Fukuzawa Yukichi On Japanese Women Summary

The Meiji era (1868-1912), often touted as “the beginning of modern "Westernized" Japan”, saw to many political and social changes with the “extensive adoption of Western institutions, technology, and customs” within the country. Intellectuals of the early Meiji period, having found themselves living in a “period of paradigm shift”, frequently debated within an East-West binary. With the humiliation of China at the hands of Westerners and the increasing threat of Western imperialism at its doorstep, the Meiji intellectuals also came to associate the East with backwardness and vulnerability vis-à-vis the West with modernity and strength. One of the most prominent Meiji intellectuals was Fukuzawa Yukichi - a prolific writer known for his theories

The state of Japanese women then was pitiful from the perspective of Fukuzawa, a man who had gone overseas and seen for himself the emancipated women of ‘civilized’ societies – not only did he describe Japanese women as “weak in both body and mind”, he even called Japan a “hell and inferno for women.” The isolation of Japanese women is depicted in his writing, where he notes how “social intercourse and talking beyond necessity were prohibited” for them. He also highlights the powerlessness of Japanese women by raising the fact that a woman “owns no property of her own” at home but “cannot hope for a position of any consequence” in society either. With “honoring men and belittling women” being a clear relic of the country’s ‘backwards’ Confucian past, the effort to elevate the status of Japanese women can thus be said to be an attempt to distance Japan from such “evil customs” and bring it closer to the ‘civilized’ West. Additionally, Fukuzawa’s belief in the “innate equality of the genders” also made him recognize the necessity of harnessing the hitherto untapped potential of women for the development of Japan. In his comparison between Japan and the West, Fukuzawa saw