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Western Women Missionaries and their Japanese Female Charges, 1870–1890

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09612020601048787

1747-583X

Mara Patessio,

Japanese History and Culture

Abstract In the past ten years much research has been published on the issue of nineteenth‐century Western women (missionaries) and their imperialist attitudes toward the Asian populations they came in contact with when they travelled to, or were sent by the missions to proselytise in China, India or Korea. The author discusses the relationship between Western women missionaries and Japanese girls during the 1870s and 1880s, focusing in particular on the educational work undertaken by women missionaries and on the values they tried to impart to Japanese girls in the girls’ schools they founded. The author shows that women missionaries could not easily discard the patriarchal and imperial notions they had come to believe in. She also argues, however, that the environment they created in Japan helped some girls to voice their hopes for a society in which their understanding of Japanese women’s worth was recognised. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Peter Kornicki, Dr Louise Jackson, and the two anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments. Notes [1] The Meiji period (1868–1912) is characterised by the formation of a modern, centralised state through the development of a strong industrial and economic base, the abolition of regional and social barriers, the spread of the national language, the institution of a compulsory education for boys and girls irrespective of social class and of universal male conscription. This was done in order to renegotiate the unequal treaties signed with the Western powers and preserve national integrity and independence. [2] See A. Hamish Ion (1993) The Cross and the Rising Sun, 2 vols (Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press); Julia Boyd (1996) Hannah Riddel: an Englishwoman in Japan (London: Charles E. Tuttle); Richard Poate Stebbings (1992) The Japan Experience: the missionary letters of Belle Marsh Poate and Thomas Pratt Poate, 1876–1892 (New York: Peter Lang); Noriko Kawamura Ishii (2004) American Women Missionaries at Kobe College, 1873–1909: new dimensions of gender (New York: Routledge); Koizumi Takashi (1991) Nakamura Keiu to kirisutokyō (Tokyo: Hokuju Shuppan); Ōe Mitsuru (2000) Senkyōshi uiriamuzu no dendō to shōgai : Bakumatsu meiji beikoku seikōkai no kiseki (Tokyo: Tōsui Shobō); Watanabe Masao (1988) Kai to jūjika : Shinkaronja senkyōshi J. T. Gyurikku no shōgai (Tokyo: Yūshōdō Shuppan), and Kohiyama Rui (1992) America Fujin Senkyōshi: Rainichi no haikei to sono eikyō (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai). On the Tokyo Fujin Kyōfūkai, see Rumi Yasutake (2002) Transnational Women’s Activism: the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Japan and the United States, in Margaret Lamberts Bendroth & Virginia Lieson Brereton (Eds) Women and Twentieth‐Century Protestantism (Urbana: Illinois University Press), pp. 93–112; Manako Ogawa (2004) Rescue Work for Japanese Women: the birth and development of the Jiaikan Rescue Home and the missionaries of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Japan, 1886–1921, U.S.‐Japan Women’s Journal, 26, pp. 98–133; and Mara Patessio (2006) The Creation of Public Spaces by Women in the Early Meiji Period and the Tokyo Fujin Kyofukai, The International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, pp. 155–182. [3] Gael Graham (1995) Gender, Culture, and Christianity: American Protestant mission schools in China, 1880–1930 (New York: Peter Lang), p. 2. [4] Padma Anagol (1998) Indian Christian Women and Indigenous Feminism, c.1850–c.1920, in Clare Midgley (Ed.) Gender and Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 81. [5] Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, p. 18. [6] Ferris Jogakuin (Ed.) (1975) Kidā Shokanshū (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan), p. 8. [7] Mary Poovey (1988) Uneven Developments. the ideological work of gender in mid‐Victorian England (Chicago: Chicago University Press), p. 4. Women missionaries often came from the middle or upper‐middle classes and were well educated: Katherine Tristram of the English Society for Promoting Female Education in China, India, and the East (known as the Female Education Society, FES) was the daughter of the Canon of Durham, had studied in London, and had been a mathematical lecturer at Westfield College, Hampstead. Alfreda Arnold, who helped the SPG, studied at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, whereas Gladys Philipps, who worked for St Hilda’s Mission, became a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge in 1891. [8] There were 29 female schools with boarders in 1887 (against 12 male ones) with 1716 students in 1886 and 2707 in 1887. Most missionaries were living in Yokohama, Tokyo, Kobe, Sendai, Wakayama, Osaka, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Hiroshima, Sapporo, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Nagoya and Shizuoka. Archive of the Church Missionary Society, Birmingham University, ref. n. 2/J/O 1888/64B. [9] Judith Rowbotham (2000) ‘Soldiers of Christ’? Images of Female Missionaries in Nineteenth‐Century Britain: issues of heroism and martyrdom, Gender and History, 12(1), p. 99. [10] He wrote that it was a waste of money to send young single women to Japan, who did not know themselves, the world, or the work they were going for, and often got married to lay men, leaving the missionary work. He preferred experienced women ‘and if they are not very handsome don’t let it trouble you’. Records of US Presbyterian Missions (1872), Yokohama Kaikō Shiryōkan, vol. 2, 4/5, 87–99, 21 August. Henceforth ‘Records’. [11] Jane Haggis (1998) ‘Good Wives and Mothers’ or ‘Dedicated Workers’: contradictions of domesticity in the ‘Mission of Sisterhood’, Travancore, South India, in Kalpana Ram & Margaret Jolly (Eds) Maternities and Modernities: colonial and postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 88. By 1882 the American women’s societies supported 694 unmarried missionaries in various countries, maintained hundreds of local assistants, and had erected residences, schools, and hospitals: R. Pierce Beaver (1980 revised edition) American Protestant Women in World Mission (Michigan: William B. Eerdmans), p. 109. The FES, formed in 1834, was run entirely by women. [12] Alison Blunt (1994) Travel, Gender, and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa (New York: Guilford), p. 94. [13] Rowbotham, ‘Soldiers of Christ’?, p. 97, and Helen Barrett Montgomery (1910) Western Women in Eastern Lands (New York: Macmillan), p. 48, in Carolyn De Swarte Gifford (Ed.) (1987) Women in American Protestant Religion 1800–1930 (New York: Garland). [14] Antoinette Burton (1994) Burdens of History. British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press), p. 7. [15] H. L. Platt (1909) The Story of the Years: a history of the Woman’s Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, Canada, from 1881 to 1906, vol. 2 (Ontario: Woman’s Missionary Society, Methodist Church), p.1. [16] Margaret Donaldson (1990) ‘The Cultivation of the Heart and the Moulding of the Will…’. The Missionary Contribution of the Society for Promoting Female Education in China, India, and the East, in W. J. Sheils & Diana Wood (Eds) Women in the Church (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), p. 430. [17] Julia Carrothers (1879) The Sunrise Kingdom (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication), p. 263. [18] Blunt, Travel, Gender, and Imperialism, p. 105. [19] Charlotte DeForest (1950) History of Kobe College (Chicago: Kobe College Corporation), p. 3. Kobe College was opened in 1873 with 20 girls from 8 to 14 years old. The first class graduated in 1882. [20] Judith Rowbotham (1998) ‘Hear an Indian Sister’s Plea’: Reporting the work of nineteenth‐century British female missionaries, Women’s Studies International Forum, 21(3), p. 258. [21] Mrs. H. Pettee (1912) ‘The Power of an Endless Life’, Life and Light, April, pp. 157–161. [22] Judith Walkowitz (1992) City of Dreadful Delight: narratives of sexual danger in late‐Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). [23] Haggis, ‘Good Wives and Mothers’, p. 89. [24] Burton, Burdens of History, p. 43. [25] Tōyō Eiwa Jogakuin Shiryōshitsu Iinkai (1985) Tōyō Eiwa Jogakuin Shiryōshū, 2, p. 20. [26] Records, vol. 4, 6/15, 88–107. In 1874, Youngman and Mary Parke opened the B‐Rokuban Girls’ School, later renamed Shinsakae Girls’ School, with two students, rising to 23 the next year. In 1886 there were 82 students: Jogaku Zasshi, n. 27 (25.6.1886). Yokoi Tamako worked there and in 1901 co‐founded the Women’s School of Art and Design, now university. [27] January and February 1882. Dōshisha Joshi Daigaku Sōgō Bunka Kenkyūsho (1993) Sōgō Bunka Kenkyūsho Kiyō, 10, pp. 77 and 86. [28] John W. Krummel (1973) The Methodist Protestant Church in Japan, Ronshū, 14, p. 1. [29] Earl Kinmonth (1998) Nakamura Keiu and Samuel Smiles, in Peter Kornicki (Ed.) Meiji Japan: political, economic and social history, 1868–1912, vol. 2 (London: Routledge), p. 286. [30] Irwin Scheiner (1966) Christian Samurai and Samurai Values, in B. Silberman & H. Harootunian (Eds) Modern Japanese Leadership (Tucson: University of Arizona Press), pp. 183 and 189. [31] In 1871 Mary Kidder started working at the Hepburn school and in 1872 Ōe Taku, governor of Kanagawa prefecture, supplied material and offered a building for the school, which in 1875, under her direction, became Ferris Seminary: Ferris Jogakuin Hyakunenshi Henshū Iinkai (Ed.) (1970) Ferris Jogakuin Hyakunenshi (Yokohama: Ferris Jogakuin), p. 33. The governor of Shizuoka prefecture, whose daughter was studying at Tōyō Eiwa, helped with the foundation of Shizuoka Eiwa Girls’ School in 1887: Ion, The Cross and the Rising Sun, pp. 121–122. [32] Archive of Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen, Records of WUMS, Yokohama, collection 379. [33] Ibid., p. 27. See also Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen Henshū Iinkai (Ed.) (1991) Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen hyakunijūnen no ayumi (Yokohama: Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen). [34] Records, 7 May 1880, vol. 4, 9/15, 147–166. [35] By 1880 Methodist Protestants were supporting 17 girls in Yokohama where 40 dollars were enough to maintain a girl for one year: John Krummel (1972) Methodist Protestant Beginnings in Japan, Ronshū, 13, p. 6. Protestant missionaries offering scholarships took girls on trial for three months, and if they proved capable, parents signed a contract promising that they would remain in the school a certain number of years as pupils and two additional years as helpers if their services were required: Proceedings of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of Japan (April 1883), Osaka, vol. 2 (Yokohama: R. Meikle John & Co.), p. 161. Henceforth Proceedings. The same agreement was used at Tōyō Eiwa Girls’ School. [36] Ōhama Tetsuya, Joshi Gakuin no Rekishi (Tokyo: Joshi Gakuin), p. 206. Tōyō Eiwa was opened in 1884 by the Woman’s Missionary Society of the Canadian Methodist Church to accommodate two missionaries and twenty boarders, but in 1887 there were 227 students and ten Japanese teachers. Graduates could read, write and speak English. A primary course covered three years and the academic course five years. Every graduate and fifty per cent of the students seem to have embraced Christianity: Platt, The Story, vol. 2, pp. 10–4. [37] Tōyō Eiwa Jogakuin Shiryōshitsu Iinkai (1984) Tōyō Eiwa Jogakuin Shiryōshū, 1, p. 15. [38] ‘Instructions to Miss Tristram and Miss Tapson proceeding to the Japan Mission, October 1888’. Archive of the Church Missionary Society, Minutes of Committee of Correspondence: G2/J/L2. [39] Grain of Mustard Seed, January 1 and February 1, 1887. [40] Archive of the Ladies’ Association, letter dated February 1878. Even when girls were frequenting missionary schools, parents could not always allow them to be baptised because of fear of social repercussions, since officials were obliged to send the names of any who received baptism to the central government, and this could cost fathers their jobs. Carrothers, The Sunrise Kingdom, pp. 234–235. [41] January 1882 and January 1883. Sōgō Bunka Kenkyūsho Kiyō, 10, pp. 77 and 86. [42] DeForest, History of Kobe College, p. 9. [43] Yamamoto Hideteru (Ed.) (1932) Ferris Waei Jogakkō Rokujū Nenshi (Yokohama: Ferris Waei Jogakkō Dōsōkai), p. 61, and Sōgō Bunka Kenkyūsho Kiyō, 10, p. 89. [44] Records, 7 January 1884, vol. 5, 1/11, 1–15. [45] Records, 26 August 1887, vol. 6, 2/5, 25–43. [46] Proceedings, pp. 213–216. [47] Fujisawa Matoshi & Umemoto Junkō (Eds) (2003) Tamura Naoomi Nihon no Hanayome Beikoku no Fujin Shiryōshū (Tokyo: Osorasha). [48] Kosaka Masaaki (Ed.) (1958) Japanese Thought in the Meiji Era (Tokyo: Pan‐Pacific Press), p. 379. [49] See, for example, Sharon Sievers (1983) Flowers in Salt (Stanford: Stanford University Press), and Mara Patessio (2004) Women’s Participation in the Popular Rights Movement during the Early Meiji Period, U.S.‐Japan Women’s Journal, 27, pp. 3–26. [50] Tamura & Asada, Joshi Gakuin, pp. 85–88. [51] Haggis, ‘Good Wives and Mothers’, p. 98. [52] Yamamoto, Ferris Waei, p. 93. [53] Tamura & Asada, Joshi Gakuin, p. 49. [54] Tamura & Asada, Joshi Gakuin, p. 22, and Yamamoto, Ferris Waei, p. 92. [55] Montgomery, Western Women, p. 69. [56] Sōgō Bunka Kenkyūsho Kiyō, 7, 1990, p. 186. [57] Tamura & Asada, Joshi Gakuin, pp. 11–12. Hayashi founded a branch of the Tokyo Fujin Kyōfūkai in Osaka in 1899. [58] Yuasa Yozō (1936) Yuasa Hatsuko (Tokyo: Yuasa Tasuke), p. 46. [59] Kanzaki Kiyoshi (1940) Gendai Fujin Den (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron), p. 205. [60] Kōbe Jogakuin (1976–81) Kōbe Jogakuin Hyakunenshi Kakuron (Kōbe: Kōbe Jogakuin), pp. 204ff., and Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections. [61] Padma Anagol, Indian Christian women, p. 82. [62] In Western scholarship, Japanese girls’ encounter with the West during the early Meiji period normally begins, and ends, with Tsuda Umeko and the other four girls who went to the United States with the Iwakura embassy in 1871. After that, Japanese women’s encounter with the West seems to have been on hold until the beginning of the twentieth century. See Karen Kelsky (2001) Women on the Verge: Japanese women, Western dreams (London: Duke University Press), pp. 36–37. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMara Patessio Mara Patessio is a Research Associate at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, where she obtained her Ph.D. with a thesis entitled ‘Women and the Public Sphere in the Early Meiji Period’. Her recent publications include, ‘To Become a Woman Doctor in Early Meiji Japan (1868–1890): women’s struggles and ambitions’, Historia Scientiarum, 15920, 2005, pp. 159–176, and ‘Women’s Participation in the Popular Rights Movement during the Early Meiji Period’, U.S.‐Japan Women’s Journal, 27, 2004, pp. 3–26.