Commentators were worried about the temperaments of the female characters and the lusty content.Įxamples of titles of the type of articles that appeared include: Advantages and Disadvantages of Young Women Reading Novels, Young Women And Novels, Problems of Girls Education by Novels, and Behaviour and Morality. There were concerns not just about new and imported publications, but also about the classics, even The Tale of Genji, which had been required reading for over a thousand years for Japanese aristocratic women. The concerns raised were not just about books, but also about the new literary freedom that women were experiencing, about the choice of their reading matter, and also their new ability to publish and write for new publications such as Jogaku Zassshi, the Women’s Education Journal, a magazine launched in 1885 by Yoshiharu Iwamoto (1863-1942) a famous Meiji era advocate for women’s education.īooks and often ones imported from the West were also starting to become the ultimate ‘must-clutch’ fashion accessories for young women and schoolgirls in a visible outward public expression of these new freedoms. Perhaps it is not surprising given this climate and the growing concern that some had about the new direction Japan was heading that articles started appearing about the dangers of fiction and especially novels read by Japanese women.Ī series of articles appeared, mostly written by men, in the press between 18 about the problems of women reading novels and the danger that novels posed for women and the health of the nation. Foreign visitors to Japan were increasing in number, foreign books and ideas were arriving in Japan and Japan’s first modern novel, The Drifting Cloud by Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909) had been penned. It was Meiji era (1868-1912) Japan, when the nation was experiencing a period of rapid modernisation and opening up to the West. In the late 1880s much was changing in Japan.
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