Hi, everyone!
I’m delighted to hear that you are enjoying your nice holiday. I got home this afternoon from Osaka.
Welcome, Gloriosa. You have a cute name, haven’t you!?
In Osaka, my family and I visited in the order my HD’s parents’, my parents’, and my brother’s home. All of them live close by and enjoy living. My kids were very looking forward to meet their cousins, who are almost the same age, and had a pleasant time with them playing a lot of games.
My HD’s parents took us a famous restaurant for Tosa food, especially katsuo no tataki. We enjoyed delicious hatsu-gatsuo there. At that restaurant, I found an interesting coaster card, in which there were some famous people’s pictures, such as Ryoma Sakamoto, Yataro Iwasaki, and Taisuke Itagaki. Yes, Tosa is a special place for People’s right’s movement in the Meiji era. Since I wrote about that movement in my essay, I feel strong affinities with Tosa. I’d like to visit there to learn more about those people’s history in the near future.
So, see you later. Good night.
6 comments:
Hi, everyone!!
Welcome to this blog, Gloriosa.
I have never seen this flower. Is it a kind of lilies? Perhaps the beautiful flower draws an attention from people.
Cherry, can I ask you? With what condiment did you have Hatsugatsuo, bonito? Ginger or Horseradish? Then, do you know the way of eating Hatsugatsuo people in Edo era liked very much?
The answer is that they ate it with mustard.
Hi, ladies!!!
It is Tuesday, May 6, 2008, today, and it has been a beautiful day since early morning. It is a perfect spring day, isn’t it?
I am delighted to hear that all of you are having a fabulous time during this spring holiday, being blessed with brilliant weather, though we had a bit rain yesterday.
Over the past few days, I was thinking about Sexual Politics and Kate Millett, and while I was doing some net surfing, I found her official site, which surprised me tremendously, because I heard that she was in England, half dying due to no luck of career.
Her official site is so lovely and pretty, even romantic, and gives us totally different impressions from the ones we normally get from her representative work, Sexual Politics. Or, maybe I had gotten an utterly wrong idea about her. Perhaps, so, because she was an excellent artist when she had her feminist literary work published more than 35 years ago and is now so.
I would like to let you know about her official site “An Art Colony for Women”, by pasting part of it:
MILLETT FARM
An Invitation to the Farm
AN INVITATION TO THE FARM
from KATE MILLETT
MILLETT FARM 20 OLD OVERLOOK ROAD POUGHKEEPSIE, NY 12603 Tel: 845-473-9267
This is an invitation to enjoy a residency for the summer at the Women's Art Colony Farm in Poughkeepsie, New York. An invitation extended to women writers, visual artists of all kinds and musicians all around the world. Over the twenty years of our existence several hundred women have spent summer or spring or fall at the farm, painting or writing, living in nature and community with other women. We have no outside funding. We share expenses and work together to keep the place looking good.
The farm is about the work you bring to the place. The painting and prose you do here, the place itself, its beauty and shelter, a piece of the world that is ours to enjoy; wildflowers, a pond to swim in, fields to dream in, woods to ramble.
C O M M U N I T Y
We are also the experience of living with women in freedom, in friendship, in discussion, the comradeship in nature and at the dinner table, good talk over wine, the sun on our flesh by the pond; everywhere around us flowers and woods, a world we have invented here, are perfecting and enjoying, creating a new way to live. The farm is a chance to stretch our imagination on paper and canvas, risking within the security and support we have brought into being here. It takes a determination to use the time well. We give preference to artists who can stay from four to six weeks, but women do come for shorter periods as well. Our enjoyment of the place is built on the many years of pioneer effort by the women who have come over the past twenty years. Time here is precious time; we are few in number and the places offered few and carefully chosen.
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello. How are you?
Talking about Tosa, a friend of mine has been living in Tosa since this spring. Her husband was transfered from Kanto to Kochi. They have 3 kids. She felt they were moving to the middle of nowhere and wondered how often she could have a visit from her mother who lives in Gamogori. Her mother used to visit her at least twice a month when they were in kanagawa. Actually, she called her mother to her place.
By the way, I've started the project of preparing for writing another thesis. From now on, I'll use this blog as my memorandum, too. Thanks.
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From excerpts concerning the “Woman Question” in nineteenth century England, we can see a clear distinction between traditional views and challenges to them. In traditional views, women should not be educated, not be franchised, or not be allowed to do what men could do in the public sphere. On the other hand, the challengers defy these oppressive views. However, answers to such a simple question like, “Should women be educated?” do not necessarily divide respondents into the two parties sharply. Even those who answer “yes” may hold traditional views.
As for this question about women's education, 3 types of answers can be considered: (1) No; (2) Yes with traditional views; and (3) Yes for women's liberation. Let me review what had been discussed.
Should women be educated?
(1) No. --- This is a traditional view without doubt. This was after the age of enlightenment. Any argument required some rational reasons. In 1869, M. Burrows who advocates this traditional view writes, “the College, or University, woman, is of the type of the man-woman.” From this point of view, “The learned woman does not make the best educator of children.”
In the 1870s, scientific discourses support this view. Edward H. Clarke, an American doctor, who starts this line of argument, obtains a rational reason from physiology. He emphasizes physical differences between male and female. He argues, “many of the efforts for bettering her education and widening her sphere, seem to ignore any difference of the sexes.” According to him, a young woman should not be educated to build up a perfect female body and organs. He writes, “the growth of this peculiar and marvellous apparatus, in the perfect development of which humanity has so large an interest, occurs during the few years of a girl's educational life,” and he concludes, “They graduated from school or college excellent scholars, but with undeveloped ovaries. Later they married, and were sterile.”
Victorian scientists raise more plausible arguments. They measure brain. The weight of brain! A physiological work indicates that a woman's brain weighted five ounces less than that of men. Theoretical background has already been prepared. That is Darwinism, namely, evolution, and natural selection. In 1887, G.J. Romanes writes, “it must take many centuries for heredity to produce the necessary five ounces of the female brain.” This scientific rationale supports women's intellectual inferiority, hence it leads to the notion that women's education equal to that of men is meaningless.
Another scientific rationale is the law of finite energy. Clarke's argument seems to contain this law. This is related to Social Darwinism. Influenced by this hypothesis, John Thorburn states that girls who are “future healthy mothers of our race” should not be too educated, or otherwise, they causes the disease which might “unsex” the girl.
(2)Yes with traditional views. --- Yes to this question may sound less oppressive. In 1850s, Victorian reformers argue that education for girls is needed to elevate women's moral character in progressive wives and to avoid premature, foolish marriages. Incidentally, the very similar argument is found in a Japanese magazine which was published in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kiyoura Keigo contributed to the magazine called Taiyo in 1896 insisting that “we cannot expect the current education for girls which provide basic subjects such as reading manner books, writing, and sewing to make a Japanese woman be a lady, a good wife, and a wise mother.”
(3)Yes for women's liberation. --- The harbinger of challenges to the traditional views is Mary Wollstonecraft's “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792). Women had not been educated, therefore they did not have as much knowledge as men. Wollstonecraft insists that women should be given a chance to be educated if women's ignorance is used to “justify the oppression of women.” She writes:
“if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all. ... Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, ... Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance!”
Hi, everyone,
I didn't write yesterday because I was a bit tired. On Children's Day, I went to Tokoname, my husband's hometown. There my mother-in-law, daughter and I enjoyed throwing pottery, so called pottery making using rokuro. It was a lot of fun. For 3000 yen, we can make two pieces like unomi or chawan. The reason why I was so tired was that I had a quarrel with my DH. Without him, I had to drive to the restaurant where my mother-in-law said she was waiting. I regreted how much mental energy and time I had spent for the quarrel. I don't even remember the reason for the quarell. Too bad!
Hello again,
Correction! Regreted should be spelled regretted, and unomi should be yunomi. I was very sorry.
Hello, Gloriosa. It sounds like a lovely flower, but unknown. Let me know the Japanese name.
Alice, I was very impressed with your question because me, too have been thinking on it these days. I learned that women pretended not to be so clever in the 18th century a.d. On today's Chunichi, a mother wants to have an advice. She doesn't want to reveal her high academic career. She asked whether it is possible to hide it from other mothers. If you were asked, what advice will you give to her? She is living in the Heisei era.
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