Working Women of Japan

by Sidney Lewis Gulick

SEPARATING THE WHEAT HEADS FROM THE STRAW
AT THE LOOM

Also in the harvesting and threshing of the rice, barley, wheat, and millet, women take an important part. But it is needless to enter into details. Enough to say that, in general farming, women share with husbands and brothers the heavy toil and fatigue of agriculture. It should be added that this is not because men shirk heavy work, but only because Japanese agriculture is so largely done by hand that every possible worker is pressed into service. As a fact, men do the heaviest part of the work, preparing the soil for the successive crops and carrying the heavy loads.

So varied are the modes of agriculture in different parts of Japan that general statements are dangerous, but I know that in some districts the weariness and drudgery of rice-planting and puddling are relieved by the singing or chanting of old folk-songs. The chorus leader intones a descriptive phrase, oftentimes improvising his own story, and is answered with a refrain from a dozen or a score of women. A story slowly evolves as the hours pass, and thus the work is lightened and the time beguiled.

In spite of fatigue, rice-planting has its charm for those who have been reared in farmers' homes. It is a time of hope, of social intercourse, of rest days and festivals, so that even the drudgery of the farmer has its compensations. Miss Denton, of the Doshisha Girls' School, says it is interesting to note how country girls get restless at rice-planting time, and for one reason or another usually succeed in getting excused from school work, to be off to the homes and share in the toils and joys of the season.

Tea-picking is probably the pleasantest form of toil undertaken by farmers' wives and daughters. The labor comes in the spring and early summer, when the temperature is delightful. It gives opportunity for social intercourse that is highly appreciated. Rice-planting and tea-picking constitute the two extremes of laborious and delightful toil engaged in by Japan's agricultural women.

How many are the women engaged in agriculture? The Japan Year Book for 1914 says that in 1912 there were 5,438,051 farming families, constituting about 58 per cent. of the entire nation. According to the Résumé Statistique for 1914 the total number of females in Japan proper, in 1908, was 24,542,383. Omitting those under fifteen years of age, 8,364,000, and those over sixty years of age, 2,216,000, we have 13,962,000 as the number of able-bodied women, of whom 58 per cent., or 8,077,000, are the farmers' wives and daughters.

In regard to their education it may be said that until the most recent times they have had practically none. In recent decades, however, farmers' children have begun to go to school. Until 1908 the elementary course (compulsory) covered four years, but the results were so poor that the period has now been extended to six. Four years' schooling does not give ability to read easily even a simple daily paper, much less an ordinary book. Our cook, an intelligent and able farming woman, when she came to us twelve years ago, could not read even the simplest Japanese characters, and thinks that at present relatively few farmers' wives have enough education to read papers or write letters. Whether or not six years' schooling will give this ability remains to be seen. It is safe to say that to-day Japanese adult farming women, as a whole, lack book education and have received little, if any, systematic training. They are accordingly largely controlled by tradition, and it goes without saying that their level of mental, moral, and spiritual life is low. The Shinto and Buddhist religions, as they exist among the farmers, are largely lacking in ethical content; they are rituals rather for burying the dead and through the use of charms and magic rites they promise future happiness and present, temporal blessings. Priests, as a rule, do not seek to cultivate the minds of the people, to strengthen their wills for moral life, or to elevate their personalities.

Yet it must not be inferred that farming women are without mental ability or common sense. They are indeed not inferior to the men with whom they share the burdens and toil of life. As a rule they are a sturdy, intelligent, self-respecting folk, having ideals of conduct which include cleanliness, gentleness, and politeness, and in comparison with the peasant classes of Europe are much to be commended. The women not seldom appear to better advantage than their husbands in point of intelligence and common sense, which I have thought might be due to the greater variety of their daily occupation.