Now, in northern Japan the winters are long and hard, and the most industrious of farmers and fisher-folk can wring only a bare subsistence from the conditions of their toil. It is from these villages, perhaps, more than from any other sources, that the girls are obtained to supply the jōroya of the great cities. At any rate, in this particular village, the only hope that any girl possessed of escaping from the hard home toil was by the sale of her person, and the thought of seeing the great cities, of wearing beautiful dresses, of being admired and petted, and perhaps at last of marrying some rich lover and becoming a great lady, was a tempting bait to these poor peasant girls. To this young man, whose soul had been awakened to a new sensitiveness during his absence, the full horror of the conditions that could so warp and dwarf the souls of women appealed as it had never done before. He must do something to help them, but what to do his previous experience did not help him to know. He sought for aid and sympathy in his native place, among his friends and co-religionists; but the state of affairs was too old and too familiar to excite interest, and at last he worked his way to the capital, feeling that somewhere in that great city he would find light on the question that perplexed him. It was a mere question of ways and means—how to begin a work which he felt driven from within to do. In Tōkyō, as he inquired among his friends, he was told that Christians knew all about the kind of work that he wished to begin, that he must go to them and study their methods, if he would help the people of his native village. So the devout young Buddhist, who had found in his own faith the divine impulse, turned to the study of what Christians had done and were doing for the unfortunate. The story is not finished yet. We cannot tell whether in the end it will result in another addition to the ranks of the Japanese Christians, or whether it will aid in the quickening that has come to Buddhism, but, whatever way it ends, it shows in a concrete example what Christianity is now doing for Japan, and especially for the women of the country.
Footnotes:
[43] The following in the report for 1898 may be of interest:—
Percentage of pupils of school age receiving instruction:—
| Year. | Girls. | Boys. |
|---|---|---|
| 1896 | 47.54 | 79.00 |
| 1897 | 50.86 | 80.67 |
| 1898 | 53.73 | 82.42 |
The total number of girls of school age not receiving instruction is 1,552,601; of boys, 662,985; while the total number of girls of school age is 3,642,263, and of boys, 4,067,161.
[44] In the Japan Mail of July 8, 1901, the following statistics of women employees in factories in Japan were given:—
| Manufacture. | No. of Women. | No. to 100 Men. |
|---|---|---|
| Raw Silk | 107,348 | 93 |
| Cotton Spinning | 53,053 | 79 |
| Matches | 11,385 | 69 |
| Cotton Fabrics | 10,656 | 86 |
| Tobacco | 7,874 | 72 |
| Matting | 1,641 | 59 |