Hi, ladies!!
I am Kiyoko Endo, very pleasure to join you. Going beyond space-time is a fantastic experience for us, isn’t it? All I want you to know is how I could live through my stormy life as a woman.
First of all, I have to talk to you about my first and eternal love. The lover’s name was former colleague Goro Nakano, who worked at Dempo tsushinsha as a political journalist. He already had a wife and a child, and yet felt in love with me when I was 23. A “lover” generally might mean having a sexual relationship even with a married man, but I have long hated such immoral intimacy. I don’t want to be a mistress. So, I told him that I would give my body to him if he divorced his wife. However, he was reluctant to do so, saying his wife hadn’t done anything wrong…
While such an indecisive relationship continued for almost two years, of course without any affairs, I was gradually irritated against him, and finally urged him to commit suicide together, giving him a dagger. Struck with a profound fear, he brought up separation in the end. Losing my all hope, I tried to kill myself by jumping into water at Kouzu, Kanagawa, on 28 July, 1909. But it failed. To make matters worse, next day Niroku shimpo carried the details of the incident, which showed both his and my name….(That was a yellow journalism!)
It was my first love. Bitter memory.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
Hi, ladies!
I am Rice. Thank you for nice questions, Alice. Ok, I’ll answer them.
Your questions are, “Why women’s? Why not men’s?”
My husband is a fisherman and almost men living in this town are fishermen too. Men go fishing to sea and they sometimes go on an ocean voyage. That means that they are very frequently away from home for a long times. To tell the truth, it is common that only women, children and old people alone live in fishing town. So I must support my family while my husband go out from home. I am proud of myself because I am an independent woman and my neighboring wives are in the same circumstances. We are very close friends, too. Someone may say that we, fishermen’s wives are lucky. There is a saying that the best husbands are those who are healthy and who work away from the home. But our life is far from such dream-like ones. Next, I will talk about our tough life soon. What I want to say is that we are working women, supporting families independently, living without men. Almost all men in my town were working away in Hokkaido at that time. None of us is a housewife. Now you can see that no man was actually there, around us. We had to decide and do everything by ourselves. Even if it is a riot. Today I’ll end here. See you again soon. Bye.
Thanks, Rice,
I see. They sound like women on the homefront during WWII.
Now, I'll trying to be critical.
So, if women were not with husband, can they behave independently or can they be autonomous?
Hello. I am back as Miss Ellen MacRae. Do you remember me?
I am 164 years old and well-educated.
I got a thick volume of Tokyo Jogakkan 100 nenshi (100 years of Tokyo Jogakkan).
I was really interested in it. As soon as I got it, I looked for records concerning me.
To my disappointment, the book mentions my career just briefly.
One of them is my résumé. It says,
Ellen MacRae was at that time 43. She was educated in England, France, and Germany. She got diploma from Cambridge, a license and a certificate from the study of art at South Kensington Schools. At a girls’ school in London, she had been vice vice principal for 2 years and vice principal for 8 years. Before assigned as vice principal of Tokyo Jogakkan, she had 18 year teaching career in total.
There seems to be a mistake. As you may know, women were not admitted to any degrees of Cambridge. I might have passed a local examination tested by Cambridge which started in 1867.
Oh, there is a picture of me on this page. I will show you when we meet.
Good night.
Hello.
I am Violette. Nice to join you. Sorry to interrupt your interesting talks, but today I would like to tell you about Alison Uttely, an English female writer because I have recently written an short essay about her and her novel in Japanese for Children's books study group.
Uttley was born in 1887 and brought up on a Derbyshire farm. Although her chief interesting was music, she studied maths and science at Manchester University and English at Cambridge, then taught science at a London school. She married and had a son, and started to read him the stories she had secretly written. Soon her stories such as Adventuers of Sam Pig, Adventuers of Tim Rabbit, and The Grey Rabbit series were being published, and have since delighted generations of readers. She died in 1976. (A Traveller in Time, Puffin Books)
Hi, everyone
I will fight back from a respite to cope with poverty tormenting women.
women's power and birth control
By Sanger
I can say now the most critical problem we are confronting is derived from number and quality in habitants. Overpopulation has already been chronic, redundant number of people in a race is sometimes wiped out, caused by famine and diseases. China, Russia and India show how Mother nature reacts when human beings leave this crucial issue to a chance. People in other counties fear they will not obtain enough land, caused by excessive population. The consequence is war or readiness for war. Therefore, certain people prepare for "expansion" or other people prepare for defence against aggression from a nation in which population rapidly increases. Until now, the United States has provided room for expansion in the world. The country has assumed surplus of population in Europe. However, now the US begins to shut this door. Any vacancy in both hemispheres is rapidply being jammed.
Dear Ms. Sanger
Hello.
Sorry for interrupting you.
But may I have two questions?
What do you mean by "the US began to shut this door?
When were you first aware of the connection between poverty and overpopulation?
Hello, Cherry and ladies.
In 1900s I had a challenging year in my life. I gave a birth to my son, Shintaro in 1902 when I was 26. I became a single mother.
It drew a great public attention. I had a child out of wedlock, which made me a social outcast. It was a social stigma for me.
Some refused to purchase my paintings for their ethical reasons, others regarded me to be unworthy of entrusting their daughters to study painting with me. Chastity was believed one of the most principle virtues for women to observe. It was true that I did an antisocial behavior in a woman’s life during the late Meiji period. I survived this distressful and painful time through my strength, my reputation as a painter and unwavering support from my mother.
I was surrounded by enemies. Everywhere I found enemies. I have to be strong and never succumb to my enemies. I realized that women must live with courage and strength. As I was a typical Japanese woman who was taught to be endure hardship with silence, I sealed my emotions within myself and never revealed my feelings about my personal life.
I was in a whirl of social curiosity. I had to shield myself and my family from social curiosity. I had my mother close the tea-leaf shop in 1903 when I was 27. I decided to support my mother and son by brush alone.
I have had a blossoming career since I made a debut in the professional art world at the age of 15. I have won several prizes in exhibitions during the first decade.
I suffered social ostracism but my artistic reputation helped me to survive strongly. It was nice to see women students flocked to study painting under me.
Hi, ladies!
Welcome to this blog, and thank you for talking about Ellen Utterly, Violette.
Well, now I, as Rice, am going to talk about stupid men today.
I am neither a socialist and nor a communist. I am just a common women living frugally in a small fishing town, so I don’t have any lofty ideal. My only wish is living in peace and quiet. Yes, only if we have food to survive, that’s enough. I don’t demand more. However what made me hit the ceiling was the way which forced common citizens go hungry. If the starvation came from poor harvest triggered from natural disaster, I could put up with it. But it wasn’t utterly different. This shortage of rice was caused by avarice of men with wealth and status. A species of man tends to go after money, power, and they do anything in order to acquire them. So they keep on fighting everywhere to expand their power and territory. After Japan luckly won victories over big wars, the nation’s leaders have become more arrogant, introducing democratic idea and capitalism. Egoistic stupid men began speculation of rice. Ok, I’ll try to explain why speculative buying rice began next time. Good night, friends.
Hi, everyone.
Alice, thank you for your good questions.
I would like to respond to your question.
First, what do you mean by "the US began to shut this door?
I mean the US began to impose restraints on immigrants.
Second, when were you first aware of the connection between poverty and overpopulation?
In 1798, Malthus insisted on relations between population and provision. There, he explained that population's increment was geometric progression while food (provision) increased arithmetically. Therefore, poverty was ,in a sense, natural phenomena. Poverty was not caused by the defect of social institution.
I study his theory and neo-Malthusianism. My movement is based on the neo-Malthusianism.
Malthus recommended late marriage and stoicism as a solution but neo-Malthusian insisted active birth contron meaning contraception.
Can I convince you?
We can not comfort ourselves with an ideal that survival competition contributes to racial improvement, meaning strong talented smart people survive while the feable are eliminated. At a result from legislation and artificial control, survival race is not a impartial trial of stamina and power different from the race between beasts. The haves are protected behind possessions, police prevent the weak from the strong coarsely stealing.
to be continued.
Good night.
Dear friends,
I am Utako Hayashi. Today I am going to tell you about the turning point in my life. It was when I was 21, I left my hometown, Fukui for Tokyo. The previous year I divorced from my husband and my baby I had to leave died. We loved each other, but my father did not allow me to leave him. My husband was the first son but he promised me to succeed, which was not true. I was involved in the family trouble and it was hard to to resist my father.
I went to Tokyo to find better career with my cousin. In Tokyo I was attracted with Williams's devotion to God.
I'll write about my second turning point tomorrow. Until then, good bye.
Hi, everyone.
Yesterday, I harvested plums. I made pickles and plum liqueur. I was very busy.
Overpopulation increasingly leaves the have-nots subject. The poor as breadwinners in large family are obliged to any wage just the employer decides. He must earn money more than a single colleague though, since he needs more money, he consumes himself with fear that he would be draw no wages, he resigns himself to wages lower than a bachelor.His family want nutrition, clothes and education and live in a shabby house. His wife who is exhausted from excessive labour gives birth all the time inspite that she is ineptitude in pregnancy. As for children, some survive or some die. In these survival comptition, three or four among them can survive but idiot or good for naught.
to be continued.
Good night to you. See the moon tonight!
Dear Cherry and friends
Thank you for answering my question, Ms. Sanger.
Let me tell you about Miss Ellen MacRae, tonight.
In March, 1888 (M21), when I was 43, I came to Japan and became Vice Principal of Tokyo Jogakkan. 6 women came with me. One of them was Mrs. Caroline Kirks. She hosted a Club where Japanese women could meet Westerners on a daily basis. The Club was like a out-of-school program.
Tokyo Jogakkan opened on September 11th. We, English women teachers, were in charge of making curriculum while the Japanese managed the school. As subjects we teach, we chose Western history, chemistry, geography, English, arithmetic, geometry and home economics. Since all the teachers were English, we taught in English. Students had to learn English before entering the school.
Before I came to Japan, I heard that we could preach the gospel at school. However, the Japanese school managers changed the policy. We were not allowed to preach in class. Mrs. Kirks might have been disappointed with the change and left the school soon. She rented a mansion in Nagatacho and started to host a club for upper-class women.
In 1890 (M23), the school moved to Toranomon. Since this time, the school was also known as Toranomon Jogakko. Upper class women entered this school.
Hello
Sorry for the delay. Before starting ‘I’ talk, let me introduce a life story of Kaneko Kitamura (1903-31).
In 1903, she was born into a prestigious Kambun (Chinese classical literature) scholars’ family in Ōsaka. Her father, Kaitsu Kitamura (1877-1944) published several books on Confucianism. Her grandfather, Ryūzō Kitamura (1844-1926), was also a famous Kambun lecturer, who taught at Kyōto Kazoku Shūkaijo and Dōshisha Jogakko for girls, at the same time, opening his own private school named Isshin-gijuku in Kyōto. Kaneko was being taught Kambun by her father and grandfather accordingly. Kaneko, being the first child between Kaitsu and her mother, Katsuno (1876-1957), had been brought up as the heiress of Kambun scholar for about ten years until her younger brother, Masakatsu was born in 1919. Her mother, having mastered how to make Western dresses, ran Ōsaka yōfuku gakkō. In 1916, Kitamura entered Ōsaka furitsu Umeda Kōtō Jogakkō and graduated in 1920. In October, 1922, she enterd Ōsaka Gaikokugo Gakkō bekka Eigo-ka, completing the course in March, 1924. After attending a summer language seminar for the university, Kitamura became the first woman student in a law faculty at Kansai Daigaku in October, 1923. Kitamura, however, being allowed to enter the university only as an auditor, was not able to receive a bachelor’s degree. After finishing the course, she applied for Kōbun shiken, a test for being qualified as a high official at the state government, twice, but in vain. During the second year of her Kansai University life, she wrote an article arguing a bombing incident at the time, which was paid attention to. And then Zen Kansai Fujin rengō-kai Journal Fujin issued Kitamura’s essay entitled ‘Hōritsu o manabu watashi’, which enabled her to be a journalist at Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun in April, 1925.
Post a Comment