Browse Exhibits (34 total)

For my final project, I will look at the early stages of the women’s rights movement in Japan focusing on Kanno Sugako, one of the pioneers of the feminist cause in the early twentieth century. Although the Meiji Restoration inflamed an extensive ‘Westernization’ of a patriarchal feudal society that was Tokugawa Japan, the new era hardly changed the status of women.^[1] In fact, reforms that specifically addressed the political and legal status of women worsened women’s political position in society.^[2] “A woman’s vocation was to be that of the nurturer. Her role was to be centered on the home. Women were barred from politics, from inheritance, and from any independent legal standing in civil law.”^[3] Yet, in late nineteenth century there was an increasing number of women fighting for women’s rights. Awareness for women’s rights began to spread in 1870s. There were five young women sent on the Iwakura Mission of 1871,^[4] of whom the youngest, Tsuda Ume, became a powerful figure who advocated for the expansion of social roles of women and women’s education. Throughout the decade, women such as Kishida Toshiko and Fukuda Hideko played important roles within the Movement for Freedom and Popular Rights.^[5] The women’s movement at the time condemned the ideology of “contempt for women and respect for men,”[6] advocated for women’s education and for equality within the household while arguing against concubinage.^[7] This was the political atmosphere around the time Kanno Sugako was born. Known as one of the most radical early Japanese feminists, Kanno was the only female political prisoner hanged in 1910 for the Great Treason Incident, the infamous plot against the Emperor.[8]

For my final project, I decided to examine the shift in Japanese views toward education that began at the end of the Tokugawa Period and continued through the Meiji Restoration, coming to characterize many changes that were implemented during the Meiji Period. In his work, “Education in Tokugawa Japan, R. P. Dore argues that the goals of any system of education can be roughly put into three categories: personal vocational utility, societal utility and personal enrichment.[1] As we will come to see, Japan’s schools shifted emphasis all around these three categories in its quest for a westernized system of education. While it is clear to us now that Japan’s old system of moral education would not be able to compete in the industrial age that was dawning, people at the time were not so convinced. Thus we will see the two Japans that formed around the divisive issue of education reform during the Meiji Restoration illustrated.

Takasugi Shinsaku  (高杉晋作, 27 Sepetember 1839 - 17 May 1867) is a samurai activist from Choshu domain during the Bakumatsu period. His life amounted to a short 28 years, yet his prowess, especially military talent, left him as a prominent figure in the early years of Choshu activists' history. The militia he led, the Kiheitai (奇兵隊), took lead in breaking down the status barrier in domain army at the time. It also employed western weapon and method in fighting against the bakufu army.

Takasugi was a person of unique character, often proud, stubborn and audacious, to his friends and enemy alike. Starting from his early year under the instruction of Yoshida Shoin, he remained one of the prominent figure in Choshu rebellious force, until his death to tuberculosis in 1867, on the eve of Meiji restoration. He represented the group of activists who constantly adapted and reformed for their own cause, who greatly pushed the reform of Choshu, and consequently, the establishment of new military order in Meiji Japan. By examining his early experience with Yoshida Shoin and his later experience in Shanghai, we emphasize his commitment to the establishment of Kiheitai as a conscious attempt in military reform, which challenge the existing idea of samurai warfare.

Émile Guimet (1836-1918) was a prominent art collector, scholar, and author in France in the 1870s and 1880s. His father, a prominent industrialist, had left him an immense fortune which he spent on traveling around the world to record others’ lifestyles and bring back examples of local fine arts to France. He first traveled in the early 1860s, visiting Germany, Eastern Europe, and North Africa, and this was when he started his tradition of publishing works about his experiences: a popular book entitled Sketches of Egypt: The Journal of A Tourist, which sold well in France and provided factual material for later scholarly endeavors. In 1876 he traveled to several East Asian countries, most notably Japan, before returning to France. The French government had offered him a grant if he would write a book on the “religions of the Orient” based on his work in Egypt, and Guimet leapt at the opportunity. In this book, Promenades Japonaises, which not only describes the “religion” of Japan (especially the complex relationship between Shinto and Buddhism), is a remarkable collection of first-person anecdotes, traditional folklore (including the tale of the 47 Rōnin), and factual information on the political and religious customs and history of Japan.

In order to best capture Japan in his book, Guimet brought Felix Regamey (1844-1907), a painter, along with him for illustrations. Regamey, a well-established artist who had been previously been published mostly in newspapers and magazines, used the trip as an opportunity to study Japanese art, particularly the use of watercolors. Because the trip was officially sponsored, the artwork was also expected to be factually accurate, so Regamey’s drawings can be considered far less fanciful than much of the Western art depicting Japanese subjects from the time. However, as an artist who had begun his career in caricature and who came from a developed Western nation, elements of euro-centrism, racism, and orientalism can be identified in his work.

Bibliography:

Guimet, Émile, Promenades Japonaises (Paris: 1880). http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6581625t/f1.image.

Librizzi, Jane, “Felix Regamey Goes To Japan,” The Blue Lantern, May 24, 2009, http://thebluelantern.blogspot.com/2009/05/felix-regemay-goes-to-japan.html.

Macouin, Francis. “Émile Guimet, fondateur du musée,” Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet, http://www.guimet.fr/fr/musee-guimet/emile-guimet-fondateur-du-musee.

Over the course of the Edo period, fifteen men cycled through the most influential position in Japan’s ruling class. Each of these shogun left their own indelible impact on the socioeconomic and political landscape of Tokugawa Japan. Yet, while their policies had profound short term impacts on the internal growth of Japan, the Edo period is still often dismissed by historians as a period of stagnation[1].

Japan remained behind Western powers for a vast majority of the time as a result off its “underdeveloped social and economic systems”[2]. Still, it would be remiss to suggest that these policies were purely detrimental within this period of diminished growth. Tokugawa Yoshimune, for example, brought to Japan a series of reforms that attempted to correct Japan’s unreliable economy. From 1716 to 1745 Yoshimune presided over a series of economic and social reforms, better known as the Kyoho reforms (Gordon 42)[3]. While these reforms were short lived, the interplay between Japan’s shift to import substitution and impending globalization poised Japan for inevitable economic hardships.