Product Synopsis

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1902. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER Xni. TEN TEARS OF PROGRESS. The woman question in Japan is at the present moment a matter of much consideration. There seems to be an uneasy feeling in the minds of even the more tonservative men that some change in the status of woman is inevitable, if the nation wishes to keep the pace it has Bet for itself. The Japanese women of the past and of the present are exactly suited to the position accorded them in society, and any attempt to alter them without changing their status only results in making square pegs for round holes. If the pegs hereafter are to be cut wquare, the holes must be enlarged and squared to fit them. The Japanese woman stands in no need of alteration unless her place in life is somehow enlarged, nor, on the other hand, can she fill a larger place without additional training. The men of New Japan, to whom the opinions and customs of the Western world are becoming daily more familiar, while they shrink aghast, in many cases, at the thought that their women may ever become like the forward, self-assertive, half-masculine women of the West, show a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with the smallness and narrowness of the lives of their wives and daughters, -- a growing belief that better educated women would make better homes, and that the ideal home of Europe and America is the product of a more advanced civilization than that of Japan. Reluctantly in many cases, but still almost universally, it is admitted that in the interest of the homes and for the sake of future generations, something must be done to carry the women forward into a position more in harmony with what the nation is reaching for in other directions. This desire shows itself in individual efforts to improve by more advanced education daughters of exceptional promise, and in general effor...