The turnover from the Tokugawa period to the Meiji is historically seen as a Japan entering a new age of modernization and industrialization to reach western levels of civilization.
Tokugawa as a traditional, old fashioned age while Meiji metaphorically as opening itself up to new ideas and western ways of thinking. The Meiji era was a time where Japan opened itself up to western influence. This romanticized way of viewing Meiji as a triumphant time of growing industry and capitalism is, however, largely leaving out the accounts of the rural peasants whose lives were not simply transformed overnight by these new changes. Most people living in the countryside were still relatively poor, barely getting buy with the little money that they manage to earn. Traditional gender roles for women were also still in effect during Meiji, …show more content…
Immediately following the Meiji Restoration, elementary education was mandatory for both boys and girls. This gave way to a new ideal of “good wife, wise mother” which signified a modern, wage earning woman. Wage earning women and girls working in factories and cut off from their traditional domestic roles as subservient housewives challenged the preconceived notion of gender and the role the patriarchal system had set for them. Adding to the notion of the “good wife, wise mother” ideal was the birth of the “housewife” that emerged during the growth of the middle class during the mid-20th century. The Japanese housewife embodied a both a modern and domestic woman that was also commonly a graduate from a higher school. (Faison 8-9) Thus, a new hierarchy was born between women of “housewife” status who were part of the educated middle-class and the “good wife, wise mothers” who were majority of working-class, factory
Tokugawa as a traditional, old fashioned age while Meiji metaphorically as opening itself up to new ideas and western ways of thinking. The Meiji era was a time where Japan opened itself up to western influence. This romanticized way of viewing Meiji as a triumphant time of growing industry and capitalism is, however, largely leaving out the accounts of the rural peasants whose lives were not simply transformed overnight by these new changes. Most people living in the countryside were still relatively poor, barely getting buy with the little money that they manage to earn. Traditional gender roles for women were also still in effect during Meiji, …show more content…
Immediately following the Meiji Restoration, elementary education was mandatory for both boys and girls. This gave way to a new ideal of “good wife, wise mother” which signified a modern, wage earning woman. Wage earning women and girls working in factories and cut off from their traditional domestic roles as subservient housewives challenged the preconceived notion of gender and the role the patriarchal system had set for them. Adding to the notion of the “good wife, wise mother” ideal was the birth of the “housewife” that emerged during the growth of the middle class during the mid-20th century. The Japanese housewife embodied a both a modern and domestic woman that was also commonly a graduate from a higher school. (Faison 8-9) Thus, a new hierarchy was born between women of “housewife” status who were part of the educated middle-class and the “good wife, wise mothers” who were majority of working-class, factory