Above are three images from the brush of Kawanabe Kyôsai in the 1870s. They depict male anxieties about female social power. Click on each image to view a larger version. At left a woman sits on top of a bewildered-looking man, apparently using him for a cushion as she reads and smokes. In the middle are various scenes of social havoc. At right, a women in semi-Western attire who has returned home from study abroad has become a teacher in an elite women's academy. Sharon Sievers has pointed out that: "By 1874 the discussion of women's issues was country wide; arguments were full of contradictions, and the debate itself, carried in growing numbers of newspapers and periodicals, often lapsed into silliness and superficiality." (Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983], p. 16.)

This page is part of www.east-asian-history.net. If you arrived here via a link from within the site, simply close this window or tab to return. If you arrived here via a web search or an external link, click the icon at left to go to the home page or click this link to go to the index page for the textbooks: www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/.