View - ResearchGate

Takeo Shibahara, Doshisha University, Japan
However, under the upsurge of the regressive and
nationalistic political climate in the 1880s, Tsuda’s mission
became insignificant. She noted:
We Japanese women students had returned at a
reactionary period, and there was no movement to use
us in any way, nor could we get any work, although we
were government students sent over for study and
educated as teachers (Tsuda, 1980, pp. 489-90 ).
The government no longer expected women to play active
roles in society. Rather, to advance its modernization and
industrialization programs, the government
constitutionalized gendered polices, including educational
policy for women; the so-called “Good wife and Wise mother,”
which emphasized women’s collective roles as wives and
mothers in households. In addition to promoting this
ideology of womanhood, the government underpinned this by
framing the Meiji Civil Code in 1898, under which married
women’s civil rights, such as property, alimony, and divorce
were restricted. Furthermore, women’s political activities
were prohibited by the Law on Political Assemble and
Association of 1890 (Shukai oyobi Seisha Ho), by which
women were excluded from attending political meetings and
forming political parties. This law was fixed as two clauses
in Article 5 in the Public Peace Police Law (Chian Keisatsu
Ho) in 1900. Consequently, these gendered policies
confirmed women’s place in the private sphere, making
women’s subjection to men explicit and fixed in state policy. vi
It was in such a context that Tsuda lamented Japanese
women status in society, noting, “social customs have
assigned a secondary place to woman, and she is considered
unfit for responsible work, because she has grown unfit to
think for herself” (Tsuda, 1980, p. 22). She pointed out that
gendered policies promoted by the government confined
women to the secondary position in society, but at the same
time, women themselves were trapped by the notion by
accepting these policies.
This sense of disappointment and Tsuda’s desire to
raise independent-minded and socially responsible women
led her to found her own school, Joshi-Eigaku-Juku
(Women’s English School) in 1900. In her 1891 speech in
the U.S., which was made to establish an educational fund
227