WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
counselled the upper classes to educate their daughters by travel.
"We still lack an established system of education for women in this country, and they are generally deficient in the power of judging and understanding things. How children grow up depends on how their mothers bring them up, and this is a matter of supreme importance. It is commendable that those who go abroad from now onward should take with them their wives and daughters or their sisters. These would then see for themselves, and would also learn the way to bring up their children."[1]
The Nippon Women's University was opened a few years ago for the teaching of science, literature, the arts, and domestic management. Count Okuma is of the opinion that the higher education of Japanese women is an extremely valuable reform; but he thinks that culture should have for its purpose the training of women as wives and mothers.
He points out the evils of an "undiscriminating Westernization" of Japanese women.
Okakura Kakuzo, another contemporary writer, states that the women of Japan have always secured more freedom than elsewhere in the East. The Mikado traces his descent from the Sun-Goddess.
- ↑ Count Okuma. Op. cit.
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