Working Women of Japan Part 2

CHAPTER VII

HOUSEHOLD DOMESTICS

By the time a girl is fifteen or sixteen she is regarded as sufficiently large, strong, and mature to enter on more responsible work. Among the several fields open to her is that of _gejo_, or domestic service, of which we may distinguish two varieties: those who serve in private families and those who become maids in hotels and tea-houses. A komori may gradually work into the position of a domestic; indeed, in the majority of homes a komori not only tends the baby but aids the mother in her household work. It is only in the homes of the well-to-do that both gejo and komori are to be found. The work of a gejo consists in taking the brunt of the cooking, housecleaning, and washing, serving from daybreak, that is, from five or six in the morning, till ten or eleven at night. Her status is somewhat better than that of the komori.

Her hours of service however are long and taxing. Her time for rest is after the family has retired for the night and before they rise in the morning. Frequently her private room is the front hall, or entrance room; she accordingly is the last person to retire and the first to rise. It is to be noted however that in the houses of the middle cla.s.ses in the large cities there is usually now a small room for the servant-girl. The gejo draws the water from the well, washes the rice, lights the fires, cooks and lives in the dingy and usually smoky kitchen, washes the clothes, aids in the sewing, and has no relaxation but an occasional festival. Her lot is truly pitiful.

Besides her living (eating what is left from the family meal), she usually receives some two to three yen per month. Recently however some have been receiving even as much as five yen. The drudgery and monotony of the life are usually such that the opportunity to become a factory hand is quickly taken, especially as the cash earnings are relatively large. I am told by j.a.panese ladies that the problem of securing domestics in the cities or in the vicinities of factories is becoming serious.

Of course the average domestic has no opportunity nor desire for mental improvement. Having enjoyed no education to speak of, she can read neither papers nor books, nor may she attend meetings fitted to cultivate the mind or promote her higher life. Thus she is controlled by the culture and mental and moral traditions of the home in which she was reared.

Household domestics are recruited from farming and industrial families.

They earn their living for from four to six years, until their parents or guardians find them husbands; for in j.a.pan the girl has practically nothing to say as to whom she marries. Marriage is based, not on mutual acquaintance, much less on mutual attraction, but wholly on the judgment of parents or go-betweens, and is from first to last--if it is proper--a utilitarian affair.

It thus comes to pa.s.s that in j.a.pan domestics are, as a rule, young unmarried women. A domestic in her thirties, or over, is rare, and is almost certain to be a widow or a divorced woman.

CHAPTER VIII

HOTEL AND TEA-HOUSE GIRLS

A distinct cla.s.s of domestics is that which serves in hotels, tea-houses, and restaurants. Here the hours of labor are longer,--from four or five in the morning till midnight, or later. My attention was early called to their hard lot by observing that the poor girl who was serving rice for my meal, sitting before me as I ate, often fell into a sleep, from which I had to awaken her to get my rice. Inquiry would show that she had risen at four o'clock that morning, and further questioning would bring the information that she had retired the previous night at midnight or later, sometimes even not till two o'clock! Rarely do these girls get five hours of rest; frequently there are not more than three.

They must open all the _amado_ (sliding wooden shutters which protect the paper "windows"), and get the general cleaning done before the first guest rises, and must continue their service until late into the night, answering the calls of the guests, till the last one has retired. In addition to the usual cleaning of the rooms, which is really not much of an undertaking, these girls carry all the meals of all the guests from the kitchen on the ground floor to their rooms on the second or third floors, serve them while they eat, and carry away the trays when the meal is completed. In preparation for the night the girls bring out the heavy _futon_ (quilts) and make the "beds" on the floor; and in the morning remove, fold, and lay them all away in closets. The work of a j.a.panese hotel is relatively heavy for the number of guests, but that which is most taxing is the long hours of service and the insufficient time for rest. As in the poorer homes, so in the poorer and smaller hotels, the girls have no private rooms, but sleep in entryways and reception-rooms. Of course they have neither time nor opportunity for personal culture, nor even for recreation; and from the nature of their occupation, is it strange if they sometimes yield to the solicitations of guests?

These girls are of course neither professional prost.i.tutes nor geisha.

Yet I was a.s.sured by a provincial chief of police, some years ago when making investigations, that, in the eyes of the police, three fourths or four fifths of the girls in hotels and tea-houses are virtually prost.i.tutes, though of course they have no licenses and are subject to no medical inspection. Occasionally they are arrested for illegal prost.i.tution, at the instance however of brothel keepers. Hotels and tea-houses take pains to secure pretty girls for servants, in order to make their service attractive. It is a dreadful statement to make, but, if I am justified in judging from such facts as have come to my knowledge, it would appear that few traveling men in j.a.pan feel any special hesitation in taking advantage--with financial compensation of course--of such opportunities as are afforded them. Hotels give the girls their food, perhaps two gowns yearly, and generally a small payment in cash, but their princ.i.p.al earnings come from tips. This makes them attentive to the wants of the guests.

There are many first-cla.s.s hotels throughout the country, but chiefly in the princ.i.p.al cities, to which geisha are not admitted, but in those hotels to which they are admitted the green country girls soon learn from them the brazen ways and licentious talk that are evidently pleasing to many of the guests. All in all the life and lot of the hotel and tea-house girl are deplorable indeed. She does differ from the geisha and licensed prost.i.tute, however, in that she can leave her place and retire to her country home at any time, being held by no contract or debt. Hotel and tea-house girls are recruited largely from the families of artizans and small tradespeople, living in interior towns and villages; they do not often come from farming families, since they would lack the regular features and light complexion desired by hotels. Their family pedigree explains in part this easy virtue. They are saved from more disaster than they actually meet, because geisha and prost.i.tutes abound and are more attractive.

I remember, one summer at a little country hotel, a girl rushed into my room from a neighbor's in order to escape from the urgency of a guest.

She told me the following day quite freely of her troubles, of the horrid men that came to the hotel, and of the fact that most of the girls did not mind what she found unendurable. She had been there but a few weeks and was resolved to go home as soon as possible, claiming it was better to starve than to lead such a hard and especially such a disgusting life. Realizing that I had an exceptional opportunity for sociological study, I improved the occasion and asked many questions.

When asked for her reasons for not responding to the solicitations of the men, she replied that it was the fear of being laughed at should she have a child. I could not learn that she had ever been taught to regard loose s.e.xual relations before marriage as immoral or as intrinsically wrong. In her mind the question had no connection with religion, so far as I could discover. Her refusal was based wholly on utilitarian grounds.

At another hotel where I often stopped I noticed on one of my tours that an especially attractive girl of eighteen or nineteen, who usually waited on me, was no longer there. On asking her subst.i.tute what had become of her, I was told she had become a regular prost.i.tute, having found she could earn much more money that way than at the hotel. I asked if the parents had not opposed. "O no!" replied the girl, "the parents were the ones who proposed it and arranged for it." I asked the subst.i.tute if she herself did not regard the business as shameful and immoral. She looked at me with apparent surprise, hardly understanding what I meant, evidently regarding the matter entirely as a financial one.

Here is another case. A number of Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation secretaries, tramping in the j.a.panese Alps, were convinced by the noises one night at the hot springs that the five or six guides and porters were indulging in licentiousness. The next night it came out around the camp-fire that these guides and porters had paid the hotel girls five sen[4] (two and one-half cents) each.

[4] A sen has the value of one-hundredth of a yen, or almost half a cent.

Of course one may not generalize from three cases. But three such cases, together with the statement of the chief of police, and the experience, closely corresponding with my own, of many missionaries who have traveled in all parts of j.a.pan, are strong evidence. I myself do not think that guests often solicit the girls, nor that hotel girls commonly yield to the requests of guests, but there can be no doubt that it occasionally happens, and is not regarded in any such way by either the men or the women as an Occidental would expect. As said above, there are many hotels in the cities from which geisha are rigidly excluded, and where without doubt the relations of guests with hotel girls are above criticism.

It is an impressive fact of j.a.panese civilization that the "greenest"

country girls can in but a few short weeks of hotel service become so graceful and attractive. That in their lives which to the Occidental is so deep a sin is nothing to them. Their calm, innocent eyes, winning ways, and gentle conversation can hardly fail to impress the foreigner.

But compared with the girls in their homes they have lost that air of modesty and reserve which is so important an element in the charm of j.a.panese womanhood. The hotel and tea-house girl belongs rather to the geisha cla.s.s, whose loud, harsh voices and artificial, coa.r.s.e laughter are distinguishing characteristics. Girls of both these cla.s.ses however have an advantage enjoyed by no other women in j.a.pan, namely: that of meeting large numbers of men of various occupations and interests. They hear varied conversation and thus become somewhat acquainted with the affairs of the outside world, which makes them more intelligent than the average j.a.panese woman, so that it is possible to carry on some sort of a conversation with them--a thing practically impossible with the average young woman of j.a.pan.

In regard to the numbers of hotel domestics, I have found no statistics, but have no hesitation in venturing an estimate of many tens of thousands.

CHAPTER IX

FACTORY GIRLS AND WOMEN

As already stated, many girls prefer factory work to that of domestic service, either in private families or in hotels. From ancient times there have been small industrial enterprises, employing each a few hands in various lines of work, such as the reeling and spinning of silk and cotton thread and the weaving of cloth; but since the war with China there have arisen enormous factories, after the fashion of Western lands, which have introduced great changes in the industrial situation and in the condition of the working cla.s.ses.

The government report for 1912 shows that there were 863,447 individuals employed in 15,119 factories having ten or more hands each. Of these, 348,230 were men and 515,217 were girls and women. In addition it reports 427,636 weaving houses, having 733,039 looms and employing 697,698 operators. No statement is made as to the proportion of the s.e.xes. Remembering that the government statistics take no account of industrial enterprises employing less than ten hands, it is probably safe to estimate the number of women employed in exclusively non-domestic occupations at not less than a million.

We are not concerned however with the industries themselves, but rather with the conditions under which the operatives work and the effect of the work on their lives and characters. To begin with the more pleasant side of the question, there are factories which come well up toward the ideal. The terms of employment, the wages paid, the provisions for ill health, for accident, for long service and old age; the rooms for sleeping, eating, and recreation; the bathing establishments; the education given to those who need it; the public lectures and religious and ethical instruction given at fixed times in the public halls of the factories, Buddhist and Christian teachers being impartially invited; the provisions for marriage of employees and arrangements that each couple have a separate suite of rooms, and that the infants are cared for while the mother is in the mill; these and other provisions show that the best in j.a.pan is up to a high level of excellence. Such is the policy of the Kanegafuchi Company, which owns a score of mills in different parts of j.a.pan, and whose success moreover is so great that it is now buying up less successful compet.i.tors.

For several years this company has set aside annually 20,000 yen ($10,000) for its relief and pension fund for operatives. In June, 1913, in addition to its regular appropriation, it voted an extra $50,000 for a "welfare promotion fund."

The president of the Fuji Cotton Spinning Company was given in 1913 a retiring grant of $50,000, inasmuch as the great success of this company had been due to his skill and energy. He however presented the entire amount to the "employers' relief fund, and it was decided to make this gift the nucleus of a permanent endowment fund."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY]

There is a silk factory in Ayabe, the Gunze Seishi Kwaisha, whose record is the most wonderful of all. It is managed by a Christian, who runs it entirely with a view to the benefit of the workers and the district. No girls of that district go elsewhere for work. Once enrolled as members of the working force they are regularly instructed, both in general education and in their particular duties; they earn good wages, keep good health, receive Christian instruction, have their regular rest days, remain the full number of years, help support the family and earn enough besides to set themselves up in married life, and are now beginning to send their daughters to the same factory. This Christian factory is Christianizing the district. The rising moral and religious life is transforming even the agricultural and other interests of the region. So high is the grade of silk thread produced, and so uniform and reliable is the quality, that it alone of all the factories in j.a.pan is able to export its product direct to the purchasing firm in the United States, which buys the entire output at an annual cost of about $500,000, and without intermediate inspection at Yokohama. Here we have a splendid ill.u.s.tration of the way in which Christian character is solving the problem arising from the low moral and economic ideals of the ma.s.ses of j.a.pan's working cla.s.ses. As a rule the modern industrial worker does not put moral character into his work; and a wide complaint of Occidental importers of j.a.panese products is that goods are not made according to contract or sample. This is one of the greatest obstacles to the continuous prosperity of any j.a.panese industry; for as soon as a large demand has arisen in foreign lands for any given article, its quality, as a rule, has rapidly deteriorated. It is this unreliability of j.a.panese workmen that makes so difficult direct exportation to foreign lands without the supervision of Occidental middlemen. The Christian Gunze Seishi Kwaisha is one of the splendid exceptions which shows what j.a.panese workmen and manufacturers can do, when controlled by high ideals and motives.

Unfortunately however not all factories and their managers have the same spirit, aim, or skill. Many factories are the exact opposite in every respect to those owned by the Kanegafuchi and Gunze Seishi companies. My personal attention was first called to the heartrending condition of servitude imposed on vast numbers of girls by reading, a score of years ago, of a fire in the dormitory of an Osaka factory. The dormitory was in a closed compound, whose doors and gates were carefully locked to keep the girls from running away. The result was the death, if I remember correctly, of every inmate, of whom there were several score.

My personal knowledge in regard to the conditions of life and work of factory operatives was secured in Matsuyama, Shikoku, a small inland city of some forty thousand inhabitants, having but a single cotton thread spinning factory. It had no dormitories of its own, but sent its operatives to certain specified boarding-houses in the town.

Through a Mr. Omoto, who was at that time working in the factory, and whose life story is given in the final chapter, I became intimately acquainted with the conditions prevailing in Matsuyama. In 1901, when Mr. Omoto began to work in the factory, he was amazed to see how many were the children taking their turns in work along with the older girls by day and by night. Large numbers ranged from seven to twelve years old, the majority, however, being from fifteen to twenty. They worked in two shifts of twelve hours each, but as they were required to clean up daily they did not get out till six-thirty or seven, morning and night. The only holidays for these poor little workers came two or three times a month, when the shifts changed; but even then there was special cleaning, and the girls who had worked all night were kept till nine and even ten in the morning. He was also deeply impressed with their wretched condition and immoral life. The majority of them could neither read nor write; their popular songs were indecent, and they were crowded together in disease-spreading and vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they were deliberately tempted. Some of the landlords were also brothel keepers.

Mr. Omoto, having opportunity as official "visitor" to become accurately acquainted with their life, told me in detail the conditions which have been briefly summarized above. The boarding-houses were only for girls from out of town. They had to be "recognized" by the factory, and the girls had to live in the houses to which they were a.s.signed. Of course the purpose of these houses was to make money. The financial, hygienic, intellectual, and moral interests of the girls were wholly ignored. They were crowded into ill-ventilated, sunless rooms, the two shifts occupying the same rooms alternately. Personal extravagance was purposely stimulated, for girls in debt to the keepers were compelled to stay to work off their debts. Drinking and immoral carousings were their only recreation. As might be expected, sickness was common and epidemics frequent. Many girls returned to their homes after a few months in the "city" ruined not only in health but in character,--premature mothers of illegitimate children.

The conditions of the factory girls in Matsuyama were not unique. Miss J. M. Holland, a Church of England missionary in Osaka, recently told me some of her observations and experiences. She has devoted the larger part of her time for fifteen years to work among factory girls, and on the whole can report improvement. When she began her visits to the factories, the conditions were often appalling. It was not uncommon for girls working on the night shift to be kept, on one pretext or another, till noon the next day, making eighteen hours of work. The conditions of work and life were such that the girls frequently ran away, to prevent which the dormitories were virtually prisons within the factory compounds. The girls were not allowed to go out on the streets, were given no opportunity for recreation, and of course no education. They were underfed, overworked, and punished in various ways by their overseers, cuffed and sometimes whipped, for disobedience or blunders.

The daily papers of those days had frequent items reporting oppression and ill treatment; to be deprived of wages as punishment was a common experience; police occasionally discovered girls working in cellars and vaults as punishment for misdeeds; girls sometimes escaped in their night clothes, and on a few occasions the girls rebelled and did personal violence to the overseers.

But, as already stated, the general conditions are now much better, for it was gradually found that such ill-treated labor was not profitable.

"Most of the superintendents in Osaka are now splendid men, who on the whole take good care of the girls and wish to treat them honorably." The crying evils of the past have been largely done away. Rest, recreation, education, wages, and health are receiving careful consideration at all the leading factories. Still, no true parent would send a daughter to work in such a place, unless under the stress of dire poverty. There are still many small children under ten years of age, whose parents make false statements in regard to their ages. The work is from six in the morning to six in the evening. This means rising at four-thirty every morning for work on the day shift. Some factories have abolished the night shift. Fifteen minutes are allowed for rest in the middle of the forenoon, thirty minutes for lunch, and fifteen minutes again in the afternoon, giving thus eleven hours of steady work per day and the same per night. On pay days the girls, after standing eleven hours, have to stand in file from one to three hours more, according to their luck, and Miss Holland says that such long hours of standing result in serious organic difficulties. One half of the girls fail to work out their three years' contract, returning to their homes before time for marriage, seriously injured, if not completely ruined, physically. So long as this system continues, she adds, skilled labor is impossible. While some factories take great care that girls are carefully guarded from evil, others exercise no control whatever over their goings and doings. One factory she named as allowing its girls to be out on the streets till two o'clock in the morning. It insists on only two and a half hours of sleep! The difficulties connected with private boarding-houses for factory girls have proved so great that most of them have been closed.

One of the tragic aspects of factory life in j.a.pan is the large number of what would seem to us avoidable accidents, due to the fact that the girls know nothing whatever about machinery. Large factories accordingly keep surgeons on hand to care for the wounded. Miss Holland says that in one Osaka factory where there are a thousand operatives, the kind-hearted surgeon told her they had an average of fifty accidents daily which needed his attention. The little children especially suffer, often losing fingers. Not long since five fingers were clipped off in a single day! Miss Holland added that, improved though the conditions are, factory life for children is a "murder of the innocents." As a rule the food provided in factory dormitories is still inadequate. When asked whether corporal punishment is still inflicted, she expressed a doubt, having heard of none for a long time.

In her conversation Miss Holland expressly limited her report to the factories she knows in Osaka. The question arises whether the conditions there may not be peculiar. May not factory conditions in Yokohama and Tokyo, where government inspection and control would theoretically be most complete, be better than elsewhere? The facts do not seem to justify such a surmise. The Kanegafuchi Company and some others have good factories everywhere, but there would seem also to be bad ones everywhere.

A j.a.panese book on _Industrial Education_ has recently been published by a Mr. R. Uno, who, for fifteen years, has been a devoted student of j.a.pan's industrial problems. A summary of the statistics there given appeared in May, 1914, in the _Tokyo Advertiser_, from which I cull the following facts and figures.

In the cotton thread and spinning factories of j.a.pan, there are 81 girls to 19 men. Out of 1,000 girls, 386 are over 20 years of age, 317 are from 17 to 20, 191 are from 15 to 16, 73 are from 12 to 14, while 7 girls out of a thousand are under 12 years of age. The vast majority of factory girls live in the factory dormitories, which are of enormous size. In the region of Osaka there are more than 30,000 girls working in 30 factories; in these same factories there are less than 7,000 men.

Three of these factories employ over 3,000 girls each, while three more employ 2,000 and upward. These girls are herded together in enormous dormitories, disastrous both to health and morals. Statistics covering a number of years show that out of every 1,000 girls, 270 work less than six months at the same place; 200 less than one year, 179 less than two years; 121 less than three years; 141 less than five years, and only 89 pa.s.s the five-year period. The usual reason for this extraordinary fluctuation of workers is that the girls break down in health.

Government statistics declare that out of every 100 girls to enter upon factory work 23 die within one year of their return to their homes, and of these 50 per cent. die of tuberculosis. But it is also a.s.serted that 60 per cent. of the girls who leave home for factory work never return.

Of the criminal girls arrested in Osaka for a certain period, 49 per cent. had been factory hands. As to the education of factory girls it is stated that, out of 1,000, the number that had completed the required number of years of schooling (six) was 450, while 385 were entirely without education. Out of 1,000 girls, 453 were orphans. Of 1,000 girls, 611 came from farmers' homes, 166 from those of fishermen, and 55 from merchant homes, the remaining 168 being scattering. Factory girls earn and can save more than almost any other cla.s.s. The average earnings per month are stated to be $4.67. The girl pays $1.20 per month for food, which is less than the actual cost, the factory providing the balance, namely, $1.30. The average girl sends home fifty cents per month. Three out of ten girls spend the balance entirely on clothes, five out of ten on cakes and theaters, while two out of ten save it. Such are some of the statements made by Mr. Uno in his enlightening book.