Working Women of Japan

by Sidney Lewis Gulick

For several years this company has set aside annually 20,000 yen ($10,000) for its relief and pension fund for operatives. In June, 1913, in addition to its regular appropriation, it voted an extra $50,000 for a "welfare promotion fund."

The president of the Fuji Cotton Spinning Company was given in 1913 a retiring grant of $50,000, inasmuch as the great success of this company had been due to his skill and energy. He however presented the entire amount to the "employers' relief fund, and it was decided to make this gift the nucleus of a permanent endowment fund."

AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY

There is a silk factory in Ayabe, the Gunze Seishi Kwaisha, whose record is the most wonderful of all. It is managed by a Christian, who runs it entirely with a view to the benefit of the workers and the district. No girls of that district go elsewhere for work. Once enrolled as members of the working force they are regularly instructed, both in general education and in their particular duties; they earn good wages, keep good health, receive Christian instruction, have their regular rest days, remain the full number of years, help support the family and earn enough besides to set themselves up in married life, and are now beginning to send their daughters to the same factory. This Christian factory is Christianizing the district. The rising moral and religious life is transforming even the agricultural and other interests of the region. So high is the grade of silk thread produced, and so uniform and reliable is the quality, that it alone of all the factories in Japan is able to export its product direct to the purchasing firm in the United States, which buys the entire output at an annual cost of about $500,000, and without intermediate inspection at Yokohama. Here we have a splendid illustration of the way in which Christian character is solving the problem arising from the low moral and economic ideals of the masses of Japan's working classes. As a rule the modern industrial worker does not put moral character into his work; and a wide complaint of Occidental importers of Japanese products is that goods are not made according to contract or sample. This is one of the greatest obstacles to the continuous prosperity of any Japanese industry; for as soon as a large demand has arisen in foreign lands for any given article, its quality, as a rule, has rapidly deteriorated. It is this unreliability of Japanese workmen that makes so difficult direct exportation to foreign lands without the supervision of Occidental middlemen. The Christian Gunze Seishi Kwaisha is one of the splendid exceptions which shows what Japanese workmen and manufacturers can do, when controlled by high ideals and motives.

Unfortunately however not all factories and their managers have the same spirit, aim, or skill. Many factories are the exact opposite in every respect to those owned by the Kanegafuchi and Gunze Seishi companies. My personal attention was first called to the heartrending condition of servitude imposed on vast numbers of girls by reading, a score of years ago, of a fire in the dormitory of an Osaka factory. The dormitory was in a closed compound, whose doors and gates were carefully locked to keep the girls from running away. The result was the death, if I remember correctly, of every inmate, of whom there were several score.

My personal knowledge in regard to the conditions of life and work of factory operatives was secured in Matsuyama, Shikoku, a small inland city of some forty thousand inhabitants, having but a single cotton thread spinning factory. It had no dormitories of its own, but sent its operatives to certain specified boarding-houses in the town. Through a Mr. Omoto, who was at that time working in the factory, and whose life story is given in the final chapter, I became intimately acquainted with the conditions prevailing in Matsuyama. In 1901, when Mr. Omoto began to work in the factory, he was amazed to see how many were the children taking their turns in work along with the older girls by day and by night. Large numbers ranged from seven to twelve years old, the majority, however, being from fifteen to twenty. They worked in two shifts of twelve hours each, but as they were required to clean up daily they did not get out till six-thirty or seven, morning and night. The only holidays for these poor little workers came two or three times a month, when the shifts changed; but even then there was special cleaning, and the girls who had worked all night were kept till nine and even ten in the morning. He was also deeply impressed with their wretched condition and immoral life. The majority of them could neither read nor write; their popular songs were indecent, and they were crowded together in disease-spreading and vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they were deliberately tempted. Some of the landlords were also brothel keepers.

Mr. Omoto, having opportunity as official "visitor" to become accurately acquainted with their life, told me in detail the conditions which have been briefly summarized above. The boarding-houses were only for girls from out of town. They had to be "recognized" by the factory, and the girls had to live in the houses to which they were assigned. Of course the purpose of these houses was to make money. The financial, hygienic, intellectual, and moral interests of the girls were wholly ignored. They were crowded into ill-ventilated, sunless rooms, the two shifts occupying the same rooms alternately. Personal extravagance was purposely stimulated, for girls in debt to the keepers were compelled to stay to work off their debts. Drinking and immoral carousings were their only recreation. As might be expected, sickness was common and epidemics frequent. Many girls returned to their homes after a few months in the "city" ruined not only in health but in character,—premature mothers of illegitimate children.

The conditions of the factory girls in Matsuyama were not unique. Miss J. M. Holland, a Church of England missionary in Osaka, recently told me some of her observations and experiences. She has devoted the larger part of her time for fifteen years to work among factory girls, and on the whole can report improvement. When she began her visits to the factories, the conditions were often appalling. It was not uncommon for girls working on the night shift to be kept, on one pretext or another, till noon the next day, making eighteen hours of work. The conditions of work and life were such that the girls frequently ran away, to prevent which the dormitories were virtually prisons within the factory compounds. The girls were not allowed to go out on the streets, were given no opportunity for recreation, and of course no education. They were underfed, overworked, and punished in various ways by their overseers, cuffed and sometimes whipped, for disobedience or blunders. The daily papers of those days had frequent items reporting oppression and ill treatment; to be deprived of wages as punishment was a common experience; police occasionally discovered girls working in cellars and vaults as punishment for misdeeds; girls sometimes escaped in their night clothes, and on a few occasions the girls rebelled and did personal violence to the overseers.