me great deal of assistance
a
and good advice during the course of my research. Murata
(Yamaguchi) Shizuko, Tsurumi Kazuko, and the late, re­
markable Ichikawa Fusae were generous enough to find
time in busy schedules to talk with me about Meiji women,
and I learned a great deal in those conversations. In both
Japan and the United States, Hanawa Yukiko's assistance
vm Acknowledgments
with this research and her friendly criticism of my work
have been extremely valuable to me.
I would like to thank Tazuko Inui for checking transla­
tions and Eiko Fujii Harvey for helping me sort through
some of the early translating and research involving the
Women's Reform Society. My thanks also to Kondo Ma­
gara, Y osano Hikari, and Kishida Y oshikazu for permis­
sion to use photographs that appear in this volume and to
Hanawa Tomoko, Makino Kikuo of Mainichi Press, Ichi­
jima Toshio of Heibonsha, and Ide Fumiko for assistance
in gathering them; to Signs for permission to include some
of the material in "Feminist Criticism in Japanese Politics
in the i88o's: The Experience of Kishida Toshiko," in
Chapter Three; and to Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies
for permission to use Tsuzuki Chushichi's translation of
an Osugi Sakae poem in Chapter Six.
Barbara Mnookin of Stanford University Press has done
an unusually perceptive and skillful job of editing this
manuscript, and has been good to work with. J. G. Bell was
very helpful in shepherding the work through its initial
stages.
Though it is impossible to make explicit the enormous
debt I owe to women's studies scholars in Japan and the
United States, I would like to thank friends and colleagues
whose encouragement and criticism has been sustaining­
among them Chris Iwanaga, Sondra Hale, Sherna Gluck,
Lloyd lnui, Sharlie Ushioda, Laurie Welch, Maylene
Wong, and the notorious Tsuchiya-tachi.
Finally, I would like to express my long-standing admi­
ration and appreciation for the work of Emiko Moffitt,
Deputy Curator of the East Asian Collection at the Hoover
Institution. I am just one of many beneficiaries of Emiko's
ability to find a place in the budget for important materials
on women, and her constant encouragement of research
on Japan.
S.L.S.
Contents
Introduction
Xl
l. Impressions, 1860 l
2. The Early Meiji Debate on Women 10
3· Women in the Popular-Rights Movement 26
4· The Textile Workers 54
The Women's Reform Society 87
5·
6. Women Socialists 1 14
7. Kanno Suga 139
8. The Bluestockings 163
9· A Retrospective View 189
Notes 199
Index 233
Eight pages of photographs follow p. 66