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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Working Women of Japan, by Sidney Lewis Gulick
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+Title: Working Women of Japan
+
+
+Author: Sidney Lewis Gulick
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 7, 2011  [eBook #35511]
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKING WOMEN OF JAPAN***
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+
+WORKING WOMEN OF JAPAN
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+[Illustration: LIBRARY OF CHRISTIAN PROGRESS]
+
+_Volumes Issued_
+
+The Church a Community Force. _By Worth M. Tippy_
+The Church at the Center. _By Warren H. Wilson_
+The Making of a Country Parish. _By Harlow S. Mills_
+Working Women of Japan. _By Sidney L. Gulick_
+Social Evangelism. _By Harry F. Ward_
+
+_Cloth, 50 Cents, Prepaid_
+
+
+ADDITIONAL VOLUMES TO BE ISSUED
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+[Illustration: A FARMER'S HOME]
+
+
+WORKING WOMEN OF JAPAN
+
+by
+
+SIDNEY L. GULICK
+
+Twenty-five years a missionary in Japan, Professor in
+Doshisha University, Late Lecturer in the
+Imperial University of Kyoto
+
+Author of
+_Growth of the Kingdom of God; Evolution of the Japanese;
+The White Peril in the Far East; The American
+Japanese Problem; The Fight for Peace_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+1915
+Missionary Education Movement of the
+United States and Canada
+New York
+
+Copyright, 1915, by
+Missionary Education Movement of the
+United States and Canada
+
+
+
+
+                               Dedicated
+                                   to
+                             SHINJIRO OMOTO
+                  in appreciation of more than a decade
+                          of untiring service
+                                for the
+                         Working Women of Japan
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+            PREFACE                                               ix
+
+         I  SOCIAL CLASSES IN JAPAN, OLD AND NEW                   1
+
+        II  FARMERS' WIVES AND DAUGHTERS                           8
+
+       III  DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN FARMING FAMILIES               24
+
+        IV  SILK WORKERS                                          32
+
+         V  WIVES AND DAUGHTERS OF ARTIZANS AND MERCHANTS         36
+
+        VI  _KOMORI_ (BABY-TENDERS)                               42
+
+       VII  HOUSEHOLD DOMESTICS                                   48
+
+      VIII  HOTEL AND TEA-HOUSE GIRLS                             52
+
+        IX  FACTORY GIRLS AND WOMEN                               61
+
+         X  GEISHA (_HETAERAE_)                                   87
+
+        XI  _SHOGI_ (LICENSED PROSTITUTES)                       104
+
+       XII  AMELIORATIVE EFFORTS                                 118
+
+      XIII  THE MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME                    137
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                PAGE
+
+    A FARMER'S HOME                           _Frontispiece_
+
+    SEPARATING THE WHEAT HEADS FROM THE STRAW                     16
+
+    AT THE LOOM                                                   16
+
+    A FAMILY AT WORK IN A RICE-FIELD                              28
+
+    TRANSPLANTING YOUNG RICE PLANTS                               28
+
+    SPINNING COTTON THREAD FOR WEAVING                            32
+
+    AT WORK IN A KITCHEN                                          32
+
+    CARRYING FAGOTS                                               44
+
+    BABY-TENDERS                                                  44
+
+    AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY                                     82
+
+    O HAMAYU (GEISHA)                                             92
+
+    MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME                                156
+
+    GIRLS IN THE MATSUYAMA HOME                                  156
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Japan is rapidly swinging into the current of an industrial civilization
+imported from the West. How is this movement modifying her ancient
+civilization? And, especially, what effect is it having on her homes and
+on the character of her manhood and womanhood? These are questions of
+profound interest to students of national and social evolution.
+
+While many works on Japan consider these questions more or less fully,
+they do so almost exclusively from the standpoint of the effect on men.
+So far as is known, no work studies the problem from the standpoint of
+the effect on women, who, it may be incidentally remarked, constitute
+one half of the population.
+
+One book, indeed, that by Miss Alice M. Bacon, on _Japanese Girls and
+Women_, describes the homes, lives, and characteristics of Japanese
+women. This important work should not be overlooked by any who wish to
+know Japan thoroughly. Yet Miss Bacon's study is largely confined to the
+higher and upper middle classes, who, though important, constitute but
+one section of the women of Japan. To understand Japan it is also
+needful to know the lives and characteristics of the working classes.
+Especially important in the eyes of those who study social development
+is the transformation that is taking place in the Japanese home because
+of the influx of Occidental industrialism.
+
+The purpose of this book is to give some information as to conditions
+prevailing among working women, which conditions have called for the
+establishment of institutions whose specific aim is the amelioration of
+the industrial and moral situation. Two classes of workers have not been
+considered--school-teachers and nurses.
+
+The reader will naturally ask what the native religions have done to
+help women meet the modern situation. The answer is short; practically
+nothing. They are seriously belated in every respect. For ages the
+native religions have served by doctrine and practise to hold women down
+rather than to elevate them. The doctrine of the "triple obedience" to
+father, to husband, and when old to son, has had wide-reaching and
+disastrous consequences. It has even been utilized for the support of
+the brothel system. Popular Buddhism, especially during the feudal era,
+has emphasized the inherent sinfulness of woman; some have even taught
+that her lightest sins are worse than the heaviest sins of man. The
+brothel system flourishes in certain districts where Buddhism is most
+strongly entrenched. Brothels abound in the immediate vicinity of famous
+and popular temples. I have yet to hear of a Buddhist anti-brothel
+movement or a Buddhist rescue home for prostitutes. Japanese
+philanthropy, under the impulse of Buddhism, did indeed start early and
+attain striking development at the hands of Imperial and princely
+personages. Men and women of lowly origin also attained high rank in
+the annals of Buddhist philanthropy. With the decay of Buddhism in
+recent centuries, however, little philanthropic activity has survived.
+With the revival of Buddhism Buddhists have again undertaken
+philanthropic work; they have established orphan asylums, schools,
+ex-convict homes, and various benevolent enterprises for the poor, the
+old, and invalids; but not yet do they seem to appreciate the moral and
+industrial situation, or undertake anything commensurate with their
+numbers and resources. The conception of private enterprise for the
+amelioration of industrial difficulties and moral need is still the
+almost exclusive possession of Christians.
+
+The closing chapter describes one institution in which the Christian
+ideal is applied to the moral and industrial situation in one small
+town. It serves as an illustration of what is being done by Christians
+in other places and along many other lines as well. Christianity is
+being accepted in Japan, not so much because of its doctrine, as
+because of its practical methods of inspiring and uplifting manhood and
+womanhood. While the purpose of this book is, as stated, to describe the
+industrial condition and the characteristics of Japanese working women,
+back of this purpose is the desire to show how the Christian gospel,
+when concretely expressed, takes hold of Japanese working women in
+exactly these conditions and becomes to them "the power of God unto
+salvation."
+
+The problems of life are substantially the same the world around, for
+human nature is one; and the heart with its needs, desires, temptations,
+defeats, and victories is essentially the same, East or West. The
+problems created by industrialism do not differ, whether in Germany,
+England, and America or in Japan and China. And their fundamental
+solution likewise is the same.
+
+Let not the reader assume that the discussions of this volume give
+adequate acquaintance with the working women of Japan. It deals with
+only a few specific classes and inadequately even with them. A more
+comprehensive treatment would doubtless be enlightening. Limitations,
+however, of time and space forbid a more adequate discussion.
+
+And let the reader be wary of generalizing certain criticisms herein
+made and applying them universally to all classes of women. Many years
+of life in Japan have led the writer to a high estimation of the
+character as well as the culture of Japanese women.
+
+Especial thanks are due to Colonel Yamamuro for valued criticisms and
+suggestions in the preparation of this work. The responsibility,
+however, for its statements rests upon the writer. The limitations of
+this book none can feel more than he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOCIAL CLASSES IN JAPAN, OLD AND NEW
+
+
+In old Japan, next to the Imperial family and court nobles, came the
+feudal lords (_Daimio_), upheld by the warrior class (_Samurai_), below
+whom in turn were ranked the three chief working classes,--farmers,
+artizans, and tradesmen. These three classes produced and distributed
+the nation's wealth and paid taxes to their respective feudal lords by
+whom the warriors were supported. Below all were day laborers and
+palanquin bearers,--in those days a large and important though a
+despised class, for they lived entirely by bare, brute strength, lacking
+all special skill. Still lower were the _eta_ or pariah class, excluded
+from towns and villages, except when they entered to do the foulest
+work, such as digging the graves of criminals and the slaughtering of
+animals, and curing their skins. And lowest of all were _hi-nin_,
+literally translated "non-humans." These were beggars and criminals, who
+would not or could not work. The name, popularly given, well indicates
+how they were regarded.
+
+With the fall of the feudal system, in the early seventies, society was
+reorganized. Those above the Samurai were divided in 1886 into five
+grades, not counting the Imperial princes, namely: prince, marquis,
+count, viscount, and baron. These constitute to-day the hereditary peers
+of Japan, and possess considerable wealth and, of course, overwhelming
+prestige.
+
+They numbered, in 1903, 1,784 families. Besides the 1,784 heads of these
+families, there were 1,786 male and 2,485 female members of these
+families of rank. The number of these peers is constantly being
+increased by Imperial favor, the conferring of rank being the customary
+method of rewarding distinguished service. According to the _Japan Year
+Book_ for 1914, the number of peers in 1911 was 919, there being 17
+princes, 37 marquises, 101 counts, 378 viscounts, and 386 barons.
+Promotion from one rank to another causes constant change in the numbers
+of the various ranks.
+
+The _Samurai_, deprived of their swords and military privileges, were
+given the name _shizoku_ (Samurai families) and were paid off in lump
+sums, thereafter being thrown on their own resources. There are 439,154
+shizoku families, numbering altogether 2,169,018 individuals. The
+remaining classes were designated as _heimin_ (common people).
+Statistics show that they number 8,471,610 families, totaling 44,558,025
+individuals. The eta were elevated, hence popularly called _shin-heimin_
+(new common people) and allowed to live anywhere and take up any
+desirable calling. The hi-nin also were classed along with the rest of
+humankind. As a matter of fact, the eta and hi-nin were but a small
+fringe of the whole population, the descendants of the former being now
+estimated at something less than one million, and those of the latter
+amounting to about 35,000.
+
+With the national reorganization it was inevitable that the new
+executive offices from the highest to the lowest should be given to men
+of experience. At first, therefore, the reorganization amounted to
+little more than a great shuffle of names and titles. Peers took the
+highest governmental positions, while Samurai and their sons as a rule
+filled the lower posts. Many Samurai, however, received no appointments
+and had to go to work. In time, as education has progressed, sons of
+farmers and merchants have become qualified and have been appointed to
+government offices. The new departments, such as the educational, the
+postal and telegraph offices, the railroads, and especially the army and
+navy, call for large numbers of efficient men. These posts are filled
+almost entirely on the basis of fitness. While ancestry is not entirely
+ignored in the making of appointments, nevertheless old class
+distinctions are gradually being obliterated.
+
+The fortunes of the women have naturally followed those of the men. All
+families that lost their hereditary income had to go to work; this was
+true chiefly of the Samurai. Where the men were fortunate, the women
+could maintain the old customs, limiting themselves to their familiar
+domestic work, with a servant or two to help, but tens of thousands of
+Samurai families found themselves reduced to the direst poverty; women
+having generations of genteel ancestry were forced to enter the ranks of
+the workers.
+
+Let us define what we mean by a working woman. Women whose husbands or
+parents provide the support of the family are not to be included in this
+term. These women may, and indeed doubtless do, labor abundantly and
+fruitfully in the home; their time is fully occupied. Probably no
+working women toil more diligently or for longer hours than do these
+wives and mothers in hundreds of thousands of homes, in most of which
+there are no servants. All the cooking, sewing, and housecleaning is
+done by them, so that they are indeed workers. But they are not
+"working women." They are the true gentlewomen of Japan, whose culture,
+graces, and charms are not easily described.
+
+By "working women" we mean only those women who, in addition to the
+regular duties of the home, must share in the labor of earning the daily
+bread. In Japan the number of such is exceptionally large, if compared
+with that of some countries of the West. They may be divided into eleven
+classes, according to the nature of their occupations, namely:
+school-teachers, nurses, clerks and office girls, farmers, home
+industrial workers, factory hands, domestics, baby-tenders, hotel and
+tea-house girls, geisha, and prostitutes. Omitting the teachers and
+nurses, these are the classes whose conditions, numbers, education, and
+character we are now to study. Taken as a whole we do not hesitate to
+say that the working women of Japan, while probably lower in point of
+moral and physical energy and personal initiative than corresponding
+classes of the West, are not inferior to them in point of personal
+culture. And if civilization is defined, as it should be, in terms of
+personal culture rather than in those of mechanical contrivances and
+improvements, then Japan will surely take her place among the highly
+civilized nations of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+FARMERS' WIVES AND DAUGHTERS
+
+
+Japan has three leading wealth-earning occupations: agriculture,
+sericulture, and factory work. In each of these women take an important
+part. In the cultivation of the soil farmers' wives and daughters share
+equally with men the toil of planting and reaping the crops. For
+instance, in the cultivation of rice, the most important and the hardest
+work of the farmer, it is often the women who plant it spear by spear in
+regular rows, and it is they who "puddle" the paddy-fields with their
+hands four or five times in the course of the season. In some districts,
+however, men and women do this work together. The toil and the weariness
+involved cannot be appreciated by one who has not actually shared it.
+Fancy, if you can, the fatigue of standing more than ankle deep in mud,
+stooping all day long as you set out the tiny rice plants in regular
+lines! And at short intervals of a few days each you must repeatedly
+puddle the whole paddy-field: that is, stir up the mud with your hands
+in order to destroy the sprouting weeds and prevent the soil from caking
+and hardening around the tender rice roots, preventing their best
+growth. And remember that you must do all this regardless of the
+broiling summer sun, or the pelting rain, for the planting must be done
+at exactly the right time, and the successive puddlings must follow in
+due order. So severe is the strain that, after the planting and each
+puddling, the whole village takes a rest. My gardener, an ex-farmer,
+speaking of those summer days of toil in the rice-fields, expatiates on
+the extreme fatigue and the joy of the rest days, and as women take the
+brunt of the stooping-work, theirs is the lion's share of the weariness.
+He says that, during the rice-planting season, the women are so
+important that those days are called the "women's daimio days," and
+adds that we must not forget how during that time the regular work of
+the women must also go on, for they must cook the food and care for the
+children. For this, indeed, young girls and grandmothers are pressed
+into service as far as possible, but the responsibility and care rest
+nevertheless on the wives and mothers.
+
+ [Illustration: SEPARATING THE WHEAT HEADS FROM THE STRAW AT THE LOOM]
+
+Also in the harvesting and threshing of the rice, barley, wheat, and
+millet, women take an important part. But it is needless to enter into
+details. Enough to say that, in general farming, women share with
+husbands and brothers the heavy toil and fatigue of agriculture. It
+should be added that this is not because men shirk heavy work, but only
+because Japanese agriculture is so largely done by hand that every
+possible worker is pressed into service. As a fact, men do the heaviest
+part of the work, preparing the soil for the successive crops and
+carrying the heavy loads.
+
+So varied are the modes of agriculture in different parts of Japan that
+general statements are dangerous, but I know that in some districts the
+weariness and drudgery of rice-planting and puddling are relieved by the
+singing or chanting of old folk-songs. The chorus leader intones a
+descriptive phrase, oftentimes improvising his own story, and is
+answered with a refrain from a dozen or a score of women. A story slowly
+evolves as the hours pass, and thus the work is lightened and the time
+beguiled.
+
+In spite of fatigue, rice-planting has its charm for those who have been
+reared in farmers' homes. It is a time of hope, of social intercourse,
+of rest days and festivals, so that even the drudgery of the farmer has
+its compensations. Miss Denton, of the Doshisha Girls' School, says it
+is interesting to note how country girls get restless at rice-planting
+time, and for one reason or another usually succeed in getting excused
+from school work, to be off to the homes and share in the toils and joys
+of the season.
+
+Tea-picking is probably the pleasantest form of toil undertaken by
+farmers' wives and daughters. The labor comes in the spring and early
+summer, when the temperature is delightful. It gives opportunity for
+social intercourse that is highly appreciated. Rice-planting and
+tea-picking constitute the two extremes of laborious and delightful toil
+engaged in by Japan's agricultural women.
+
+How many are the women engaged in agriculture? The _Japan Year Book_ for
+1914 says that in 1912 there were 5,438,051 farming families,
+constituting about 58 per cent. of the entire nation. According to the
+_Resume Statistique_ for 1914 the total number of females in Japan
+proper, in 1908, was 24,542,383. Omitting those under fifteen years of
+age, 8,364,000, and those over sixty years of age, 2,216,000, we have
+13,962,000 as the number of able-bodied women, of whom 58 per cent., or
+8,077,000, are the farmers' wives and daughters.
+
+In regard to their education it may be said that until the most recent
+times they have had practically none. In recent decades, however,
+farmers' children have begun to go to school. Until 1908 the elementary
+course (compulsory) covered four years, but the results were so poor
+that the period has now been extended to six. Four years' schooling does
+not give ability to read easily even a simple daily paper, much less an
+ordinary book. Our cook, an intelligent and able farming woman, when she
+came to us twelve years ago, could not read even the simplest Japanese
+characters, and thinks that at present relatively few farmers' wives
+have enough education to read papers or write letters. Whether or not
+six years' schooling will give this ability remains to be seen. It is
+safe to say that to-day Japanese adult farming women, as a whole, lack
+book education and have received little, if any, systematic training.
+They are accordingly largely controlled by tradition, and it goes
+without saying that their level of mental, moral, and spiritual life is
+low. The Shinto and Buddhist religions, as they exist among the farmers,
+are largely lacking in ethical content; they are rituals rather for
+burying the dead and through the use of charms and magic rites they
+promise future happiness and present, temporal blessings. Priests, as a
+rule, do not seek to cultivate the minds of the people, to strengthen
+their wills for moral life, or to elevate their personalities.
+
+Yet it must not be inferred that farming women are without mental
+ability or common sense. They are indeed not inferior to the men with
+whom they share the burdens and toil of life. As a rule they are a
+sturdy, intelligent, self-respecting folk, having ideals of conduct
+which include cleanliness, gentleness, and politeness, and in comparison
+with the peasant classes of Europe are much to be commended. The women
+not seldom appear to better advantage than their husbands in point of
+intelligence and common sense, which I have thought might be due to the
+greater variety of their daily occupation.
+
+In her excellent work on _Japanese Girls and Women_ Miss Bacon writing
+of this class says: "There seems no doubt at all that among the
+peasantry of Japan one finds the women who have the most freedom and
+independence. Among this class, all through the country, the women,
+though hard-worked and possessing few comforts, lead lives of
+intelligent, independent labor, and have in the family positions as
+respected and honored as those held by women in America. Their lives are
+fuller and happier than those of the women of the higher classes, for
+they are themselves breadwinners, contributing an important part of the
+family revenue, and are obeyed and respected accordingly. The Japanese
+lady, at her marriage, lays aside her independent existence to become
+the subordinate and servant of her husband and parents-in-law, and her
+face, as the years go by, shows how much she has given up, how
+completely she has sacrificed herself to those about her. The Japanese
+peasant woman, when she marries, works side by side with her husband,
+finds life full of interest outside of the simple household work, and,
+as the years go by, her face shows more individuality, more pleasure in
+life, less suffering and disappointment than that of her wealthier and
+less hard-working sister."[1]
+
+    [1] Pp. 260, 261.
+
+The home of the average tenant farmer is a small, single-storied,
+thatch-roofed building, having usually two or three small rooms
+separated by sliding paper screens, and a kitchen with earthen floor.
+The smoke escapes as it can, passing through the roof or pervading the
+whole house. No privacy of any kind is possible, nor is any need of it
+felt. The house is free of furniture, save for one or two chests of
+drawers. A closet or two affords a place for the _futon_ (bedding) by
+day, and for the little extra clothing. Of course no books are found in
+such homes. The main room often has a board floor, with a fire box in
+the center, over which is a kettle suspended from the roof. Here the
+family eat, and friends gather to chat after the day's work is over. The
+food is of the poorest grade in the empire, though usually adequate in
+amount. Of course there are well-to-do farmers, not a few, who own
+their farms, employ fellow farmers, and cultivate large areas. Their
+homes are larger and better, but still in arrangement and structure they
+are practically the same. Their sons attend the middle schools and books
+and the daily paper are familiar objects.
+
+The economic condition of the farming class may be judged from the fact
+that the land cultivated by each family averages three and one-third
+acres, which must provide food and clothing for five or six persons. The
+great majority of farmers live in little, compact villages, having
+populations ranging from 500 to 5,000. There are 12,706 villages under
+5,000, and only 1,311 villages, towns, and cities over 5,000. These
+facts suggest the nature of the social conditions of the farming
+population. They live under the severest limitations of every kind,
+physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Yet during the recent era of
+Meiji (enlightened rule), from 1868 to 1912, the economic condition of
+the agricultural classes made great improvement. My gardener, a man of
+sixty, who remembers Japan before the reformation, 1868, says that
+farmers now live in luxury. The taxes they pay to-day are slight
+compared with what was required of them in former times, when, in his
+section, farmers had to give to their Daimio about five twelfth of the
+rice crop, while taxes to-day require but one fifth or less. He adds
+that families owning three and one third acres of land are well-to-do,
+seeing many families have to make their entire living from only one
+acre!
+
+Of course, farmers, without education or social demands, require little
+beyond the simplest food and shelter. The clothing needed by their
+families is the cheapest cotton, with cotton wadding added in the winter
+for warmth. The heat of the summer renders much clothing a burden. A
+farmer is adequately dressed for the field or his own home if he has on
+his loin-cloth. His wife or grown-up daughter, when in the house with
+only the immediate members of the family or most intimate acquaintances
+present, is satisfied with the _koshimaki_--a strip of cloth some two
+feet wide tied around the waist and covering the lower part of the body.
+But on the street both men and women conform to the national customs and
+wear the kimono.
+
+The Japanese household and bathing customs have served to prevent the
+development of that particular type of modesty characteristic of Western
+lands. It is difficult for Occidentals to understand this feature of
+Japanese civilization, but such an understanding is essential if one
+would do justice to the moral life of this people. We may not apply to
+them Occidental standards in matters of modesty or dress. They have
+standards of their own, to understand and appreciate which requires no
+little study.
+
+At this point, I venture a second quotation from Miss Bacon, for she has
+studied carefully this subject, which all foreigners seeking to estimate
+the nature of Japanese civilization and moral character should not fail
+to master. "As one travels," she writes, "through rural Japan in summer,
+and sees the half-naked men, women, and children that pour out from
+every village on one's route, surrounding the _kuruma_ (wheeled vehicle)
+at every stopping place, one sometimes wonders whether there is in the
+country any real civilization, whether these half-naked people are not
+more savage than civilized. But when one finds everywhere good hotels,
+scrupulous cleanliness in all the appointments of toilet and table,
+polite and careful servants, honest and willing performance of labor
+bargained for, together with the gentlest and pleasantest of manners,
+one is forced to reconsider the judgment formed only upon one
+peculiarity of the national life, and to conclude that there is
+certainly a high type of civilization in Japan, though differing in many
+particulars from our own. A careful study of Japanese ideas of decency,
+and frequent conversation with refined and intelligent Japanese ladies
+upon this subject, has led me to the following conclusion. According to
+the Japanese standard, any exposure of the person that is merely
+incidental to health, cleanliness, or convenience in doing necessary
+work is perfectly modest and allowable; but an exposure, no matter how
+slight, that is simply for show, is in the highest degree indelicate. In
+illustration of the first part of this conclusion, I would refer to the
+open bath-houses, the naked laborers, the exposure of the lower limbs in
+wet weather by the turning up of the kimono, the entirely nude condition
+of the country children in summer, and the very slight clothing that
+some adults regard as necessary about the house or in the country during
+the hot season. In illustration of the last point, I would mention the
+horror with which many Japanese ladies regard that style of foreign
+dress which, while covering the figure completely, reveals every detail
+of the form above the waist, and, as we say, shows off to advantage a
+pretty figure. To the Japanese mind, it is immodest to want to show off
+a pretty figure. As for the ballroom costumes, where neck and arms are
+frequently exposed to the gaze of multitudes, the Japanese woman who
+would with entire composure take her bath in the presence of others,
+would be in an agony of shame at the thought of appearing in public in a
+costume so indecent as that worn by many respectable American and
+European women."[2]
+
+    [2] _Japanese Girls and Women_, 257-260.
+
+This completes our study of the homes and characteristics of five
+eighths of Japan. Here the brawn of the nation is reared. Hence come the
+sturdy, docile, patient, and courageous soldiers. Here are raised boys
+and girls by the hundreds of thousands who must at an early age begin to
+earn a living. This is the hunting-ground of those who seek for builders
+of railroads, factory hands, domestics, hotel girls, baby-tenders, and
+occasionally geishas, concubines, and prostitutes. Considering the
+severe economic conditions under which Japan's agricultural classes
+live, who can fail to admire their courage and grit, their personal
+culture, their even temper and cheerful faces, their innate habits of
+courtesy and good breeding, their mutual patience and forbearance, and
+their simple artistic tastes and pleasures! Do they not compare well
+with the peasant classes of any other nation?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN FARMING FAMILIES
+
+
+Before passing on to study the various classes of workers constantly
+recruited in no small numbers from the homes of farmers, we should first
+consider the high development of industrial occupations within these
+homes themselves. To appreciate both the opportunity and the need for
+this, we turn to the official statistics of marriage and education.
+Until 1908 compulsory education, as has been already stated, covered
+four years from the age of six to ten. According to governmental
+statistics (1912) 98.8 per cent. of the boys and 97.5 per cent. of the
+girls were actually fulfilling the requirement. This percentage seems
+high to American statistical students, but investigations show that,
+while Japanese rules for the attendance of pupils and methods of
+counting the same differ in some respects from those that prevail in
+the United States and Canada, yet, as a matter of fact, in school
+attendance Japan compares well with other lands. It should be
+remembered, however, that the nature of the Japanese written language is
+such that even six years of elementary education is probably not equal
+to four years of similar schooling in Western lands. American children,
+at the close of their elementary education, possess a mastery of the
+tools of civilization and a degree of general intelligence considerably
+in advance of Japanese children who have enjoyed the same number of
+years of school life. As we have already seen, this amount of compulsory
+education is insufficient to give children ability to read and write
+with freedom.
+
+The question for us however is as to the number of girls above school
+age and still unmarried who, because of family poverty, must find some
+form of wage-earning occupation. Turning to the vital statistics
+provided by the government (1914), we find that in 1908 there were
+2,496,142 girls between ten and fifteen years of age, and 2,180,408
+young women between fifteen and twenty years of age. But how many of
+these are married? Again relying on government statistics for the same
+year, we learn that only 199 girls under fifteen had been married,
+whereas 193,978 had married under twenty years of age. In view of the
+fact that 709,021 marriages took place between twenty and twenty-five
+years of age, it is altogether probable that, of those married under
+twenty, a large majority were married in their nineteenth year.
+Remembering that many do not marry until the twenty-third or
+twenty-fourth year, we can confidently assert that there are over
+4,000,000 unmarried girls and young women between the ages of ten and
+twenty-five; and, as 58 per cent. belong to the farming class, we have
+in the vicinity of 3,000,000 girls who belong to families of such
+economic state that they, no less than the boys, must contrive in some
+way to earn a share at least of their own living. Girls of fifteen and
+upwards in farmers' families help their fathers in the lighter forms of
+agriculture, planting the rice, as we have seen, and reaping and
+threshing the crops. But the small acreage to each family barely
+provides work enough for the man, much less for the half-grown boys and
+girls, hence the need of finding something besides the agricultural work
+for the growing family. The younger children (under fifteen) are pressed
+into lighter farming, and such household duties as are within their
+strength and ability, as cooking and caring for the still younger
+children; while the older children and the mother help the father, or
+take up some domestic industry, such as the rearing of silkworms,
+reeling of silk, spinning of thread, and weaving of silk and cotton
+fabrics, or similar work which can be easily and profitably done in the
+house in spare hours. Hence has come the widespread practise of
+household industries, by which the female members supplement the family
+income. There were, in 1907, 1,628,000 members of farming families who
+were earning a part of their living in this way. This condition has
+prevailed for many generations, and is the secret of the wonderful
+development of the arts and home industries in Japan.
+
+            [Illustration: A FAMILY AT WORK IN A RICE-FIELD
+                    TRANSPLANTING YOUNG RICE PLANTS]
+
+From of old Japan's industrial system, like that of other lands, has
+been domestic--carried on in the house. There have been families and
+gilds which have made their entire livelihood by these manual
+industries. There have also been hundreds of thousands of farming
+families which have supplemented their meager income from their farms by
+taking up some of these domestic industries, and those who have
+displayed or developed special aptitude for such work have naturally
+drifted into this wholly industrial life. This has doubtless been the
+origin of industrial families and gilds. But the point to be especially
+noted is that this wide development of domestic industries is due to the
+skill and diligence of Japan's working _women_. Japanese men have
+produced the food by which the nation has been fed; her women have
+produced industries by which the nation has been clothed, as indeed is
+the case of all great civilized nations. Their long-continued drill,
+from generation to generation, in home industrial occupations, has
+produced a high degree of manual dexterity; the eye and hand
+instinctively move accurately and rapidly in the work, and the result is
+that Japan's leading industries to this day are dependent on female
+labor. "Sericulture, silk-reeling, cotton spinning, _habutae_ (a
+particular variety of silk fabric), and other woven goods, tea-picking,
+straw and chip braids, etc., are practically dependent on female labor,"
+says the _Japanese Year Book_ for 1910. "But an industry depending on
+female labor has this peculiarity, namely: it is not compatible with the
+factory system, but thrives best on the domestic plan. Generally
+speaking it is in industries which admit of being carried on
+independently at separate homes by housewives and mothers that skilled
+female labor is seen to the best advantage. As operatives of family
+industries Japanese women show an efficiency rarely reached by their
+foreign sisters." But in this connection we may remind ourselves of the
+great skill and industry of our grandmothers and preceding generations
+of women, who lived before the great factory system made their home
+industrial occupations unnecessary. Japan is merely several decades
+behind Western lands in her industrial development.
+
+           [Illustration: SPINNING COTTON THREAD FOR WEAVING
+                         AT WORK IN A KITCHEN]
+
+We are to understand, then, that a large portion of these 3,000,000
+unmarried Japanese women and girls are engaged more or less continuously
+in some sort of industrial work, either in their own homes or in small
+groups in their immediate vicinity. The introduction into Japan of
+Occidental mechanical civilization, with its great machinery run by
+steam power, and the great factory system, taking girls and young women
+away from their home industries, home restraints, and home training, is
+producing mighty changes in Japan's traditional civilization. The real
+consequences of these new modes of life and labor are still little
+appreciated. There is taking place a rapid readjustment of population,
+which indeed is easily seen, but the disastrous results to the mental,
+moral, and religious life of the people, even to the maintenance of the
+ideals and standards that controlled the older arts and industries, are
+yet little realized, for the great changes have only begun within the
+past two decades. A generation or two must pass before we can see
+clearly what it all really means. Meanwhile it is for those who foresee
+coming evils to sound aloud the call, and, as prophets, to do that which
+in them lies to meet the threatened disasters, and turn new conditions
+into blessings. Japan has the advantage of a century of European
+experience from which to learn wisdom. It is to be hoped that she will
+avoid many of the perils and evils into which the West has fallen, but
+the signs of the times are not altogether reassuring. There are, as we
+shall see later on, ominous clouds on Japan's industrial horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SILK WORKERS
+
+
+The chief wealth-earning domestic industry carried on by farmers' wives
+and daughters is the rearing of silkworms and the reeling, spinning, and
+weaving of the silk. Japan supplies about 28 per cent. of the total silk
+of the world and 60 per cent. of that used in the United States. The
+value of the silk exported in 1913 was $63,000,000. Women are the chief
+workers, contributing 90 per cent. of the labor. Here again the toil is
+taxing beyond belief.
+
+The brunt of the work consists first in filling the mouths of the worms,
+which must be fed at regular intervals night and day for about three
+weeks, during the last few days of which they eat continuously and
+voraciously. It has been found that the rearing of worms can best be
+done only on a small scale, where minute attention can be given to
+each tray, almost to each worm. This means that worms are reared in the
+homes of the people, rather than in large establishments. During the
+silkworm season everything else must give way; the house is filled with
+trays of ravenous worms; rest, recreation, and sleep, for old and young
+alike, are neglected in order that the precious worms may get their
+fill. Men and boys bring in the mulberry leaves from the hills and
+fields, while women and girls strip the branches, chop the leaves and
+feed them to the magic creatures that transform worthless green leaves
+into costly silk. The leaves must not be damp, nor old, and every
+condition of weather and temperature must be watched with the closest
+care. Otherwise there is loss. This heavy work comes twice each year, in
+some places three times. That is to say, there are two or three crops of
+silkworms.
+
+Then, after the cocoons have been formed, comes the reeling off of the
+silk, as much as possible before the sleeping grub wakens and eats its
+way out, destroying the silk it has spun for its nest. So again there is
+pressure, and again women do the work--I never heard of a man reeling
+silk. It takes the deft hand and quick eye of a girl to catch the thread
+in the boiling water, connect it with the wheel, and unroll without
+breaking the almost invisible thread so wonderfully wound up by the
+worm. This work is often done in the homes, but increasingly now,
+because more profitably, in factories where the girls can be closely
+watched by inspectors and paid according to the skill and the amount of
+their work.
+
+The number of families engaged exclusively in raising silk in the nine
+principal districts is reported (1911) at 370,332. In addition however
+there are many tens of thousands of families which make this only a
+secondary business. Many merely raise the worms, selling the cocoons to
+the factories, and in such cases the work and strain are over in a few
+weeks. The value of the cocoons raised in 1911 was estimated at
+$89,001,988, which gives some idea of the great importance of this
+industry to the families engaged in it. But it must be remembered that
+the industry demands heavy expense and the most taxing of toil while it
+lasts.
+
+As this industry is carried on chiefly in the homes, the personal
+conditions of the workers are relatively favorable, as favorable as
+those of the homes. This requires therefore no special consideration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WIVES AND DAUGHTERS OF ARTIZANS AND MERCHANTS
+
+
+In old Japan, among the workers the highest rank was held by farmers,
+next by artizans, and last came the merchants, for they were regarded as
+resorting to means somewhat degrading for making their living. In fact
+they were not producers of positive wealth, but lived by cunning wit on
+what others had made.
+
+Artizans, such as carpenters, masons, and professional weavers, as well
+as merchants, naturally live in towns and cities. The first work of the
+wife is of course in the home, but when the husband's work is of such a
+nature that it is possible the wife naturally helps him. Merchants'
+wives and daughters, for instance, keep the shops while the husbands
+peddle the goods or secure fresh supplies. Weavers' wives and daughters
+aid directly, the whole family sharing in the work and acquiring skill.
+Carpentry and masonry however are trades in which women take no part, so
+women of these classes also seek some suitable domestic industry. In the
+smaller towns especially, in recent years, rearing of silkworms is a
+common occupation for all classes of moderate means, but in the cities
+it is impossible to secure the necessary mulberry leaves, so straw
+braiding, the making of fans, embroidery, and similar occupations are
+here sought; and there are produced the thousand and one articles used
+by the middle and wealthy classes and for export. As a means of
+increasing the income the wives of artizans often open their front rooms
+as shops and carry on a small retail business.
+
+In times of prosperity these classes flourish and grow luxurious, but
+hard times occasionally come, when they are reduced to dire poverty and
+even to the verge of starvation; for, living away from the land, they
+are more dependent than farmers on the continuous success of their
+labors and secondary industries.
+
+The school education of the women of these classes is in general the
+same as that of the farming class. But inasmuch as they live, for the
+most part, in the larger villages, towns, and cities, they enjoy many
+advantages over their farming sisters. Along with their husbands they
+have more need of ability to read and write, and, becoming quick-witted
+through the stimulus of city life, they learn more easily. In recent
+decades, especially the last, many of their children, naturally those of
+the more successful families, are pressing up into the higher schools of
+learning. As a body, therefore, from the standpoint of mere intellect
+and wit, this class surpasses the farming class. From the standpoint
+however of moral character, of conjugal fidelity, of industry, and of
+trustworthiness in all relations the farming class, along with the
+shizoku, surpasses all others, and probably even the peers themselves.
+But in these higher classes we must distinguish between the men and the
+women; for while the wives are, as a rule, beyond praise in the matter
+of conjugal fidelity, the same may not be said of the husbands.
+
+Among the many classes of working women named on a previous page are the
+"clerks." This is a new feature of Japanese life worthy of note,
+although the class is still small. Under this name we include ticket
+sellers in railway stations, assistant barbers, and saleswomen and
+shopgirls. Members of this class have of course enjoyed a relatively
+large amount of education, and are therefore above the average in
+general intelligence and ability. These girls are recruited from the
+families of city artizans and merchants.
+
+The descendants of palanquin bearers, day laborers, eta, and hi-nin form
+to-day the lowest stratum of society, dwelling on the outskirts of large
+cities, in wretchedness, filth, and poverty, getting their living from
+day to day and breeding criminals, geisha, and prostitutes. The
+stone-breakers, gravel gatherers, coolies, and most irregular of city
+day laborers come from this class. Many of these men have illustrious
+pedigrees. Some fell to this estate through wanton lust and reckless
+expenditure of inherited wealth; some are descendants of disinherited
+sons; the ancestors of some have met political reverses and found refuge
+and safety only among the "non-humans," where they could live
+unrecognized and unknown. Thus all grades of blood course through the
+veins of this, the lowest class in Japan. The wives and daughters of
+these men share their fate and fortune, living from hand to mouth. Their
+life is so low and uncertain that it is absurd to speak of secondary
+occupations--they lack even a primary occupation; and their homes, which
+constitute the slums of the cities, are no places in which to carry on
+any domestic industry.
+
+With the coming to Japan however of modern industrialism and the
+building of large factories in or near the cities, the wives and
+daughters of this class have opportunity for regular work, earning
+enough and more than enough to support themselves while actually at
+work. But when attacked by laziness, fickleness, or disease, they easily
+slump back into the same economic pit. From this lowest class comes one
+of the serious dangers threatening the better life of modern Japan. The
+insufficiency of these laborers, their unreliable character, and the
+inferior quality of their work, have forced the factories to search
+elsewhere for hands. These they have found in the relatively workless,
+but industrious and comparatively moral farming class. These farmers'
+girls have been brought to the cities and thrown into intimate relations
+with the lowest, most dissolute, despised, and really despicable
+classes, and the results have naturally been disastrous in many ways, as
+we shall see in a later chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_KOMORI_ (BABY-TENDERS)
+
+
+The great poverty of the majority of the people renders necessary, as
+already noted, not only the utmost economy in the home, but also a high
+degree of industry, and the beginning of productive labor at an early
+age. As soon as the child has completed the elementary education, and,
+in cases of exceptional poverty, even before that, he or she must begin
+to do something of value and earn a living, at least in part. In the
+case of farming families, younger children care for the youngest and
+share in the household duties, thus relieving the mother and elder
+children, enabling them to aid the husband and father in the field. But
+the positive agricultural or industrial work which girls of from ten to
+fifteen can do is insignificant, yet they eat as much as a grown
+person, and hence comes the search for suitable openings for such
+workers. This is found for many of the younger girls in the homes of the
+middle and upper classes, where they go as _komori_ (baby-tenders).
+
+Girls even as young as ten leave their homes and go out to service. They
+receive food and lodging, in some cases a garment in summer and one in
+winter, and sometimes in addition a small cash stipend. A komori thus is
+usually the daughter of a poor family who goes into a well-to-do family
+to aid the mother in the care of her infant. Her chief duty is to carry
+the infant, sleeping or waking, on her back for many consecutive hours
+during the day. In addition to this she aids a little in the household
+work, washing dishes and cleaning the house, her hours of service being
+unlimited. In some families she may be called on at any hour of the
+night to carry the baby, if it is restless or fretful and needs to be
+"jiggled" to sleep! A komori is employed by the year, but usually
+without specific contract, her parents sometimes receiving a few yen[3]
+when she enters upon service. Her time is entirely at the disposal of
+her mistress and she goes to no school, receives no regular instruction,
+and no training other than that which comes incidentally from
+association with members of the family. Long hours each day are spent on
+the street with an infant on her back, playing hop-scotch and other
+games with other komori.
+
+    [3] A yen has the value of forty-nine cents.
+
+In a few places efforts are being made, I am told, to provide these
+baby-tenders with educational advantages, but the movement is as yet
+small. Buddhists are said to be particularly active in this matter.
+
+              [Illustration: CARRYING FAGOTS BABY-TENDERS]
+
+A blind man in Matsuyama, a Christian of my acquaintance, put out one of
+his daughters to service as a komori. After two years of such life,
+poverty-stricken though the family was, he brought her home again, for
+the child of fourteen, so far from learning anything good, was learning
+many things bad on the street, and was being dwarfed in mind by the
+long hours when she was wholly without mental stimulus. The life of a
+komori will of course vary much with the nature of the family by which
+she is employed, but at best the service cannot fail to stunt the growth
+of both body and mind.
+
+I heard not long since of a boy who became a komori. His father had died
+a drunkard, leaving the family ruined financially. The mother and
+children were accordingly distributed among the creditors to work off
+his debts. The little boy of eight went with his mother, and, so long as
+she lived--some three years--life was endurable for him, but after her
+death he was made increasingly miserable. Long hours by day and many
+interrupted nights, unkind words, and unutterable loneliness vexed his
+orphaned spirit, until he could endure it no longer, and planned to run
+away. The stern master however discovered him doing up his bundle, and,
+to prevent his escape, ordered his few possessions, even his clothing,
+to be taken away. In spite of this he slipped out one night in the
+darkness and hid in a barn in a neighboring village until morning, when
+he was taken pity on by some children who shared a kimono or two with
+him, and so he got away. With increasing years he led a wild, roving
+life; at eighteen he became a murderer and was imprisoned for life,
+escaping the death penalty on account of being a minor. In prison he
+first heard the Christian gospel of God's forgiving love, of peace and
+hope and joy. This "good news" he accepted, and learned to read, that he
+might read the New Testament, which he committed to memory. Upon the
+death of the Empress Dowager, in 1896, his penalty, with that of many
+other prisoners, was remitted, and now for fourteen years he has been
+living a life remarkably fruitful in Christian service.
+
+But, to return to our subject, we note that not all komori are children.
+Superannuated old women who have neither strength nor brains for
+anything else also act in this capacity, their conditions of service
+and wages being the same as those of girls. I have tried to get some
+idea as to the number of komori in Japan, but have been able to find no
+statistics. One gentleman assures me that at least one family in five of
+the middle and upper classes employs a komori. As the number of families
+in Japan, exclusive of farmers, is 3,981,940 (1912), this would make
+about 796,000 komori; but many well-to-do farming families also employ
+komori, so the total number in Japan would be not far from 1,000,000. A
+lady however assures me that this estimate is altogether too high, and
+thinks that not more than one family in twenty has the means to employ a
+komori. If this is true, then the number is in the vicinity of 250,000.
+In either case, the system and its nature are clear, and the numbers of
+children sent out to service at a tender age is not inconsiderable. The
+attention of educators and parents is being directed to the dangers to
+infants of this komori system, to say nothing of the harm it does to the
+girls themselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HOUSEHOLD DOMESTICS
+
+
+By the time a girl is fifteen or sixteen she is regarded as sufficiently
+large, strong, and mature to enter on more responsible work. Among the
+several fields open to her is that of _gejo_, or domestic service, of
+which we may distinguish two varieties: those who serve in private
+families and those who become maids in hotels and tea-houses. A komori
+may gradually work into the position of a domestic; indeed, in the
+majority of homes a komori not only tends the baby but aids the mother
+in her household work. It is only in the homes of the well-to-do that
+both gejo and komori are to be found. The work of a gejo consists in
+taking the brunt of the cooking, housecleaning, and washing, serving
+from daybreak, that is, from five or six in the morning, till ten or
+eleven at night. Her status is somewhat better than that of the komori.
+Her hours of service however are long and taxing. Her time for rest is
+after the family has retired for the night and before they rise in the
+morning. Frequently her private room is the front hall, or entrance
+room; she accordingly is the last person to retire and the first to
+rise. It is to be noted however that in the houses of the middle classes
+in the large cities there is usually now a small room for the
+servant-girl. The gejo draws the water from the well, washes the rice,
+lights the fires, cooks and lives in the dingy and usually smoky
+kitchen, washes the clothes, aids in the sewing, and has no relaxation
+but an occasional festival. Her lot is truly pitiful.
+
+Besides her living (eating what is left from the family meal), she
+usually receives some two to three yen per month. Recently however some
+have been receiving even as much as five yen. The drudgery and monotony
+of the life are usually such that the opportunity to become a factory
+hand is quickly taken, especially as the cash earnings are relatively
+large. I am told by Japanese ladies that the problem of securing
+domestics in the cities or in the vicinities of factories is becoming
+serious.
+
+Of course the average domestic has no opportunity nor desire for mental
+improvement. Having enjoyed no education to speak of, she can read
+neither papers nor books, nor may she attend meetings fitted to
+cultivate the mind or promote her higher life. Thus she is controlled by
+the culture and mental and moral traditions of the home in which she was
+reared.
+
+Household domestics are recruited from farming and industrial families.
+They earn their living for from four to six years, until their parents
+or guardians find them husbands; for in Japan the girl has practically
+nothing to say as to whom she marries. Marriage is based, not on mutual
+acquaintance, much less on mutual attraction, but wholly on the judgment
+of parents or go-betweens, and is from first to last--if it is
+proper--a utilitarian affair.
+
+It thus comes to pass that in Japan domestics are, as a rule, young
+unmarried women. A domestic in her thirties, or over, is rare, and is
+almost certain to be a widow or a divorced woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HOTEL AND TEA-HOUSE GIRLS
+
+
+A distinct class of domestics is that which serves in hotels,
+tea-houses, and restaurants. Here the hours of labor are longer,--from
+four or five in the morning till midnight, or later. My attention was
+early called to their hard lot by observing that the poor girl who was
+serving rice for my meal, sitting before me as I ate, often fell into a
+sleep, from which I had to awaken her to get my rice. Inquiry would show
+that she had risen at four o'clock that morning, and further questioning
+would bring the information that she had retired the previous night at
+midnight or later, sometimes even not till two o'clock! Rarely do these
+girls get five hours of rest; frequently there are not more than three.
+They must open all the _amado_ (sliding wooden shutters which protect
+the paper "windows"), and get the general cleaning done before the first
+guest rises, and must continue their service until late into the night,
+answering the calls of the guests, till the last one has retired. In
+addition to the usual cleaning of the rooms, which is really not much of
+an undertaking, these girls carry all the meals of all the guests from
+the kitchen on the ground floor to their rooms on the second or third
+floors, serve them while they eat, and carry away the trays when the
+meal is completed. In preparation for the night the girls bring out the
+heavy _futon_ (quilts) and make the "beds" on the floor; and in the
+morning remove, fold, and lay them all away in closets. The work of a
+Japanese hotel is relatively heavy for the number of guests, but that
+which is most taxing is the long hours of service and the insufficient
+time for rest. As in the poorer homes, so in the poorer and smaller
+hotels, the girls have no private rooms, but sleep in entryways and
+reception-rooms. Of course they have neither time nor opportunity for
+personal culture, nor even for recreation; and from the nature of their
+occupation, is it strange if they sometimes yield to the solicitations
+of guests?
+
+These girls are of course neither professional prostitutes nor geisha.
+Yet I was assured by a provincial chief of police, some years ago when
+making investigations, that, in the eyes of the police, three fourths or
+four fifths of the girls in hotels and tea-houses are virtually
+prostitutes, though of course they have no licenses and are subject to
+no medical inspection. Occasionally they are arrested for illegal
+prostitution, at the instance however of brothel keepers. Hotels and
+tea-houses take pains to secure pretty girls for servants, in order to
+make their service attractive. It is a dreadful statement to make, but,
+if I am justified in judging from such facts as have come to my
+knowledge, it would appear that few traveling men in Japan feel any
+special hesitation in taking advantage--with financial compensation of
+course--of such opportunities as are afforded them. Hotels give the
+girls their food, perhaps two gowns yearly, and generally a small
+payment in cash, but their principal earnings come from tips. This makes
+them attentive to the wants of the guests.
+
+There are many first-class hotels throughout the country, but chiefly in
+the principal cities, to which geisha are not admitted, but in those
+hotels to which they are admitted the green country girls soon learn
+from them the brazen ways and licentious talk that are evidently
+pleasing to many of the guests. All in all the life and lot of the hotel
+and tea-house girl are deplorable indeed. She does differ from the
+geisha and licensed prostitute, however, in that she can leave her place
+and retire to her country home at any time, being held by no contract or
+debt. Hotel and tea-house girls are recruited largely from the families
+of artizans and small tradespeople, living in interior towns and
+villages; they do not often come from farming families, since they would
+lack the regular features and light complexion desired by hotels. Their
+family pedigree explains in part this easy virtue. They are saved from
+more disaster than they actually meet, because geisha and prostitutes
+abound and are more attractive.
+
+I remember, one summer at a little country hotel, a girl rushed into my
+room from a neighbor's in order to escape from the urgency of a guest.
+She told me the following day quite freely of her troubles, of the
+horrid men that came to the hotel, and of the fact that most of the
+girls did not mind what she found unendurable. She had been there but a
+few weeks and was resolved to go home as soon as possible, claiming it
+was better to starve than to lead such a hard and especially such a
+disgusting life. Realizing that I had an exceptional opportunity for
+sociological study, I improved the occasion and asked many questions.
+When asked for her reasons for not responding to the solicitations of
+the men, she replied that it was the fear of being laughed at should
+she have a child. I could not learn that she had ever been taught to
+regard loose sexual relations before marriage as immoral or as
+intrinsically wrong. In her mind the question had no connection with
+religion, so far as I could discover. Her refusal was based wholly on
+utilitarian grounds.
+
+At another hotel where I often stopped I noticed on one of my tours that
+an especially attractive girl of eighteen or nineteen, who usually
+waited on me, was no longer there. On asking her substitute what had
+become of her, I was told she had become a regular prostitute, having
+found she could earn much more money that way than at the hotel. I asked
+if the parents had not opposed. "O no!" replied the girl, "the parents
+were the ones who proposed it and arranged for it." I asked the
+substitute if she herself did not regard the business as shameful and
+immoral. She looked at me with apparent surprise, hardly understanding
+what I meant, evidently regarding the matter entirely as a financial
+one.
+
+Here is another case. A number of Young Men's Christian Association
+secretaries, tramping in the Japanese Alps, were convinced by the noises
+one night at the hot springs that the five or six guides and porters
+were indulging in licentiousness. The next night it came out around the
+camp-fire that these guides and porters had paid the hotel girls five
+sen[4] (two and one-half cents) each.
+
+    [4] A sen has the value of one-hundredth of a yen, or almost
+        half a cent.
+
+Of course one may not generalize from three cases. But three such cases,
+together with the statement of the chief of police, and the experience,
+closely corresponding with my own, of many missionaries who have
+traveled in all parts of Japan, are strong evidence. I myself do not
+think that guests often solicit the girls, nor that hotel girls commonly
+yield to the requests of guests, but there can be no doubt that it
+occasionally happens, and is not regarded in any such way by either the
+men or the women as an Occidental would expect. As said above, there
+are many hotels in the cities from which geisha are rigidly excluded,
+and where without doubt the relations of guests with hotel girls are
+above criticism.
+
+It is an impressive fact of Japanese civilization that the "greenest"
+country girls can in but a few short weeks of hotel service become so
+graceful and attractive. That in their lives which to the Occidental is
+so deep a sin is nothing to them. Their calm, innocent eyes, winning
+ways, and gentle conversation can hardly fail to impress the foreigner.
+But compared with the girls in their homes they have lost that air of
+modesty and reserve which is so important an element in the charm of
+Japanese womanhood. The hotel and tea-house girl belongs rather to the
+geisha class, whose loud, harsh voices and artificial, coarse laughter
+are distinguishing characteristics. Girls of both these classes however
+have an advantage enjoyed by no other women in Japan, namely: that of
+meeting large numbers of men of various occupations and interests. They
+hear varied conversation and thus become somewhat acquainted with the
+affairs of the outside world, which makes them more intelligent than the
+average Japanese woman, so that it is possible to carry on some sort of
+a conversation with them--a thing practically impossible with the
+average young woman of Japan.
+
+In regard to the numbers of hotel domestics, I have found no statistics,
+but have no hesitation in venturing an estimate of many tens of
+thousands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FACTORY GIRLS AND WOMEN
+
+
+As already stated, many girls prefer factory work to that of domestic
+service, either in private families or in hotels. From ancient times
+there have been small industrial enterprises, employing each a few hands
+in various lines of work, such as the reeling and spinning of silk and
+cotton thread and the weaving of cloth; but since the war with China
+there have arisen enormous factories, after the fashion of Western
+lands, which have introduced great changes in the industrial situation
+and in the condition of the working classes.
+
+The government report for 1912 shows that there were 863,447 individuals
+employed in 15,119 factories having ten or more hands each. Of these,
+348,230 were men and 515,217 were girls and women. In addition it
+reports 427,636 weaving houses, having 733,039 looms and employing
+697,698 operators. No statement is made as to the proportion of the
+sexes. Remembering that the government statistics take no account of
+industrial enterprises employing less than ten hands, it is probably
+safe to estimate the number of women employed in exclusively
+non-domestic occupations at not less than a million.
+
+We are not concerned however with the industries themselves, but rather
+with the conditions under which the operatives work and the effect of
+the work on their lives and characters. To begin with the more pleasant
+side of the question, there are factories which come well up toward the
+ideal. The terms of employment, the wages paid, the provisions for ill
+health, for accident, for long service and old age; the rooms for
+sleeping, eating, and recreation; the bathing establishments; the
+education given to those who need it; the public lectures and religious
+and ethical instruction given at fixed times in the public halls of the
+factories, Buddhist and Christian teachers being impartially invited;
+the provisions for marriage of employees and arrangements that each
+couple have a separate suite of rooms, and that the infants are cared
+for while the mother is in the mill; these and other provisions show
+that the best in Japan is up to a high level of excellence. Such is the
+policy of the Kanegafuchi Company, which owns a score of mills in
+different parts of Japan, and whose success moreover is so great that it
+is now buying up less successful competitors.
+
+For several years this company has set aside annually 20,000 yen
+($10,000) for its relief and pension fund for operatives. In June, 1913,
+in addition to its regular appropriation, it voted an extra $50,000 for
+a "welfare promotion fund."
+
+The president of the Fuji Cotton Spinning Company was given in 1913 a
+retiring grant of $50,000, inasmuch as the great success of this company
+had been due to his skill and energy. He however presented the entire
+amount to the "employers' relief fund, and it was decided to make this
+gift the nucleus of a permanent endowment fund."
+
+               [Illustration: AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY]
+
+There is a silk factory in Ayabe, the Gunze Seishi Kwaisha, whose record
+is the most wonderful of all. It is managed by a Christian, who runs it
+entirely with a view to the benefit of the workers and the district. No
+girls of that district go elsewhere for work. Once enrolled as members
+of the working force they are regularly instructed, both in general
+education and in their particular duties; they earn good wages, keep
+good health, receive Christian instruction, have their regular rest
+days, remain the full number of years, help support the family and earn
+enough besides to set themselves up in married life, and are now
+beginning to send their daughters to the same factory. This Christian
+factory is Christianizing the district. The rising moral and religious
+life is transforming even the agricultural and other interests of the
+region. So high is the grade of silk thread produced, and so uniform
+and reliable is the quality, that it alone of all the factories in Japan
+is able to export its product direct to the purchasing firm in the
+United States, which buys the entire output at an annual cost of about
+$500,000, and without intermediate inspection at Yokohama. Here we have
+a splendid illustration of the way in which Christian character is
+solving the problem arising from the low moral and economic ideals of
+the masses of Japan's working classes. As a rule the modern industrial
+worker does not put moral character into his work; and a wide complaint
+of Occidental importers of Japanese products is that goods are not made
+according to contract or sample. This is one of the greatest obstacles
+to the continuous prosperity of any Japanese industry; for as soon as a
+large demand has arisen in foreign lands for any given article, its
+quality, as a rule, has rapidly deteriorated. It is this unreliability
+of Japanese workmen that makes so difficult direct exportation to
+foreign lands without the supervision of Occidental middlemen. The
+Christian Gunze Seishi Kwaisha is one of the splendid exceptions which
+shows what Japanese workmen and manufacturers can do, when controlled by
+high ideals and motives.
+
+Unfortunately however not all factories and their managers have the same
+spirit, aim, or skill. Many factories are the exact opposite in every
+respect to those owned by the Kanegafuchi and Gunze Seishi companies. My
+personal attention was first called to the heartrending condition of
+servitude imposed on vast numbers of girls by reading, a score of years
+ago, of a fire in the dormitory of an Osaka factory. The dormitory was
+in a closed compound, whose doors and gates were carefully locked to
+keep the girls from running away. The result was the death, if I
+remember correctly, of every inmate, of whom there were several score.
+
+My personal knowledge in regard to the conditions of life and work of
+factory operatives was secured in Matsuyama, Shikoku, a small inland
+city of some forty thousand inhabitants, having but a single cotton
+thread spinning factory. It had no dormitories of its own, but sent
+its operatives to certain specified boarding-houses in the town.
+Through a Mr. Omoto, who was at that time working in the factory, and
+whose life story is given in the final chapter, I became intimately
+acquainted with the conditions prevailing in Matsuyama. In 1901, when
+Mr. Omoto began to work in the factory, he was amazed to see how many
+were the children taking their turns in work along with the older
+girls by day and by night. Large numbers ranged from seven to twelve
+years old, the majority, however, being from fifteen to twenty. They
+worked in two shifts of twelve hours each, but as they were required
+to clean up daily they did not get out till six-thirty or seven,
+morning and night. The only holidays for these poor little workers
+came two or three times a month, when the shifts changed; but even
+then there was special cleaning, and the girls who had worked all
+night were kept till nine and even ten in the morning. He was also
+deeply impressed with their wretched condition and immoral life. The
+majority of them could neither read nor write; their popular songs
+were indecent, and they were crowded together in disease-spreading and
+vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they were deliberately
+tempted. Some of the landlords were also brothel keepers.
+
+Mr. Omoto, having opportunity as official "visitor" to become accurately
+acquainted with their life, told me in detail the conditions which have
+been briefly summarized above. The boarding-houses were only for girls
+from out of town. They had to be "recognized" by the factory, and the
+girls had to live in the houses to which they were assigned. Of course
+the purpose of these houses was to make money. The financial, hygienic,
+intellectual, and moral interests of the girls were wholly ignored. They
+were crowded into ill-ventilated, sunless rooms, the two shifts
+occupying the same rooms alternately. Personal extravagance was
+purposely stimulated, for girls in debt to the keepers were compelled to
+stay to work off their debts. Drinking and immoral carousings were their
+only recreation. As might be expected, sickness was common and epidemics
+frequent. Many girls returned to their homes after a few months in the
+"city" ruined not only in health but in character,--premature mothers of
+illegitimate children.
+
+The conditions of the factory girls in Matsuyama were not unique. Miss
+J. M. Holland, a Church of England missionary in Osaka, recently told me
+some of her observations and experiences. She has devoted the larger
+part of her time for fifteen years to work among factory girls, and on
+the whole can report improvement. When she began her visits to the
+factories, the conditions were often appalling. It was not uncommon for
+girls working on the night shift to be kept, on one pretext or another,
+till noon the next day, making eighteen hours of work. The conditions
+of work and life were such that the girls frequently ran away, to
+prevent which the dormitories were virtually prisons within the factory
+compounds. The girls were not allowed to go out on the streets, were
+given no opportunity for recreation, and of course no education. They
+were underfed, overworked, and punished in various ways by their
+overseers, cuffed and sometimes whipped, for disobedience or blunders.
+The daily papers of those days had frequent items reporting oppression
+and ill treatment; to be deprived of wages as punishment was a common
+experience; police occasionally discovered girls working in cellars and
+vaults as punishment for misdeeds; girls sometimes escaped in their
+night clothes, and on a few occasions the girls rebelled and did
+personal violence to the overseers.
+
+But, as already stated, the general conditions are now much better, for
+it was gradually found that such ill-treated labor was not profitable.
+"Most of the superintendents in Osaka are now splendid men, who on the
+whole take good care of the girls and wish to treat them honorably." The
+crying evils of the past have been largely done away. Rest, recreation,
+education, wages, and health are receiving careful consideration at all
+the leading factories. Still, no true parent would send a daughter to
+work in such a place, unless under the stress of dire poverty. There are
+still many small children under ten years of age, whose parents make
+false statements in regard to their ages. The work is from six in the
+morning to six in the evening. This means rising at four-thirty every
+morning for work on the day shift. Some factories have abolished the
+night shift. Fifteen minutes are allowed for rest in the middle of the
+forenoon, thirty minutes for lunch, and fifteen minutes again in the
+afternoon, giving thus eleven hours of steady work per day and the same
+per night. On pay days the girls, after standing eleven hours, have to
+stand in file from one to three hours more, according to their luck, and
+Miss Holland says that such long hours of standing result in serious
+organic difficulties. One half of the girls fail to work out their three
+years' contract, returning to their homes before time for marriage,
+seriously injured, if not completely ruined, physically. So long as this
+system continues, she adds, skilled labor is impossible. While some
+factories take great care that girls are carefully guarded from evil,
+others exercise no control whatever over their goings and doings. One
+factory she named as allowing its girls to be out on the streets till
+two o'clock in the morning. It insists on only two and a half hours of
+sleep! The difficulties connected with private boarding-houses for
+factory girls have proved so great that most of them have been closed.
+
+One of the tragic aspects of factory life in Japan is the large number
+of what would seem to us avoidable accidents, due to the fact that the
+girls know nothing whatever about machinery. Large factories accordingly
+keep surgeons on hand to care for the wounded. Miss Holland says that in
+one Osaka factory where there are a thousand operatives, the
+kind-hearted surgeon told her they had an average of fifty accidents
+daily which needed his attention. The little children especially suffer,
+often losing fingers. Not long since five fingers were clipped off in a
+single day! Miss Holland added that, improved though the conditions are,
+factory life for children is a "murder of the innocents." As a rule the
+food provided in factory dormitories is still inadequate. When asked
+whether corporal punishment is still inflicted, she expressed a doubt,
+having heard of none for a long time.
+
+In her conversation Miss Holland expressly limited her report to the
+factories she knows in Osaka. The question arises whether the conditions
+there may not be peculiar. May not factory conditions in Yokohama and
+Tokyo, where government inspection and control would theoretically be
+most complete, be better than elsewhere? The facts do not seem to
+justify such a surmise. The Kanegafuchi Company and some others have
+good factories everywhere, but there would seem also to be bad ones
+everywhere.
+
+A Japanese book on _Industrial Education_ has recently been published by
+a Mr. R. Uno, who, for fifteen years, has been a devoted student of
+Japan's industrial problems. A summary of the statistics there given
+appeared in May, 1914, in the _Tokyo Advertiser_, from which I cull the
+following facts and figures.
+
+In the cotton thread and spinning factories of Japan, there are 81 girls
+to 19 men. Out of 1,000 girls, 386 are over 20 years of age, 317 are
+from 17 to 20, 191 are from 15 to 16, 73 are from 12 to 14, while 7
+girls out of a thousand are under 12 years of age. The vast majority of
+factory girls live in the factory dormitories, which are of enormous
+size. In the region of Osaka there are more than 30,000 girls working in
+30 factories; in these same factories there are less than 7,000 men.
+Three of these factories employ over 3,000 girls each, while three more
+employ 2,000 and upward. These girls are herded together in enormous
+dormitories, disastrous both to health and morals. Statistics covering a
+number of years show that out of every 1,000 girls, 270 work less than
+six months at the same place; 200 less than one year, 179 less than two
+years; 121 less than three years; 141 less than five years, and only 89
+pass the five-year period. The usual reason for this extraordinary
+fluctuation of workers is that the girls break down in health.
+Government statistics declare that out of every 100 girls to enter upon
+factory work 23 die within one year of their return to their homes, and
+of these 50 per cent. die of tuberculosis. But it is also asserted that
+60 per cent. of the girls who leave home for factory work never return.
+Of the criminal girls arrested in Osaka for a certain period, 49 per
+cent. had been factory hands. As to the education of factory girls it is
+stated that, out of 1,000, the number that had completed the required
+number of years of schooling (six) was 450, while 385 were entirely
+without education. Out of 1,000 girls, 453 were orphans. Of 1,000 girls,
+611 came from farmers' homes, 166 from those of fishermen, and 55 from
+merchant homes, the remaining 168 being scattering. Factory girls earn
+and can save more than almost any other class. The average earnings per
+month are stated to be $4.67. The girl pays $1.20 per month for food,
+which is less than the actual cost, the factory providing the balance,
+namely, $1.30. The average girl sends home fifty cents per month. Three
+out of ten girls spend the balance entirely on clothes, five out of ten
+on cakes and theaters, while two out of ten save it. Such are some of
+the statements made by Mr. Uno in his enlightening book.
+
+In the September, 1910, number of the _Shin Koron_, a monthly magazine
+published in Tokyo, is an article by Professor Kuwada (of the Tokyo
+Imperial University) entitled "The Pitiful Environment of Factory
+Girls." He gives a detailed statement of the conditions of factory
+workers, in which he estimates the number of female laborers in
+factories containing ten or more hands at 700,000, of whom ten per cent.
+are under fourteen years of age. In tobacco factories ten per cent., in
+match factories twenty per cent, and in glass factories thirty per cent.
+of the girls are under ten years of age. He vigorously condemns the
+situation as threatening the future of the working class, whose
+prospective mothers are thus being destroyed. The efforts of the
+government during recent years to enact factory laws have been
+successfully thwarted thus far, says Professor Kuwada, by shortsighted,
+selfish capitalists. The girls are brought in from their country homes
+by false promises. They are told of the beautiful sights to be seen,
+theaters to be visited, the regular Sunday rest, and even of the
+splendid care and education they will receive from the factory. There is
+also stealing of expert workers from one factory by the artful
+stratagems of another. There are factories which resort to devices for
+defrauding helpless operatives. In one town where there are many
+factories, it is customary to work overtime by setting back the hands of
+the clock. To conceal this from the operatives, no factory blows its
+whistles! Some factories do not give time for the girls to rest even
+while they eat, but require them to work with the right hand while they
+eat with the left. Night work in which both male and female operatives
+are engaged together is most demoralizing. Punishment of various kinds
+is administered. In addition to fines, in some places the girls are
+imprisoned in dark rooms, rations are reduced, their arms are bound and
+the lash applied freely, and in extreme cases they are stripped to the
+waist and marched through the factory among young men and girls, bearing
+a red flag tied to the back! Superintendents are invariably men.
+
+So appalling was the statement made by Professor Kuwada that I could
+scarcely believe him in all the details, particularly in regard to the
+use of the lash and the stripping to the waist. I accordingly wrote
+both to him and to Professor Abe of Waseda University, who has made
+special study of the social problems and conditions of industry.
+Professor Kuwada, I learned, has been a careful student of social and
+industrial conditions for nearly twenty years, and is one of the leaders
+in the Society for the Study of Social Politics, composed of one hundred
+and fifty university professors and high government officials. This
+society was organized to aid the government in its efforts to secure
+social and industrial reforms. In reply to my inquiries Professor Kuwada
+says that most of the facts given concerning silk factories he has
+himself observed. Those concerning cotton spinning factories he has
+derived from reliable sources, chiefly from the officers of the
+Department of Agriculture and Commerce, who are especially engaged in
+making investigations in regard to industrial conditions. Much of the
+testimony rests on the statements of the girls themselves. Some of the
+facts come from local police and some from the published reports of the
+Department of Agriculture and Commerce. "The article in the _Shin
+Koron_ may therefore be regarded as semi-official," says Professor Abe.
+Since the appearance of the article referred to above, no reply has been
+made to it by factory owners or managers. As to the stripping of a girl
+to the waist and marching her through the factory filled with
+operatives, male and female, Professor Kuwada was told this by the girl
+herself. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to doubt the
+testimony. Nor is it probable that the cases cited are absolutely
+unique, although I think it highly probable that such extreme
+indignities and punishments are rare,--they are so out of keeping with
+the whole trend of Japanese civilization and culture. Mrs. Binford, a
+missionary in Mito, assures me, however, that altering the hands of the
+clock is a practise known to her. Testimony is widespread that girls are
+secured for factories by all kinds of false statements.
+
+In view of the frightful conditions of industrial labor thus indicated
+by Mr. Uno and Professor Kuwada, it is amazing that the Diet has
+refused on several successive occasions to enact suitable laws. The
+government began to realize in 1898 the need for legislation on these
+matters. A bill which was drafted and presented in 1902 was rejected, as
+were also three subsequent bills. The chief feature of the bill
+presented during the winter of 1910-11 was the provision that no factory
+may employ girls under twelve, and that girls of any age and youth under
+sixteen may not be kept at work for more than twelve hours per day, nor
+be made to do night work without "special reason." While some provisions
+of this bill were enacted and others amended, those considered most
+important by social reformers and by the government were virtually
+rejected. The bill was indeed passed, but with the added provision that
+the important clauses, relative to ages and night work, be inoperative
+for a period of fifteen years (!) in order to give time to the factories
+involved to adjust themselves to the new conditions. Since that time no
+further factory legislation has been enacted. Is it not astounding that
+in a land on the whole so progressive as Japan the difficulty of
+securing reform should be found in the Diet? The administration at this
+point is ahead of the representatives of the people, as it is indeed in
+many other respects. The fact is, as Professor Kuwada points out, that
+the "representatives" in both the lower and upper houses represent the
+financial interests of capitalists, rather than the human interests of
+the masses.
+
+But the reader, in his indignation over the situation of factory workers
+in Japan, should remember that Japan is no exceptional sinner among the
+nations. Christian England and America have had conditions equally bad,
+and possibly worse. Dr. Washington Gladden, in his article on "The
+Reason for the Unions," in the New York _Outlook_ for March, 1911, makes
+the following statements in regard to the condition of labor in England
+in the early part of the nineteenth century. Men and women stood daily
+at their tasks, from twelve to fourteen and fifteen hours; a working
+day of sixteen hours was not an unheard-of thing. Government reports of
+this period show that children of five and six years of age were
+frequently employed in factories. "Nor was this unmeasured abuse of
+child labor confined to the cotton, silk, and wool industries.... The
+report of 1842 is crammed with statements as to the fearful overwork of
+girls and boys in iron and coal mines, which doubtless had been going on
+from the end of the eighteenth century;... Children could get about
+where horses and mules could not. Little girls were forced to carry
+heavy buckets of coal up high ladders, and little girls and boys instead
+of animals dragged the coal bunkers. Women were constantly employed
+underground at the filthiest tasks. Through all this period the wages
+gravitated downward and family income was steadily lowered, while the
+cost of food increased. The homes of the workers were ruined. In a
+certain congested district there lived 26,830 persons in 5,366
+families, three fourths of which possessed but one room each. The rooms
+were without furniture, without everything; two married couples often
+shared the same room. In some cases there was not even a heap of straw
+on which to sleep. In one cellar the pastor found two families and a
+donkey; two of the children had died and the third was dying." And these
+conditions existed, not in days of industrial depression, but in flush
+times; business was booming and wealth accumulating in the hands of
+factory owners and employers.
+
+Many of the conditions of industrial workers even in the United States
+to-day are heartrending in the extreme. Who could read of the strike of
+the shirt-waist makers of New York in the winter of 1909-10 without deep
+indignation over the conditions under which those brave girls worked,
+and against which they rebelled? The National Committee on Child Labor
+reported in the spring of 1911 that there were over 60,000 children in
+the factories of the United States, mostly in the South. Before
+condemning Japan unduly, Occidentals should remember that their own
+record is none too bright.
+
+If comparison is to be made however between Japan and the West, it may
+be made along other lines. The West fell into its industrial
+difficulties with no example from which to learn. But this is not true
+of Japan. She can easily learn the lesson of a century of Western
+experience; but she seems slow to do it. Then again in Japan it is the
+government that is feebly leading, and the official popular
+representatives who are both blind and resisting, whereas in the West
+the great movements for industrial reform are movements of the people
+themselves, backed up and oftentimes led by enlightened humanitarian and
+Christian popular opinion. In the West, the churches are fairly in line
+with forward social movements, whereas in Japan, Shintoism,
+Confucianism, and even Buddhism are apparently wholly indifferent to the
+economic and even ethical condition of the nation's toilers.
+Furthermore, we are seeing to-day in Japan the strange phenomenon of
+one section of the government seeking to ameliorate social and economic
+conditions, and at the same time another, seemingly mortally afraid of
+allowing the people either to discuss these matters or to attempt reform
+movements themselves. Labor unions are strictly forbidden, and any
+person advocating socialism is under strict police surveillance. Strikes
+are illegal and their promoters are liable to criminal punishment.
+Anomalous as it may be, the government seems to be seeking to destroy
+that enlightened popular opinion on which it must rely for the efficient
+enforcement of its own plans for social betterment of the working
+classes.
+
+I have dwelt at considerable length on the conditions of factory
+workers, for later on I shall describe a sociological experiment among
+this class.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+GEISHA (HETAERAE)
+
+
+The word _geisha_ means an "accomplished person." A geisha is invariably
+a young woman who has had years of training fitting her to provide
+social entertainment for men. The _gei_ acquired are skill in playing
+the samisen (a three-stringed guitar), singing catching ditties, taking
+part in conversation and repartee, and in "dancing," which is to the
+Western mind rather a highly conventional posturing, with deft
+manipulations of the inevitable fan. Years of exacting and diligent work
+are required for proficiency in these "gei,"--the Geisha School in Kyoto
+provides a course of six or seven years.
+
+                    [Illustration: O HAMAYU (GEISHA)
+                       Most celebrated in Tokyo]
+
+According to the Japanese ideal, geisha singing must be shrill, and to
+secure this quality the voice is purposely strained till it is
+"cracked." Girls eight to ten years old are sometimes given their
+"singing lessons" in the frosty air of winter mornings before sunrise,
+or late at night, in order that they may take cold in the throat and
+then, by persistent, vigorous use, the voice is "broken" for life.
+Training in dancing and samisen playing is also prolonged and severe,
+for no pains are spared in efforts to excel. These efforts however are
+due, not to the will or desire of the _maiko_, the poor little girl who
+is being trained, but to the persistence of her owner.
+
+Only daughters of the very poor are secured for this outwardly beautiful
+and attractive, but inwardly repulsive, soul-destroying life.
+Practically speaking, geisha are the property of the old women who
+support and educate them through the years of their childhood, and who
+rent them out by the hour for the entertainment of men at social
+functions. Such functions would, indeed, be inane without geisha to
+serve the meals in their dainty ways, to fill the sake[5] cups for
+guests, to share in conversation by adding the spice, to provoke
+laughter, themselves laughing loudly and often, and at the proper time,
+to present their music, their singing, and their dancing. Dressed in
+faultless style, in richest silks and brilliant colors, geisha are
+moving pictures which have charmed generations of Japanese men and, in
+recent decades, many foreigners. Japanese political party dinners and
+consultations are often held in restaurants, where geisha make the fun
+and pour the wine. If foreign guests are to be entertained by wealthy
+individuals, by companies, or even by cities, the inevitable geisha is
+there, and is presented as a characteristic product of Japan--which she
+truly is. But while there is about her a certain charm of manner and
+dress, to one who watches her face, looking for traces of a soul, the
+story is all too plain--behind the harsh laugh and stoical face it is
+impossible not to recognize that there is an empty and often a bleeding
+heart.
+
+    [5] Sake (pronounced sah'-ke) is the fermented liquor of Japan,
+        made from rice.
+
+The lives of these girls are pitiful in the extreme. Chosen from among
+the families of the poor on the basis of their prospective good looks
+and ability to learn, they leave their homes at an early age and are
+subjected to the severe drill already outlined. They go through their
+lessons with rigid, mechanical accuracy. In public they appear in
+gorgeous robes, their faces painted and powdered, artificiality
+dominating everything about them,--clothing, manners, and smiles. As a
+rule nothing is done to develop their minds, and of course the
+cultivation of personal character is not even thought of. They are
+instructed in flippant conversation and pungent retort, that they may
+converse interestingly with the men, for whose entertainment they are
+alone designed. The songs learned, some of the dances performed, and the
+conversational repertoire acquired are commonly reported to be highly
+licentious, but these are the gei that best please the men, to whom
+they are open for private engagements from the time they are eighteen
+years of age. If, however, a geisha is exceptionally beautiful, her
+owner does not allow her to enter on such duties, for experience has
+shown that her beauty is soon lost in this way, and with it her highest
+earning capacity.
+
+Many geisha undoubtedly develop considerable personal ability. The
+severe drill undergone could hardly fail to call forth their powers of
+mind, and intimate association with educated and quasi-cultured men
+serves further to stimulate their mental faculties. In native ability
+too they are not lacking, though drawn from the lowest classes of
+society, for, as will soon be more fully explained, they sometimes
+possess strains of high lineage. The national custom, which represses
+the normal intellectual development and social instincts of cultured,
+respectable women, is removed from this one class, which is favored by
+many circumstances. They are not subjected to the debauching excesses
+usual with the ordinary prostitute, nor to humiliating medical
+inspection. They are not conscious of popular disapproval, but on the
+contrary are the beauties of the town, their photographs for sale on
+every street. Indeed one well-informed gentleman told me that probably
+ten per cent. of the geisha enter the calling by their own choice. No
+wonder that from time to time the tale is told of some Japanese man of
+social position falling under the spell of an accomplished geisha, whom
+he prefers to any of the silent, passive, timid, incompetent girls
+selected for him, who in all probability have never talked with any man
+except immediate relatives or tradesmen. The national custom which
+predetermines the social incompetence of the majority of cultured women
+compensates for the loss by providing this geisha class. Not until
+Japanese ladies can hold their own in social life will the vocation of
+the geisha be ended.
+
+Among the surprises one meets in studying the geisha question is the
+fact that not a few of the girls have features which indicate
+distinguished ancestry. My explanation for this fact is the further fact
+that for ages the standards of moral life in Japan have allowed large
+freedom of sexual relations. The result is that in the lowest classes,
+from which geisha are recruited, there run strains of gentle blood. It
+thus comes to pass that now in the midst of coarse surroundings and in
+deep poverty there are born of parents manifestly belonging to the
+lowest class, children of exceptional beauty, fitted, so far as
+individual appearance indicates, to belong to the highest ranks of
+society. Whether or not this suggested explanation is correct as a
+matter of historic fact I am not able to say, but I offer it as the most
+plausible that has occurred to me.
+
+Parents in this class of society much prefer daughters to sons, for they
+are likely to become valuable sources of income. At eight or nine, those
+destined for the "accomplished" calling are put into the care of some
+experienced geisha and a mutual contract is given for a specific period
+(five or six years), during which the child is termed a _maiko_
+(dancing girl). As a rule the parents receive a small sum at the
+beginning of this first period. The owner undertakes to support and
+train the girl, and expects to profit by her earnings. By the time the
+girl is fifteen or sixteen she has finished her apprenticeship, when, if
+she has exceptional graces and charms likely to win her a place in the
+highest social gatherings, she will secure quite a competency (many
+hundreds of yen, and in some cases even a few thousand) for the keeper
+and parents. On the expiration of the first contract a new one is made,
+and so on, until the girl has passed her prime and is no longer sought
+for entertainments. If in the interval she has not become the concubine
+of some rich man, she then either returns to her poor home or, what is
+more usual, becomes a servant in a hotel or tea-house. If her ability is
+exceptional, she may set up as geisha keeper, train other maiko, employ
+younger geisha, and so make her living.
+
+The great ambition of a geisha is to "catch" some wealthy man of rank
+with her charms and become his concubine. My informant estimates that
+this is what happens to perhaps one half of the geisha. In such cases
+the man pays down a handsome sum to the owner, who sends part of it to
+the parents. Thus he buys his concubine, whom he usually keeps in a
+villa, not his home. I have asked if geisha ever become true, legal
+wives and am told "only very rarely." But, if they do, are they
+cordially received by the man's kindred? "Oh, no! that is not possible,"
+is the repeated answer. The effects of her training can never be
+obliterated, and the new relatives cannot forget the despicable class
+from which she comes, and the calling by which she has gained her
+husband. She may become indeed refined and altogether correct in manner,
+but the taint of her origin as a rule adheres to her. Then too the years
+of immoral life before she won her husband make it a rare thing for a
+geisha to have children, and childless wives in Japan are not at a
+premium, for the prime purpose of marriage is the maintenance of the
+family line.
+
+Foreigners commonly say that geisha are not prostitutes. It is true they
+are not licensed, that is to say, professional, prostitutes in the eye
+of the law, nor are they procurable, as are regular prostitutes, by the
+average man, for the expense is too great. But the chief of police
+already referred to, and many Japanese of whom I have inquired, insist
+that a large proportion of geisha are corrupt--two geisha keepers have
+estimated the proportion as high as ninety per cent. Geisha who decline
+engagements leading to immorality are rare indeed, and for that very
+reason are unpopular.
+
+But better than generalized statements is the story of an actual life.
+There lives to-day in Hyogo a paralytic whose influence through her
+words, newspaper articles, and books is widely felt throughout central
+Japan. She is one of the few girls who, though trained as a geisha,
+refused to follow the calling. The story of her life is worthy of more
+than passing mention.
+
+Her father died in her infancy, and shortly after the death of her
+mother, who had married, her stepfather likewise married again. These
+stepparents, deciding to have her become a geisha, expended much time
+and money on her training.
+
+When she was prepared at sixteen years of age, she was entrusted to a
+woman whose business it was to find employment for geisha in hotels and
+tea-houses. This woman took her to a house in Osaka, where there were
+already many geisha and regular prostitutes. Learning the nature of the
+duties expected of her, she positively refused to comply. In spite of
+the fact that it was twenty miles to her home and that there were but
+two sen in her pocket, she escaped from the hotel, spent one sen on
+bridge toll, one sen on a lunch, and succeeded in walking all that
+distance alone, reaching home after midnight, the home from which she
+had been sent out with hopes that she should win for her stepparents an
+ample support. The reception accorded her can be fancied. She held
+firmly however to her resolve, preferring poverty and hard toil to
+luxury and fine clothing along with that service on which these were
+conditioned. Work was found for her in a factory, then as a family
+servant, and finally at a small tea-house, where during the winter she
+was especially exposed to the cold. An attack of rheumatism developed
+into paralysis. With no hope of recovery she longed for death, for her
+stepparents, considering the case hopeless, neglected to care for her
+properly, although she was so helpless. She could not feed herself, nor
+even crawl to the well in which she wished to drown herself,--the final
+resource of many a despairing Japanese woman. But, by a strange series
+of circumstances, or should we not say by a merciful Providence? a
+Christian man discovered and befriended her, told the story of Jesus,
+and revealed the Savior. Her faith soon became so strong and her words
+proved so thoughtful and helpful to those Christian friends who came to
+see her, that her influence began to spread. She found she could manage
+to write with her crippled hand, and as what she wrote was like her
+spoken words, simple and strong, it soon found its way into print. She
+was finally led to write the story of her life, and this book, with
+other articles written by her, has afforded a small income, which with
+additional help from friends has secured a comfortable home for herself
+and the family of which she is now the center. Her name is Zako Aiko,
+and she lives in Hyogo.
+
+A few geisha, coming under Christian influences, have been converted,
+and so far as I know, such persons leave the calling altogether, as
+incompatible with Christian principles. But condemnation of the whole
+geisha system is not confined to Christians. Many Japanese, entirely
+outside our Christian circles, regard it as a disgrace to the country,
+and wish the whole business, along with licensed prostitution, concealed
+from public view. For instance, a man of high official rank, president
+of a large institution, tells me he regrets that there is no first-class
+Japanese hotel in Kyoto at which he may entertain foreign guests in
+Japanese style, except where geisha serve the meals. Rather than
+countenance the geisha system, he prefers to take his guests to a hotel
+where the service is not so perfect but where the women employed are
+above suspicion. He deplored the fact one day that all foreigners coming
+to Kyoto in the spring visit the _Miyako odori_, commonly known in
+English as the "Cherry Dance." I myself have seen this performance more
+than once, and found nothing objectionable in either the so-called
+dancing, its setting, or its accompaniments. It nevertheless affords
+opportunity for the display of something like eighty or ninety geisha,
+and helps to maintain the business and the system. As indicating the
+status of geisha in the best Japanese society, it is significant that
+all geisha are rigidly excluded from every entertainment where any
+member of the Imperial household is present.
+
+It is often said by foreigners that geisha and prostitutes not
+infrequently make happy matches, and by legal marriage escape from their
+unhappy lives of shame. This is one of those pretty fables one would
+like to believe, but the facts do not seem to support the theory. There
+are, no doubt, rare instances where such has been the case. I have known
+two women who had been geisha and who married men of some position. In
+one case the man was a physician. When I knew the family the ex-geisha
+had been in the home a number of years and was a lovely, modest, capable
+woman, a regular member of my wife's cooking class. But it was
+noticeable that she always took a "back seat" among the ladies; she was
+tolerated by them and treated not unkindly, but it was clear that they
+looked down on her. The man's kindred never favored the match, and would
+not let him marry the woman legally, so she lived in his house, took
+excellent care of his first wife's children, and was to them all that a
+stepmother could be, yet, so far as I know, she has never gained her
+full position in the home of her husband nor among his relatives.
+
+The other case I knew but slightly, as she died but a few weeks after I
+made her acquaintance, but she must have been a woman of exceptional
+character. She was a Christian and highly respected in the church.
+
+Such cases, however, are rare. A geisha may be in high favor during the
+decade or more when at the height of her physical charms, though even
+then her inner life is empty and loveless; but when no longer attractive
+she is cast aside as a faded flower, to spend the rest of her life
+forlorn, unloved, and uncared for. Truly, the way of the geisha is hard!
+
+    Geisha naru mi to;
+    Michi tobu tori wa
+    Doko no idzuko de
+    Hateru yara,
+
+is a popular ditty regarding the final disappearance of geisha from
+sight. It may be roughly translated: "What becomes of geisha, do you
+ask? I ask in turn, where end their lives the birds that fly along the
+road?"
+
+In regard to the number of geisha, Mr. Murphy's statistics show that
+from 1887 to 1897 they increased throughout Japan from 10,326 to 26,536,
+and since then the increase has been relatively small, the number being
+now in the vicinity of 30,000.
+
+So far as is known to me, no regular Christian or philanthropic work is
+done for this class.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_SHOGI_ (LICENSED PROSTITUTES)
+
+
+It may seem strange to class prostitutes among working women, but the
+facts require such classification, for, not only so far as the parents
+and brothel keepers are concerned, but also so far as the girls
+themselves are concerned, it is entirely a matter of money. If the
+business did not pay splendidly, the keepers would not erect their
+handsome buildings, pay the heavy license fees, nor buy the girls from
+the parents at considerable cost. And on the other hand, if the parents
+did not receive what they regard as large sums for their daughters, the
+latter would not be sold to such lives of shame and disease. And so far
+as the poor victims are concerned, there is abundant evidence that they
+often go into the wretched business solely at the command of their
+parents, for among the lowest class the noble doctrine of obedience to
+parents is shamefully perverted to this vile end. Children are taught
+that obedience is a child's first duty, regardless of the question
+whether the thing required by parents is right or wrong. The girl goes
+to the brothel in obedience to her parents, who send her there to earn a
+living for herself and to help them out of special financial
+difficulties. Thus from first to last, so far as the girls, the parents,
+and the keepers are concerned, the question is economic.
+
+Among the working women of Japan prostitutes surely are the most pitiful
+of all. They give the most and get the least. They receive no training,
+like the geisha; have no liberty; to prevent their running away, are
+imprisoned in brothels, or if diseased or ill, in hospitals; and have no
+friends except possibly other prostitutes. Most of them soon loathe the
+business, but are helpless, hopeless prisoners,--for the keepers who
+paid their parents a few score or hundreds of yen and loaded them with
+beautiful clothes, charge all these items to their account, so that they
+are under a heavy debt which must be paid before they can leave. This
+debt the laws of the land theoretically ignore but practically
+recognize, for the "keeper" keeps the books as well as the brothel, and
+the police and officials are often on his side. In this way licentiously
+inclined officials, merchants, and travelers provide for the easy,
+economical, and legal satisfaction of their desires.
+
+I do not propose here to give a detailed account of this distressful and
+disgusting "business." Those who desire more information should procure
+_The Social Evil in Japan_, by the Rev. U. G. Murphy. Some years ago Mr.
+Murphy, by grit and pluck, carried certain test cases through the courts
+and secured legal opportunity for girls to quit the business if they
+wished. The Salvation Army and some of the daily papers took pains to
+let the brothel girls know their legal rights, and in a short period
+over twelve thousand, at that time over one third of the whole number,
+left the brothels, so that for a while the business was prostrated in
+many quarters. This single fact shows the spirit and attitude of a large
+number of the girls. Since then the wily keepers and all interested in
+maintaining this lucrative trade have succeeded in modifying the
+administration of the regulations, so that the girls are again closely
+controlled.
+
+There is however a rising public conscience and an abolition movement is
+gathering strength. The virtual slavery of the girls; the fact that they
+are openly bought and sold, and that, too, under governmental
+supervision and sanction; the cruelty inflicted on many girls by their
+keepers; the fraud practised in connection with their accounts, whereby
+a girl is kept hopelessly in debt, so that, however faithful she may be,
+release is impossible, and indeed the more faithful the more profitable
+she is to her keeper--all these facts are becoming widely known and are
+beginning to arouse public indignation. The government is openly
+charged with protecting slavery, and that of the worst kind. High
+government officials are being condemned for licentiousness.
+
+As signs of the times, I give a few facts. In the summer of 1909 the
+wealthiest and most centrally located prostitute quarter in Osaka was
+completely wiped out by a great fire. Before the flames were fully out,
+the anti-brothel forces realized their opportunity and under the
+leadership of the Young Men's Christian Association and Young Women's
+Christian Union began to agitate for refusal to allow the rebuilding of
+the business in that region of the city. A petition was prepared and
+signed by one hundred thousand people. Large numbers of Osaka's best
+citizens allied themselves with the movement. The result was that the
+authorities in charge saw fit to yield to the pressure and arranged that
+the new buildings for prostitution should be erected on the outskirts of
+the city.
+
+In the winter of 1911, the city of Tokyo suffered from a great
+conflagration which completely destroyed the section of the city known
+as "Yoshiwara,"[6] which for three hundred years has been assigned to
+prostitution. This center of the social evil had become enormously
+wealthy, and such magnificent buildings had been erected for the
+business that it had become one of the famous sights of Tokyo. Before
+the fire was fairly over, the anti-brothel forces began to organize
+their campaign, which continued for months. A magazine called _Purity_
+(_Kaku Sei_) was started. In this case, however, success did not crown
+their efforts.
+
+    [6] Foreigners commonly, but mistakenly, suppose that "Yoshiwara"
+        means "Prostitute Quarter."
+
+Not long since an army division was located in the vicinity of Wakayama,
+a city of considerable importance, not far from Osaka, in which there
+have never been any prostitute houses. This led to the suggestion that
+it would be well to open there a regular prostitute quarter. The matter
+was keenly discussed and the proposition carried through the city
+council and authorized by all the lower officials, but when it came
+finally before the prefectural governor for signature, it was vetoed,
+and the veto message is worthy of preservation and careful consideration
+by those who are interested in these matters.
+
+The governor says in his message: "I was early convinced that the
+establishment of licensed quarters in the city was harmful to the public
+interest. It has been a subject of discussion in Wakayama now for many
+years, and I have investigated the question thoroughly from the
+standpoint of public morals, health, and economics, at places with and
+without licensed quarters, and find that the existence of such
+institutions is distinctly harmful. The standard of morals is lowered,
+the public health impaired, disease made rampant, the young are sent
+into wrong channels, homes are broken up, and extravagance is
+encouraged. The state of affairs in Shingu, in this prefecture of
+Wakayama, where licensed houses have been established, clearly shows
+that the existence of such places is extremely harmful to public
+interest. The majority representation to the authorities urged the
+establishment of licensed quarters on the ground that the quarters would
+promote the prosperity of that section of the city in which they were
+situated. It is true they may benefit a section of the city in one way,
+but the benefit so obtained would be offset by many other evils. The
+military authorities are strongly opposed to the establishment of
+licensed quarters, and their views are very reasonable. For these
+reasons I have decided to refuse permission for the establishment of
+licensed quarters in Wakayama city."[7]
+
+    [7] As translated by the _Japan Chronicle_, May 13, 1911.
+
+In passing, it is worthy of record that the prefecture of Joshu has for
+over thirty years, by ceaseless vigilance, prevented government sanction
+of prostitution. Repeatedly has the battle been fought and repeatedly
+have the anti-brothel forces won. In this respect Joshu stands alone
+among the forty-eight prefectures of the Japanese empire.
+
+As illustrating the low moral ideals prevailing among a certain class of
+men, Professor Abe of Waseda University, in a recent brothel-abolition
+speech, told of a certain politician who, though a fast liver, was
+praised because he never debauched the wives and daughters of his
+friends, but always confined himself to those women whose services he
+fully paid for in hard cash! Colonel Yamamuro, the highest Japanese
+officer in the Salvation Army, on the same evening, speaking of the low
+moral ideals of the classes from which prostitutes are drawn, said that
+in connection with the Salvation Army he had had opportunity to know of
+twelve hundred girls who had been aided in the two rescue homes of the
+Army. Of these twelve hundred about one half had been prostitutes. The
+reasons given by them for leaving were various, such as ill health,
+cruelty, lovers, but not one said she left the business because it was
+wrong. The evidence is full and convincing that a considerable section
+of the Japanese people do not regard loose sexual relations as
+particularly immoral.
+
+In regard to the statistics of prostitutes, the figures given by Mr.
+Murphy are probably the most accurate available, and are substantially
+official. Between 1887 and 1897 the number of prostitutes increased from
+27,559 to 47,055, reaching their maximum in 1899, when there were
+52,410. Then, following up the work of Mr. Murphy and the Salvation
+Army, came the "cessation movement," reducing the number to 40,195 in
+1901, and the following year to 38,676. Since that date the number has
+grown. In two years four thousand fresh girls were bought up, and a
+thousand more the following year. The latest statistics are those for
+1906, when the number of prostitutes was reported as 44,542. It is safe
+to say that at the present time the number is near, if it has not
+passed, the fifty thousand mark.
+
+It would be natural to suppose that recruits for the geisha and shogi
+occupations would be found largely among the poorest farmers, but both
+my outdoor man and also my cook assert that such is not the fact.
+"Farmers would never sell their daughters for such vile purposes,
+however poor they might become. Parents who do such things are only the
+degenerate creatures who live in cities," is the scornful remark of my
+gardener. My cook asserts the same thing, and adds that farmers'
+daughters have not the genteel features and figures nor the light
+complexion essential to girls seeking such occupations. Other
+investigations confirm these assertions. The great cities of Nagoya and
+Niigata, and indeed the whole of Echigo, are famous for the supply of
+girls they send to the brothels of Tokyo. A poor man with several
+daughters has a pretty good investment, and rejoices more at the birth
+of a girl than of a boy, because it means an early and definite income.
+
+I found at one time in Matsuyama that all the girls of sixteen to
+eighteen years of age in a certain poor quarter had, in the course of
+one year, been sold off to the brothels. About that time a man came to
+me with a pitiful story of poverty; he had five children, but
+unfortunately they were all boys; had they been girls, he said, he might
+have sold some of them and so not have needed to ask my aid!
+
+The word used in connection with both geisha and prostitutes is
+perfectly frank; no effort is made to conceal by terms the nature of
+the transaction. The girls are "bought" and "sold." They employ the
+same words as those used in buying and selling animals, food,
+clothing--anything. Their purchase and sale is a regular business in
+which men and women openly engage, traveling the country over in search
+of girls, and conducting them in small groups to the keepers of
+brothels, who pay so much a head. And this takes place in civilized
+Japan! Moreover, in spite of the fact that girls may thus be bought, it
+is true that they are also occasionally stolen. I have known of a
+pitiful instance where the girl, a member of a respectable family, was
+boxed and shipped on a steamer as freight, to elude the police, and
+taken to Siam. In five years she has succeeded in getting one letter to
+her home, but the parents dare not put the matter into the hands of
+Japanese officials, as that would make the situation hopeless.
+
+But Occidentals may not forget how terrible a scourge is commercialized
+vice in civilized and so-called "Christian" Europe, and who has not
+heard of the "white slavery" of America, with its stealing of girls and
+young women for purposes of prostitution? The institution of comparisons
+between nations and individuals is alike odious,--but unavoidable. A
+fair comparison would seem to be that, whereas in the West the moral
+sense of a large proportion of the people is very strongly against the
+social evil and seeks to abolish it, in Japan the moral sense of the
+mass of the population acquiesces in the situation, so that the
+government and a vast majority of the influential people of the land
+unite to make the business safe, legal, and remunerative; and that,
+while in Occidental Christian lands no girl can voluntarily enter this
+sphere of life without being conscious of its shame and immorality, many
+of the girls of Japan may have no adequate knowledge of these inevitable
+consequences until their fate has been sealed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+AMELIORATIVE EFFORTS
+
+
+The reader will desire to know what, if any, have been the efforts to
+ameliorate the evils described in preceding pages. They are of two
+kinds: first, governmental in origin, general in scope, legal and
+educative in method; and second, private in origin, both general and
+specific in scope, personal, educative, ethical, and religious in
+method.
+
+The general educational policy of the government is not to be regarded
+as a philanthropic or ameliorative effort to meet the conditions already
+described. This policy however does have a powerful elevating influence
+on the lives and character of the entire people. As we have seen, over
+ninety-seven per cent. of the girls of school age are in attendance,
+according to the reports. Though we allow a discount on these figures
+(and some may perhaps be necessary), we can still say that, if the
+present policy of six years of compulsory education is carried out, the
+rising generation of boys and girls will be able to read fairly well the
+daily paper and simple books. To millions of women this means the
+opening of doors of knowledge and opportunity which in ages past have
+been closed to them.
+
+The government has also been the chief initiative force in all recent
+movements to improve the economic and industrial conditions of the
+people. Railroads in Japan owe their existence to the government, as
+also do many forms of modern industry. Agriculture and fruit and stock
+raising owe much to the government, which has imported Western seed,
+Western fruit trees, and new breeds of horses and cattle. All these
+efforts have done much to improve the economic conditions, thus
+elevating the scale of living. People eat better food and more of it,
+live in better houses, and wear better clothes than they did fifty or
+more years ago, and--an important item--they pay less taxes in
+proportion to their income. A general uplifting process is modifying
+their life and thought, and this is profoundly affecting Japan's working
+classes, and, of course, her women.
+
+In regard to the specific evils introduced by Western industrialism, we
+have already seen how the government has sought to remedy the
+difficulties, so far as laws can go, but hitherto its efforts have
+largely been thwarted by capitalists.
+
+Among the notable efforts of the government to promote wise social
+reform movements have been the large gatherings, at considerable
+government expense, of leaders of philanthropic and benevolent
+institutions for instruction in the most recent and approved
+sociological principles. Competent specialists from all over the country
+have been employed to instruct these leaders, and thus the whole country
+is given the benefit of the special knowledge of the few. The government
+has also, during the past four years, distributed some forty thousand
+yen annually among those eleemosynary institutions which it regards as
+models of efficiency.
+
+Furthermore, opportunity for the higher education of women, first given
+on a wide scale during the past decade, while not yet affecting working
+women to any appreciable extent, cannot fail to do so as time passes,
+for it proclaims the intrinsic ability of woman and gives her a standing
+of intellectual equality with man, in sharp contrast to the humiliating
+position assigned to her by popular Buddhism, which has taught that
+women must be reborn as men before they can be saved. Indeed, they are
+born women because of their sins. A Japanese proverb has it that one
+must never trust a woman, even if she has borne you seven children! This
+long-believed doctrine as to the inherent incapacity and essential
+depravity of woman has no doubt been a powerful cause of her social
+degradation. Under the present system of general education, however,
+these doctrines and beliefs will soon be completely overthrown, thus
+making room for and producing great changes in the social and industrial
+conditions of all women.
+
+But the government is not the sole worker for the social amelioration of
+industrial conditions. Through private effort forces are being
+introduced which are more potent than any the government knows or can
+control. I refer to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This has already
+introduced such a leaven into Japanese society that nothing can now
+prevent its transforming the whole mass in time.
+
+Should the entire foreign body of 624 Protestant and 371 Roman Catholic
+missionaries be withdrawn from Japan, there would still remain (January,
+1914) 728 ordained and 713 unordained Japanese Protestant pastors and
+trained evangelists, and 331 Bible women. Among the 815 organized
+churches, 182 are wholly self-supporting. In addition to the 90,000
+Protestant communicants, 67,000 Roman Catholic people, and 32,000 Greek
+Christians among the Japanese, it is estimated by Christian pastors that
+there are many hundreds of thousands of the people who are conducting
+their lives according to the principles and with the spirit of Jesus.
+
+Furthermore, a careful study of modern Japanese civilization shows that
+the Christian conception of man as having intrinsic and inherent worth
+has been embodied in the constitution and laws of the land and is being
+put into wide practise. The rights of children, women, and inferiors and
+the duties of parents, husbands, and superiors are new notes in Japan,
+and are sounding forth a richer music than has ever before been heard in
+the Orient.
+
+Of course there are still discordant notes, as we have seen when
+considering the subject of the buying and selling of geisha and
+prostitutes; but so there are even in so-called Christian lands.
+Nevertheless, the conception of the value of the individual and of his
+rights is inspiring a hope among the lowly and hitherto downtrodden and
+oppressed sections of the nation which cannot be extinguished, and will
+in due time powerfully transform the traditional civilization, giving to
+woman a place of equality along with man in the estimation of all.
+
+The general education of girls, and especially their higher education,
+is signal proof of a wide acceptance of Christian conceptions. According
+to the _Resume Statistique_ (1914), there were, in 1911-12, 250 girls'
+high schools, public and private, whose pupils numbered 64,809. In
+addition, the number of women in normal schools preparing to become
+elementary school-teachers was 8,271, and in the higher normal schools,
+570. The number of female teachers is reported at 42,739. These girls'
+high and normal schools, through the ability they give their graduates
+to converse with men on a basis of intellectual equality in regard to
+topics of current interest while retaining their modesty and personal
+character, are so transforming the reticent habits and unsocial customs
+of Japanese ladies that ere long scant room will be left for the
+old-time geisha.
+
+The change Christianity is silently bringing to the home life of Japan,
+adding to its sweetness, purity, and conscious unity, and contributing a
+mighty uplift to both head and heart, few as yet have either eyes to see
+or ears to hear. The influence already exerted by Christian ideas and
+ideals on the traditional conceptions of Japan in regard to home life,
+marriage, childhood, the poor and lowly, the orphan, the blind, the
+leper, and the diseased generally,--in a word on the value of the
+individual and his inalienable, God-given rights,--is so widespread and
+so beneficent that it receives little specific comment and no
+opposition.
+
+There were no doubt in old Japan certain influences predisposing many to
+the new ideals and practises introduced from the West. It is difficult,
+perhaps impossible, at this stage in Japan's development to reckon
+accurately how much of Japan's new life is due to new factors introduced
+from Christendom, and how much to ideals already operative in the
+feudal system. No one can doubt, however, that Christian ideals have
+been the most important factors in the West to give woman her present
+status. Nor can we doubt that Christian ideals and practises are playing
+an important role in the modern emancipation of women in Japan.
+
+Those who criticize missionaries as forcing the Christian religion upon
+unwilling peoples know not whereof they speak. The Christian faith would
+make no progress whatever in Japan were it not found by Japanese
+themselves to be ennobling and satisfying. It is welcomed because it
+brings hope and peace and power to those who were hopeless and restless
+and powerless.
+
+But he is very shortsighted who thinks that the main forces
+Christianizing Japan are wielded by the foreign missionary. The
+missionary doubtless is an essential agent, but of far more importance
+is the work of Japanese Christians themselves; and in addition to these
+is the general though vague influence exerted by Western civilization
+as a whole, and particularly by the English language and literature. In
+that important work, _Fifty Years of New Japan_, are many remarkable
+chapters, but especially noteworthy are those entitled "Social Changes
+of New Japan," and "Influence of the West upon Japan," from the pens of
+competent, wide-awake Japanese scholars.
+
+Consider what Professor Nitobe says: "The greatest influence of the West
+is, after all, the spiritual.... Christianity has influenced the thought
+and lives of many individuals in Japan, and will influence many more,
+eventually affecting the nation through the altered view-point and
+personnel of the citizen and the administrator. The character-changing
+power of the religion of Jesus I believe to be only just now making
+itself appreciably evident in our midst." Somewhat further on, referring
+to the English language, he writes: "The effect of the acquisition of
+the English tongue on the mental habits--I had almost said on the
+unconscious cerebrations of our people--is incalculable.... The moral
+influence of some of its simple text-books used in our schools cannot be
+overrated.... They have been instrumental in opening new vistas of
+thought and vast domains of enterprise and interest to young minds."
+
+No student of Japan's new life, resulting from the influence of Western
+and Christian ideas and ideals, should fail to familiarize himself with
+the eighth issue (1910) of _The Christian Movement in Japan_, which
+gives a series of remarkable addresses delivered by Japanese and
+foreigners at the semicentennial celebration of the beginning of
+Protestant missions in Japan. Especial attention should be paid to the
+section treating of the "Influence of Christianity on Japanese Thought
+and Life."
+
+It will be obvious to any thoughtful person that changes so wide and
+deep, affecting all the fundamental conceptions of life, of manhood and
+womanhood, of the state, of law and justice, of right and duty, are not
+confined to those whose privilege it is to study Western books and
+acquire the higher education. In ten thousand ways the whole national
+life is being transformed, slowly it may be and silently, yet surely and
+steadily. And the benefits are accruing to the most lowly and least
+educated no less than to those at the top. All the working women of
+Japan have already received in some degree, and in the future will more
+and more receive, the blessings and the uplift which are coming to the
+nation through its contact with the Christian conceptions and standards
+embedded in Western civilization and literature.
+
+A volume--nay, many volumes--would be needed to tell in detail the story
+of how the Christian message has been and is being conveyed to the
+people of Japan. We should make known the story of Joseph Hardy Neesima,
+of the Kumamoto Band, of Dr. Clark and Dr. Hepburn, of Young Men's
+Christian Association teachers of English in government schools, of
+faithful, self-sacrificing pastors, evangelists, Bible women, and
+missionaries. We should recount the deeds of heroic lay Christians in
+all the walks of life, and above all in their homes, too often hostile,
+commending their new-found faith by their new spirit and life. We should
+tell of the work of Christian teachers of ethics in the prisons, and the
+remarkable results secured. We should relate the experiences of those
+who have struggled for the rights of prostitutes, of Salvation Army
+officers, of matrons of reform homes, of managers of ex-convicts' homes,
+of founders of orphan asylums, of supporters of private charity
+hospitals. We should tell the story of the scores of Christian
+institutions the central aim of which is to express in concrete life the
+Christian's faith and hope and love.
+
+But in addition to the narrative of direct Christian work, full heed
+should be given to the evidences of the wide acceptance by the nation of
+the best Christian ideals in matters of philanthropy. To meet the needs
+of the famine sufferers in north Japan during the winter and spring of
+1914, and of those who were deprived of their all by the terrific
+volcanic explosion of the island of Sakurajima in January, 1914, more
+than a million yen ($500,000) of private gifts flowed into the hands of
+the relieving committees. For the earthquake sufferers the Diet voted
+622,883 yen ($311,441).
+
+The late Emperor, shortly before his death, was so moved by the medical
+needs of the poor that he contributed a fund of a million yen for the
+systematic undertaking of medical work in all parts of Japan. This
+started a movement among the wealthy which has resulted in the
+establishment of a Medical Relief Association (Saiseikwai), having a
+fund of $5,000,000 already paid in and pledges for $8,000,000 more.
+
+Men of wealth in Japan are following the example set by the best
+Christian life in the West. In recent years several large gifts have
+been made for education. At the close of 1913 one of the most wealthy
+and always generous families of Japan, Sumitomo of Osaka, announced
+their decision to establish an industrial school for the poor, at an
+expense of $200,000. And in the same year Mr. O'Hara, one of the
+wealthiest and most philanthropic men of Okayama, announced his plan of
+opening a high-grade agricultural school for poor boys of that
+prefecture. The amount of the gift is not stated, but in addition to the
+large sum needed for buildings and equipment, he donates as permanent
+endowment some 250 acres of rice land whose value, roughly estimated,
+may be about $50,000.
+
+There are in Japan of all denominations and religions the following
+institutions for the uplift and regeneration of the downtrodden and for
+the help of the poor:
+
+    Orphan asylums.......................... 100
+    Rescue work.............................  92
+    Dispensaries............................  45
+    Reformatories...........................  47
+    Homes for ex-prisoners..................  37
+    Homes for old people....................  22
+    Poor farms..............................  11
+                                            ____
+                                             354
+
+Of these institutions, the compiler of the statistics states that for
+one Shinto and three Buddhist, there are five Christian institutions.
+The leaders and inspirers in all the forms of philanthropic work are
+Christians, as from the nature of the case might be expected.
+
+"In the matter of Christian Social Service," writes A. D. Hail, in the
+_Japan Evangelist_,[8] "the Federated Missions have been represented by
+two Committees whose fields of endeavor are quite distinct. The one is
+the excellent Eleemosynary Committee. It deals with the delinquents,
+defectives, and dependents of society....
+
+    [8] January, 1915.
+
+"The Industrial Welfare Committee seeks to Christianize the industrial
+classes, and to encourage the development of dealing upon Christian
+principles with the complicated questions growing out of the relations
+of capital and labor. By the industrial classes we mean the
+non-capitalistic laborers and bread-winners. It includes men, women,
+and many thousands of children. They do not own the machinery they
+handle, and have no voice in the control of the industries with which
+they are connected. Being without any say in the control of factories,
+machines, and raw material, they can be discharged at any moment by
+employers for reasons satisfactory alone to themselves. Their bodies,
+their minds, and oftentime their morals, become subservient to foremen
+and managers. The unskilled laborers in particular have no margin of
+either wages or time for wholesome recreations, for accidents, old age,
+widowhood, and unemployment. Besides these there is another large class
+in Japan, of small traders who rent their shops and eke out earnings by
+the sweating process, or by renting rooms for doubtful purposes. To
+these are to be added fishermen who do not own tackle, tenant farmers
+and their employees, and the main body of school-teachers; also an army
+engaged in transportation, together with postal clerks, postmen, and
+others. Incidental to this are the districts of large cities and mining
+camps, where there are congested populations of unskilled laborers
+subjected to diseases occasioned by bad drainage, inadequate housing,
+and all the consequent evils. As these do not earn sufficient wages to
+entitle them to vote, they have no voice whatever in the betterment of
+their surroundings....
+
+"There is a growing tendency toward the fixedness of a gulf between
+laborers and their employers, so much so that Japan's great danger in
+this direction is that she may fail to realize that she has a labor
+problem on hand, and one that can be solved here, as elsewhere, only on
+the basis of Christian principles of common fair dealing."
+
+In spite, however, of abundant evidence that Christian ethical and
+philanthropic ideals are receiving wide acceptance in Japan, far wider
+than would be suggested by the statistics of membership in the Christian
+churches, it is also true that the evils of Occidental industrialism and
+materialism are sweeping in like a flood.
+
+Turning now from general statements as to the ethico-industrial
+conditions of the working women of Japan, in the next chapter I give the
+story of a single institution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME
+
+
+The origin and history of the Matsuyama Working Girls' Home cannot be
+told apart from the story of the man who has been its heart and life,
+Mr. Shinjiro Omoto. Born in 1872 and graduating from the common school
+at fourteen, he at once went into business, first as an apprentice and
+later with his father. At nineteen he opened a sugar store, which
+flourished and before long overshadowed the father's business. Money
+came in so easily that he soon entered on a life of licentiousness, and
+for several years he was as famous for his drunken carousals as he had
+been for his phenomenal business success. His parents cut him off,
+refused him admittance to the house, and for years he did not even speak
+to his father.
+
+              [Illustration: MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME
+                      GIRLS IN THE MATSUYAMA HOME]
+
+In 1899, we held a preaching service in a theater. Mr. Omoto happened to
+be drinking in the saloon opposite. Hearing of our gathering, with some
+rowdy comrades, he thought he would break it up, with the result that we
+experienced persistent opposition throughout the meeting. But the
+sermons on Pessimism and the New Life, and my statement of the reasons
+that had brought me to Japan attracted his attention, and the next day I
+received an anonymous letter asking for tracts. These seem to have
+produced a profound impression, particularly the tract entitled "Two
+Young Men." It told of two hardened prisoners who had been transformed
+by the gospel and became highly useful and well-known members of
+society. Mr. Omoto thereupon set himself definitely to learn about
+Christianity, but privately, unwilling to make public his new hope. He
+bought and read through, quite by himself, the entire New Testament.
+Though he gained some idea of the gospel, he soon found he had lost none
+of his passion for drink. After a while he went to Kobe and joined a
+temperance society; but soon finding that the society had members who
+broke their pledges, he began to break his. In despair he went to
+Okayama and tried to join himself to Mr. Ishii, head of the well-known
+Christian orphanage, asking to be made a Christian, but he was told to
+return to Matsuyama and join the church there in his old home; only so
+could he be saved. Greatly disappointed, he returned and called on me
+early in June, 1901, but without telling fully about himself. He also
+called on Mr. Nishimura, an earnest Christian worker, who prayed with
+him, telling him that to be saved he must receive the Holy Spirit.
+
+That summer, quite exceptionally, I returned in the middle of the
+vacation. Mr. Omoto appeared at the prayer-meeting for the first time
+and was evidently in a state of great excitement, so much so that only
+with difficulty could we understand his remarks and his prayer. The gist
+was that he had that day received the Holy Spirit, that he was now
+saved, and that his joy was too great for utterance. Tears rolled down
+his cheeks as he talked and prayed. After the meeting I had a few words
+with him, and urged him to ally himself with our experienced workers. He
+was so excited that I feared for him, and wondered whether this might
+not be a tornado of emotion due to drink and to the nervous condition
+incident to his riotous life, an emotion which he mistook for the gift
+of the Holy Spirit. I urged him to begin at once to live the Christian
+life, cutting loose from all bad companions and bad habits.
+
+To gain an honest living he entered the Matsuyama Cotton Thread Spinning
+Factory. This required twelve hours of work daily, sometimes by day and
+sometimes by night, a hard pull for one who had done no steady work for
+years. He attended Christian services faithfully, so far as his hours of
+work allowed, and became quite intimate with two or three of our best
+Christians. Before long he began to talk about the wretched conditions
+and immoral life of the factory girls, telling us of the situation
+already described in Chapter IX.[9] His first thought was to give these
+tired children wholesome recreation. He secured the use of our preaching
+place in the vicinity of the factory and invited the girls to attend
+what he called the Dojokwai (Sympathy Society). He soon persuaded the
+girls to add a little reading and writing to their play, and later also,
+sewing. These meetings had of course to be held after the twelve or more
+hours of work in the factory had been completed. Care had also to be
+taken that the studies and the fun should not absorb time needed for
+sleep. Membership in the Sympathy Society rose rapidly and soon numbered
+seventy girls.
+
+    [9] See pages 67-69. (Transcriber's note: See starting at "In
+        1901, when Mr. Omoto began to work in the factory, he was
+        amazed to see how many were the children taking their turns
+        in work along with the older girls by day and by night.")
+
+At first meetings were held only in the evening three times a week, and
+lasted but an hour. But as the educational element of the society
+developed, others were induced to help and every evening save Sunday
+was occupied. In order that girls on the night shift might continue
+their studies similar classes were also held from seven to nine o'clock
+in the morning. Before six months had passed the play aspect of the
+society was largely superseded by the educational.
+
+But opposition of Buddhists now began to show itself. A few parents
+refused to let their girls attend. The most determined opposition
+however came from the manager in the factory who had charge of one of
+the shifts. Members of that shift were so treated that gradually they
+dropped out of the Dojokwai, and new members from that shift could not
+be secured. The hostile manager was however himself dropped some months
+later, and all opposition to the work from within the factory ceased.
+
+In a previous chapter we have noted the facts discovered by Mr. Omoto as
+he went the rounds of the boarding-houses in which the girls were
+required to live.[10] As these conditions became clearer and more
+appallingly impressive, he began to say with increasing frequency and
+insistence that the Sympathy Society, however successful, could not do
+what was needed. Only a Christian home would answer. Not only do the
+girls need to learn to read and write and sew, but even more than these
+do they need a home free from temptation, clean and pure and helpful,
+and elevating morally and religiously. The difficulties however in the
+way of such an enterprise seemed insuperable. To say nothing of the
+financial problem, a still greater obstacle, it was felt, was the
+securing of "recognition" from the factory, for Buddhist influence in
+the factory was at that time still dominant. During these months the
+Sympathy Society was winning its way among the girls and their parents,
+and Mr. Omoto himself was learning valuable lessons.
+
+    [10] See pages 68, 69. (Transcriber's note: See starting at
+         "they were crowded together in disease-spreading and
+         vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they
+         were deliberately tempted.")
+
+One was that the girls were not all eager to be in a Christian home. We
+of course forbade all drinking, irregular hours, and more irregular
+"friendships." Attendance on prayers, night and morning, and at the
+school, was required. It looked for a time as if we should fail, for
+lack of girls to meet the expenses.
+
+But in spite of discouragements we kept on. The earnings of the girls
+who lived in the home, for the first year, were 1,361 yen. Of this sum
+they paid for board 905 yen, and sent to their parents 456, whereas
+girls in the other boarding-houses were able to save nothing, although
+the amount paid for board was the same in all the houses, being fixed by
+the factory at 3.60 yen per month, or twelve sen (six cents) per day.
+
+In February, 1903, a representative of the government who came from
+Tokyo to inspect the conditions of labor in western Japan, heard of the
+Dojokwai (Sympathy Home), and was so much interested in the story of its
+work that he took time to visit it with several local officials. He was
+greatly pleased, for he knew of nothing just like this, in any other
+part of Japan, particularly in its hygienic, educational, and moral
+advantages, and he expressed the wish that there might be many such.
+This was our first notice from government officials.
+
+As time went on, Mr. Omoto was found by the factory officials to be
+exceptionally faithful to its interests; he was rapidly promoted from
+one position to another, and in December of the same year was made
+"visitor" and "employing agent." This required him to visit neighboring
+towns and villages and collect new girls when needed. He tried to
+decline this work, saying that he could make no false promises to the
+girls or to their parents, nor in any way delude them as to the nature
+of their work, the amount of their wages, the conditions of the
+boarding-houses; being strictly a temperance man, also, he could not
+treat with sake (sah'-ke) and so get into friendly relations, all of
+which things employing agents constantly do; he had no expectations of
+gaining any recruits; the factory would better send some one else. They
+told him at least to try. To the surprise of all, and of himself the
+most, from his first trip he brought back with him fifteen girls. For
+three years he continued in this work and was always successful in
+securing girls for the factory. Because of his refusal to touch liquor
+in any form, his traveling expenses were much less than those of other
+employing agents, much to the satisfaction of the management; and the
+girls he secured on the whole remained longer and more contentedly at
+work, because he had always told them the truth. This made his position
+in the factory more secure and influential. After about two years'
+employment by the day he was promoted to the rank of a regular employee
+and paid by the month. His hours of official service were also largely
+reduced in order that he might have time for his educational and
+Christian work in the Home--a striking testimony of appreciation on the
+part of the factory officials.
+
+As the months passed by it gradually became clear that the effectiveness
+as well as the permanence of the work demanded suitable quarters. The
+heavy rental paid for the house made self-support impossible. Results
+already attained seemed to warrant appeal to friends for gifts, for the
+purpose of buying land and the erection of a building. Responses to our
+appeals provided the needed funds, land was purchased and a contract
+made with a carpenter on exceptionally favorable terms, just two days
+before the opening of the Russo-Japanese war (February, 1904).
+Immediately prices went up by leaps and bounds; but our contract was so
+well made and the carpenter had already made such full subcontracts for
+the lumber, etc., that we were not troubled because of war prices.
+
+As we entered our new quarters in June, 1904, however, the factory shut
+down the main part of its work and discharged the majority of its
+workers. This was a severe blow to the Home. The occupants were reduced
+to seven girls. Although the factory opened again after a few months,
+the conditions during and after the war made it difficult for the
+factory to secure girls, and the Home, together with the other
+boarding-houses, suffered from lack of boarders. Beginning with March,
+1907, however, special circumstances combined to fill the Home to its
+utmost capacity; during the three months of April, May, and June thirty
+applicants were refused admittance and as many more who desired to enter
+the school were declined.
+
+Increasing acquaintance with the disastrous effects of factory
+labor,--the lint-filled air so often producing consumption, and the
+excessive heat of summer sometimes resulting even in sunstroke,--made
+Mr. Omoto unwilling to persuade girls to enter upon such a life. The
+needs of the Home also pressed upon his time. These considerations led
+him, in 1906, to give up his work in the factory altogether, in order to
+devote his entire time and strength to the Home and to the upbuilding of
+the moral and religious life of the girls.
+
+In July, 1906, Mr. Omoto attended in Osaka the first convention of
+factory officials convened to study the problem of the proper care of
+operatives. Representatives were present from sixteen factories having
+night schools, and specimens of the work of the girls were compared. Mr.
+Omoto was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the work
+sent in from our Home and many newspapers made special mention of him
+and his work.
+
+In September, 1908, there was held in Tokyo under the auspices of the
+Home Department of the Imperial government an eight weeks' school of
+applied sociology. Mr. Omoto was among the 376 persons who attended.
+Again he received exceptional attention and was asked to tell his story.
+At this school no less than thirty-six learned specialists gave lectures
+on every conceivable topic suitable for such a school. Among the
+speakers so many were professed Christians, and of the rest so many
+advocated such markedly Christian ideals, that some Buddhists are said
+to have taken offense, regarding the whole affair as a part of the
+Christian propaganda.
+
+In the spring of 1909 there occurred an event of considerable
+significance. Without a preliminary hint of what was happening, Mr.
+Omoto saw in the paper one day the amazing statement that the Matsuyama
+Working Girls' Home, along with seventy-nine other selected institutions
+throughout the country, was the recipient of a specified sum (200 yen)
+as a mark of government approval! A total of 40,000 yen were thus
+distributed in varying amounts, Christian institutions being recognized
+to an unexpected degree. Later, word came from the Prefectural Office
+summoning him to receive the gift. In the entire prefecture six
+institutions had been thus honored, and of these, two were Christian.
+This gift from the Department of the Interior has been repeated each
+year since.
+
+Again in May, 1910, a Conference of Social Service Workers (Chu-o Jizen
+Kyokwai) was held at Nagoya at the time of the Exposition, and Mr.
+Omoto was among those invited to attend. His address and statistical
+report received much attention. Mr. Tomeoka, representative of the
+government and chairman of the conference, spoke in unstinted praise of
+the work of the Home, which he characterized as "Kokka Jigyo" (a
+national enterprise), and recommended the adoption by others of several
+of its special features.
+
+In the spring of 1911, the Home Department of the central government
+published a small volume describing one hundred and thirteen model
+philanthropic institutions of the country, in which we were of course
+pleased to see that the Home was included, being the only one from the
+prefecture.
+
+As opportunity offered and means were available, following the advice of
+friends, four small adjacent lots were purchased, one of which we were
+almost forced to secure for self-protection, because of the evil
+character of the buildings upon it. We now own altogether about two
+acres of land on the north side of the beautiful Castle Hill, around
+which Matsuyama is built. Here have been erected at different times six
+buildings (three of them two-storied), for residential, dormitory,
+chapel, night school, weaving, hospital, bath, and other purposes. We
+have space for a playground, of which the girls joyously avail
+themselves, after returning from twelve hours of confinement in the dust
+and clatter of machinery. The garden, too, provides fresh vegetables of
+an assured character at a minimum of expense, adding much to the variety
+and the wholesomeness of the diet. The present value of the property is
+more than its original cost, for land and buildings are constantly
+rising in price, as is the case in other parts of the country.
+
+The city educational authorities in 1906 asked Mr. Omoto to open his
+night school to the poor of the district. For this he had to have a
+regular school license from the National Bureau of Education at Tokyo.
+This was to be a Christian school--the only license of exactly that
+kind in the empire, he was told.
+
+Industrial newspapers have been noticing the Home and its work for some
+time.[11] During the past five years the favorable attitude of local and
+national government officials has been particularly pronounced.
+Government inspectors have repeatedly been sent from the Prefectural
+Office and occasionally even from Tokyo to visit the Home. One such
+expressed himself as amazed at the excellent mental work done by the
+girls, in view of the fact that all their study takes place after twelve
+hours of toil. Nothing but good food, sufficient sleep, and a wholesome
+and happy home life could account for their splendid health and superior
+school work. One man remarked that the girls in the Home do better work
+than pupils in the same grade in public schools.
+
+    [11] See page 149. (Transcriber's note: See starting at "Mr. Omoto
+         was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the
+         work sent in from our Home")
+
+Even so early as the autumn of 1906 the Home Department of the central
+government sent down special instructions to the prefectural office in
+Matsuyama to investigate our work, with the result that of nine
+benevolent institutions throughout Japan selected for commendation, ours
+was the one most carefully described and unqualifiedly praised. A recent
+government pamphlet concerning industrial problems makes special
+reference, covering two pages, to the work of the Home. Thus has a small
+institution begun to serve as a model for the country.
+
+The good health of the girls in our Home has been in strong contrast
+with the health of those in other boarding-houses, even in the best
+dormitories of the best factories in other cities.
+
+Statistics recently compiled by the government show that the average
+death-rate among factory operatives throughout the country is
+extraordinarily high. The highest, fifty per cent. on account of an
+epidemic, was reported from a certain factory owned and managed
+boarding-house in Niigata prefecture. Not one girl has ever died in our
+Home. Of the 301 girls who had lived in our Home by 1911, only eight,
+all told, died.
+
+In 1912 the Home passed through a crisis that threatened to destroy it.
+Late in 1911 the one factory in Matsuyama, where all the girls worked,
+was sold out to parties living in Osaka. A new manager was sent down who
+introduced many drastic changes. The change most affecting us was the
+stopping of the night work and the lengthening of day work to fourteen
+hours: namely, from 6 A.M. till 8 P.M.
+
+The girls in the Home soon became dissatisfied, and not many months
+passed before all had left the factory. Mr. Omoto was urged by the
+manager to find and bring in new girls. He refused however on the ground
+that he could not ask anybody to work such brutally long hours.
+
+Had it not been for a little weaving department with which we had
+already been experimenting, the Home would have been compelled to close.
+More looms were secured and those girls who wished to remain with us
+were given opportunity for work. Mr. Omoto's attention was at that time
+directed to the condition of the weaving girls in the scores and even
+hundreds of little establishments in the city and its suburbs. He soon
+found that an educational, economic, moral, and religious condition
+existed among them not unlike that which he had found among the factory
+girls of Matsuyama a dozen years before. The weaving establishments are,
+as a rule, small private affairs, usually having less than ten girls
+each, and are therefore wholly outside of the supervision of the
+government. The treatment of workers and the hours of labor are entirely
+settled by the individual owners.
+
+As a rule the girls are apprenticed for from two to three years
+immediately on leaving the primary school, at an age therefore of twelve
+or thirteen. They barely earn their living, although they work from
+daybreak to ten or eleven at night, and in some establishments even till
+midnight--from fifteen to eighteen hours a day! There are no night
+shifts and rare holidays on occasional festivals. The hygienic and moral
+conditions are about as bad as can be. It is estimated that one half of
+the girls are ruined before the close of their apprenticeship. Our Home
+is now deliberately attacking the new problem, which in many respects is
+more difficult than was the old one. We have put up two small buildings
+on our own grounds, enabling us to have thirty looms to give opportunity
+for work to thirty girls.
+
+The uniform quality of the cloth produced by our girls, the central
+portions of each piece equaling the ends in quality, shows unflagging
+moral attention, without effort to rush the work and stint the material;
+this has already won such approval from merchants that the "Sympathy
+Home" brand can be sold for a little more than other brands, and Mr.
+Omoto is assured that there is no limit to the amount which could be
+marketed.
+
+An owner of several weaving establishments has become so impressed with
+the quality of the work and the character developed in our girls that
+he asked Mr. Omoto if he would not take charge of a hundred of his
+weaving girls. This new departure is especially promising, for we have
+complete supervision of the girls throughout the entire twenty-four
+hours. The girls, moreover, are already remaining in our Home as a rule
+much longer than they used to when getting work in the spinning factory.
+
+As successive chapters of this book have shown, no more urgent problem
+faces New Japan than that of the moral development of her workers. This
+is particularly true of the hundreds of thousands of girls in the larger
+and smaller factories and industrial establishments. The wretched
+physical, economic, social, and moral conditions under which the
+majority of these girls lived and worked at the time when our Home was
+started are not easily described.
+
+Many of the factory authorities[12] are neither ignorant nor unmindful
+of the situation, and are striving to remedy it. The government also has
+enacted laws not a few. But laws and official actions alone provide no
+adequate solution of the serious problems raised by the extraordinary
+industrial and social transformations sweeping over Japan. A new spirit
+must be evoked, both on the part of capital and labor, and new moral
+ideals and relations established. This cannot be done by laws alone.
+Only love and contagious personal example are sufficient for the needs.
+
+    [12] It is not to be inferred from the statements in this book
+         that the political leaders and the organizers of
+         industrial Japan have been dependent on our Home for
+         ideas and ideals in regard to the problems raised by
+         modern industry. Many of those leaders are men of
+         cosmopolitan education and are well versed in the best
+         and most recent of literature of the West on these
+         matters. It is true, however, that our Home has been an
+         important concrete experiment affording in Japan
+         valuable suggestions and stimulus.
+
+Our Home was designed to meet just such a situation and has to a
+remarkable degree, we think, succeeded. It has provided not only
+sufficient fresh air, nourishing food, adequate bedding, clean rooms,
+and wholesome recreation, but also moral and religious instruction, and
+some education. The girls in our Home have enjoyed conspicuously better
+health and have done better work and earned and sent to their parents
+more money than those of the other boarding-houses of Matsuyama. But
+better than these have been the educational, moral, and religious
+results. Their womanhood has been raised. They have been better fitted
+for life's duties and for motherhood than they would have been without
+the training which has been given them.
+
+Moreover, the results of the Home have been such as to break down
+opposition. The good-will and cooperation of the factory officials were
+won. Factories in other parts of the country also have recognized our
+Home as presenting a splendid ideal which, in a measure, many of them
+are already following. The local and the central governments, as already
+shown, have repeatedly sent officials to inspect us, and in their
+reports have not only praised us, but have described our Home in detail,
+saying that we have solved the difficult problem of how to care for
+factory hands.
+
+Through the Home we are reaching the lowest strata of the working
+classes of Japan, and are providing them with ideals, motives, and
+education, and in a way, too, which does not tend to pauperize them, for
+each girl pays as board a sum sufficient to cover actual living
+expenses. It is also exerting an influence on the townsfolk. The
+attitude of the people toward Christianity has undergone a marked
+change. Villages in the interior likewise have altered their attitude on
+seeing how their daughters, graduates of our Home, have improved both in
+intelligence and character, in marked contrast to those who have been in
+other boarding-houses. All in all, Mr. Omoto has attained remarkable
+success. He is absorbed, heart and soul, in his work of bettering the
+moral and religious conditions of the working girls of Japan, and is a
+man continuously growing in spiritual life, Christian character, and
+knowledge of men. I have never known a man more thoroughly converted or
+more enthusiastic in his chosen field of work. The Omoto of to-day is a
+different person from the reformed debauchee of thirteen years ago, who
+began this service for factory girls as the outcome of his sincere
+question, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" His family have become
+possessed with the idea of social service, and his five children are
+being brought up in this atmosphere and in the fear of the Lord.
+
+Thus has the Matsuyama Working Girls' Home survived many threatening
+vicissitudes, attained conspicuous successes, and is now embarked on a
+new line of endeavor. May it exceed in the future its successes of the
+past and make still more substantial contributions to the uplift of the
+working women of Japan!
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+Text in small capitals was replaced with ALL UPPER CASE.
+
+The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
+paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate.
+Thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page
+number in the List of Illustrations.
+
+Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not
+corrected except for the following:
+
+On page 111, the book mentions "among the forty-eight prefectures
+of the Japanese empire", but there were forty-seven prefectures
+since 1888.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKING WOMEN OF JAPAN***
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