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
• Social Classes in Japan, Old and New 1
• Farmers' Wives and Daughters 8
• Domestic Industries in Farming Families 24
• Silk Workers 32
• Wives and Daughters of Artizans and Merchants 36
• Komori (Baby-tenders) 42
• Household Domestics 48
• Hotel and Tea-house Girls 52
• Factory Girls and Women 61
• Geisha (Hetæræ) 87
• Shogi (Licensed Prostitutes) 104
• Ameliorative Efforts 118
• 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,