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

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

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 imp

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

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. Acc

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 fir

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 wi

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 th

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 th

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 fur

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 industr

GEISHA (HETÆRÆ) 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 a

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 t

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 conditio

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