Working Women of Japan Part 3

In the September, 1910, number of the _Shin Koron_, a monthly magazine published in Tokyo, is an article by Professor Kuwada (of the Tokyo Imperial University) ent.i.tled "The Pitiful Environment of Factory Girls." He gives a detailed statement of the conditions of factory workers, in which he estimates the number of female laborers in factories containing ten or more hands at 700,000, of whom ten per cent.

are under fourteen years of age. In tobacco factories ten per cent., in match factories twenty per cent, and in gla.s.s factories thirty per cent.

of the girls are under ten years of age. He vigorously condemns the situation as threatening the future of the working cla.s.s, whose prospective mothers are thus being destroyed. The efforts of the government during recent years to enact factory laws have been successfully thwarted thus far, says Professor Kuwada, by shortsighted, selfish capitalists. The girls are brought in from their country homes by false promises. They are told of the beautiful sights to be seen, theaters to be visited, the regular Sunday rest, and even of the splendid care and education they will receive from the factory. There is also stealing of expert workers from one factory by the artful stratagems of another. There are factories which resort to devices for defrauding helpless operatives. In one town where there are many factories, it is customary to work overtime by setting back the hands of the clock. To conceal this from the operatives, no factory blows its whistles! Some factories do not give time for the girls to rest even while they eat, but require them to work with the right hand while they eat with the left. Night work in which both male and female operatives are engaged together is most demoralizing. Punishment of various kinds is administered. In addition to fines, in some places the girls are imprisoned in dark rooms, rations are reduced, their arms are bound and the lash applied freely, and in extreme cases they are stripped to the waist and marched through the factory among young men and girls, bearing a red flag tied to the back! Superintendents are invariably men.

So appalling was the statement made by Professor Kuwada that I could scarcely believe him in all the details, particularly in regard to the use of the lash and the stripping to the waist. I accordingly wrote both to him and to Professor Abe of Waseda University, who has made special study of the social problems and conditions of industry.

Professor Kuwada, I learned, has been a careful student of social and industrial conditions for nearly twenty years, and is one of the leaders in the Society for the Study of Social Politics, composed of one hundred and fifty university professors and high government officials. This society was organized to aid the government in its efforts to secure social and industrial reforms. In reply to my inquiries Professor Kuwada says that most of the facts given concerning silk factories he has himself observed. Those concerning cotton spinning factories he has derived from reliable sources, chiefly from the officers of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, who are especially engaged in making investigations in regard to industrial conditions. Much of the testimony rests on the statements of the girls themselves. Some of the facts come from local police and some from the published reports of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce. "The article in the _Shin Koron_ may therefore be regarded as semi-official," says Professor Abe.

Since the appearance of the article referred to above, no reply has been made to it by factory owners or managers. As to the stripping of a girl to the waist and marching her through the factory filled with operatives, male and female, Professor Kuwada was told this by the girl herself. Under such circ.u.mstances, it is difficult to doubt the testimony. Nor is it probable that the cases cited are absolutely unique, although I think it highly probable that such extreme indignities and punishments are rare,--they are so out of keeping with the whole trend of j.a.panese civilization and culture. Mrs. Binford, a missionary in Mito, a.s.sures me, however, that altering the hands of the clock is a practise known to her. Testimony is widespread that girls are secured for factories by all kinds of false statements.

In view of the frightful conditions of industrial labor thus indicated by Mr. Uno and Professor Kuwada, it is amazing that the Diet has refused on several successive occasions to enact suitable laws. The government began to realize in 1898 the need for legislation on these matters. A bill which was drafted and presented in 1902 was rejected, as were also three subsequent bills. The chief feature of the bill presented during the winter of 1910-11 was the provision that no factory may employ girls under twelve, and that girls of any age and youth under sixteen may not be kept at work for more than twelve hours per day, nor be made to do night work without "special reason." While some provisions of this bill were enacted and others amended, those considered most important by social reformers and by the government were virtually rejected. The bill was indeed pa.s.sed, but with the added provision that the important clauses, relative to ages and night work, be inoperative for a period of fifteen years (!) in order to give time to the factories involved to adjust themselves to the new conditions. Since that time no further factory legislation has been enacted. Is it not astounding that in a land on the whole so progressive as j.a.pan the difficulty of securing reform should be found in the Diet? The administration at this point is ahead of the representatives of the people, as it is indeed in many other respects. The fact is, as Professor Kuwada points out, that the "representatives" in both the lower and upper houses represent the financial interests of capitalists, rather than the human interests of the ma.s.ses.

But the reader, in his indignation over the situation of factory workers in j.a.pan, should remember that j.a.pan is no exceptional sinner among the nations. Christian England and America have had conditions equally bad, and possibly worse. Dr. Washington Gladden, in his article on "The Reason for the Unions," in the New York _Outlook_ for March, 1911, makes the following statements in regard to the condition of labor in England in the early part of the nineteenth century. Men and women stood daily at their tasks, from twelve to fourteen and fifteen hours; a working day of sixteen hours was not an unheard-of thing. Government reports of this period show that children of five and six years of age were frequently employed in factories. "Nor was this unmeasured abuse of child labor confined to the cotton, silk, and wool industries.... The report of 1842 is crammed with statements as to the fearful overwork of girls and boys in iron and coal mines, which doubtless had been going on from the end of the eighteenth century;... Children could get about where horses and mules could not. Little girls were forced to carry heavy buckets of coal up high ladders, and little girls and boys instead of animals dragged the coal bunkers. Women were constantly employed underground at the filthiest tasks. Through all this period the wages gravitated downward and family income was steadily lowered, while the cost of food increased. The homes of the workers were ruined. In a certain congested district there lived 26,830 persons in 5,366 families, three fourths of which possessed but one room each. The rooms were without furniture, without everything; two married couples often shared the same room. In some cases there was not even a heap of straw on which to sleep. In one cellar the pastor found two families and a donkey; two of the children had died and the third was dying." And these conditions existed, not in days of industrial depression, but in flush times; business was booming and wealth acc.u.mulating in the hands of factory owners and employers.

Many of the conditions of industrial workers even in the United States to-day are heartrending in the extreme. Who could read of the strike of the shirt-waist makers of New York in the winter of 1909-10 without deep indignation over the conditions under which those brave girls worked, and against which they rebelled? The National Committee on Child Labor reported in the spring of 1911 that there were over 60,000 children in the factories of the United States, mostly in the South. Before condemning j.a.pan unduly, Occidentals should remember that their own record is none too bright.

If comparison is to be made however between j.a.pan and the West, it may be made along other lines. The West fell into its industrial difficulties with no example from which to learn. But this is not true of j.a.pan. She can easily learn the lesson of a century of Western experience; but she seems slow to do it. Then again in j.a.pan it is the government that is feebly leading, and the official popular representatives who are both blind and resisting, whereas in the West the great movements for industrial reform are movements of the people themselves, backed up and oftentimes led by enlightened humanitarian and Christian popular opinion. In the West, the churches are fairly in line with forward social movements, whereas in j.a.pan, Shintoism, Confucianism, and even Buddhism are apparently wholly indifferent to the economic and even ethical condition of the nation's toilers.

Furthermore, we are seeing to-day in j.a.pan the strange phenomenon of one section of the government seeking to ameliorate social and economic conditions, and at the same time another, seemingly mortally afraid of allowing the people either to discuss these matters or to attempt reform movements themselves. Labor unions are strictly forbidden, and any person advocating socialism is under strict police surveillance. Strikes are illegal and their promoters are liable to criminal punishment.

Anomalous as it may be, the government seems to be seeking to destroy that enlightened popular opinion on which it must rely for the efficient enforcement of its own plans for social betterment of the working cla.s.ses.

I have dwelt at considerable length on the conditions of factory workers, for later on I shall describe a sociological experiment among this cla.s.s.

CHAPTER X

GEISHA (HETaeRae)

The word _geisha_ means an "accomplished person." A geisha is invariably a young woman who has had years of training fitting her to provide social entertainment for men. The _gei_ acquired are skill in playing the samisen (a three-stringed guitar), singing catching ditties, taking part in conversation and repartee, and in "dancing," which is to the Western mind rather a highly conventional posturing, with deft manipulations of the inevitable fan. Years of exacting and diligent work are required for proficiency in these "gei,"--the Geisha School in Kyoto provides a course of six or seven years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: O HAMAYU (GEISHA) Most celebrated in Tokyo]

According to the j.a.panese ideal, geisha singing must be shrill, and to secure this quality the voice is purposely strained till it is "cracked." Girls eight to ten years old are sometimes given their "singing lessons" in the frosty air of winter mornings before sunrise, or late at night, in order that they may take cold in the throat and then, by persistent, vigorous use, the voice is "broken" for life.

Training in dancing and samisen playing is also prolonged and severe, for no pains are spared in efforts to excel. These efforts however are due, not to the will or desire of the _maiko_, the poor little girl who is being trained, but to the persistence of her owner.

Only daughters of the very poor are secured for this outwardly beautiful and attractive, but inwardly repulsive, soul-destroying life.

Practically speaking, geisha are the property of the old women who support and educate them through the years of their childhood, and who rent them out by the hour for the entertainment of men at social functions. Such functions would, indeed, be inane without geisha to serve the meals in their dainty ways, to fill the sake[5] cups for guests, to share in conversation by adding the spice, to provoke laughter, themselves laughing loudly and often, and at the proper time, to present their music, their singing, and their dancing. Dressed in faultless style, in richest silks and brilliant colors, geisha are moving pictures which have charmed generations of j.a.panese men and, in recent decades, many foreigners. j.a.panese political party dinners and consultations are often held in restaurants, where geisha make the fun and pour the wine. If foreign guests are to be entertained by wealthy individuals, by companies, or even by cities, the inevitable geisha is there, and is presented as a characteristic product of j.a.pan--which she truly is. But while there is about her a certain charm of manner and dress, to one who watches her face, looking for traces of a soul, the story is all too plain--behind the harsh laugh and stoical face it is impossible not to recognize that there is an empty and often a bleeding heart.

[5] Sake (p.r.o.nounced sah'-ke) is the fermented liquor of j.a.pan, made from rice.

The lives of these girls are pitiful in the extreme. Chosen from among the families of the poor on the basis of their prospective good looks and ability to learn, they leave their homes at an early age and are subjected to the severe drill already outlined. They go through their lessons with rigid, mechanical accuracy. In public they appear in gorgeous robes, their faces painted and powdered, artificiality dominating everything about them,--clothing, manners, and smiles. As a rule nothing is done to develop their minds, and of course the cultivation of personal character is not even thought of. They are instructed in flippant conversation and pungent retort, that they may converse interestingly with the men, for whose entertainment they are alone designed. The songs learned, some of the dances performed, and the conversational repertoire acquired are commonly reported to be highly licentious, but these are the gei that best please the men, to whom they are open for private engagements from the time they are eighteen years of age. If, however, a geisha is exceptionally beautiful, her owner does not allow her to enter on such duties, for experience has shown that her beauty is soon lost in this way, and with it her highest earning capacity.

Many geisha undoubtedly develop considerable personal ability. The severe drill undergone could hardly fail to call forth their powers of mind, and intimate a.s.sociation with educated and quasi-cultured men serves further to stimulate their mental faculties. In native ability too they are not lacking, though drawn from the lowest cla.s.ses of society, for, as will soon be more fully explained, they sometimes possess strains of high lineage. The national custom, which represses the normal intellectual development and social instincts of cultured, respectable women, is removed from this one cla.s.s, which is favored by many circ.u.mstances. They are not subjected to the debauching excesses usual with the ordinary prost.i.tute, nor to humiliating medical inspection. They are not conscious of popular disapproval, but on the contrary are the beauties of the town, their photographs for sale on every street. Indeed one well-informed gentleman told me that probably ten per cent. of the geisha enter the calling by their own choice. No wonder that from time to time the tale is told of some j.a.panese man of social position falling under the spell of an accomplished geisha, whom he prefers to any of the silent, pa.s.sive, timid, incompetent girls selected for him, who in all probability have never talked with any man except immediate relatives or tradesmen. The national custom which predetermines the social incompetence of the majority of cultured women compensates for the loss by providing this geisha cla.s.s. Not until j.a.panese ladies can hold their own in social life will the vocation of the geisha be ended.

Among the surprises one meets in studying the geisha question is the fact that not a few of the girls have features which indicate distinguished ancestry. My explanation for this fact is the further fact that for ages the standards of moral life in j.a.pan have allowed large freedom of s.e.xual relations. The result is that in the lowest cla.s.ses, from which geisha are recruited, there run strains of gentle blood. It thus comes to pa.s.s that now in the midst of coa.r.s.e surroundings and in deep poverty there are born of parents manifestly belonging to the lowest cla.s.s, children of exceptional beauty, fitted, so far as individual appearance indicates, to belong to the highest ranks of society. Whether or not this suggested explanation is correct as a matter of historic fact I am not able to say, but I offer it as the most plausible that has occurred to me.

Parents in this cla.s.s of society much prefer daughters to sons, for they are likely to become valuable sources of income. At eight or nine, those destined for the "accomplished" calling are put into the care of some experienced geisha and a mutual contract is given for a specific period (five or six years), during which the child is termed a _maiko_ (dancing girl). As a rule the parents receive a small sum at the beginning of this first period. The owner undertakes to support and train the girl, and expects to profit by her earnings. By the time the girl is fifteen or sixteen she has finished her apprenticeship, when, if she has exceptional graces and charms likely to win her a place in the highest social gatherings, she will secure quite a competency (many hundreds of yen, and in some cases even a few thousand) for the keeper and parents. On the expiration of the first contract a new one is made, and so on, until the girl has pa.s.sed her prime and is no longer sought for entertainments. If in the interval she has not become the concubine of some rich man, she then either returns to her poor home or, what is more usual, becomes a servant in a hotel or tea-house. If her ability is exceptional, she may set up as geisha keeper, train other maiko, employ younger geisha, and so make her living.

The great ambition of a geisha is to "catch" some wealthy man of rank with her charms and become his concubine. My informant estimates that this is what happens to perhaps one half of the geisha. In such cases the man pays down a handsome sum to the owner, who sends part of it to the parents. Thus he buys his concubine, whom he usually keeps in a villa, not his home. I have asked if geisha ever become true, legal wives and am told "only very rarely." But, if they do, are they cordially received by the man's kindred? "Oh, no! that is not possible,"

is the repeated answer. The effects of her training can never be obliterated, and the new relatives cannot forget the despicable cla.s.s from which she comes, and the calling by which she has gained her husband. She may become indeed refined and altogether correct in manner, but the taint of her origin as a rule adheres to her. Then too the years of immoral life before she won her husband make it a rare thing for a geisha to have children, and childless wives in j.a.pan are not at a premium, for the prime purpose of marriage is the maintenance of the family line.

Foreigners commonly say that geisha are not prost.i.tutes. It is true they are not licensed, that is to say, professional, prost.i.tutes in the eye of the law, nor are they procurable, as are regular prost.i.tutes, by the average man, for the expense is too great. But the chief of police already referred to, and many j.a.panese of whom I have inquired, insist that a large proportion of geisha are corrupt--two geisha keepers have estimated the proportion as high as ninety per cent. Geisha who decline engagements leading to immorality are rare indeed, and for that very reason are unpopular.

But better than generalized statements is the story of an actual life.

There lives to-day in Hyogo a paralytic whose influence through her words, newspaper articles, and books is widely felt throughout central j.a.pan. She is one of the few girls who, though trained as a geisha, refused to follow the calling. The story of her life is worthy of more than pa.s.sing mention.

Her father died in her infancy, and shortly after the death of her mother, who had married, her stepfather likewise married again. These stepparents, deciding to have her become a geisha, expended much time and money on her training.

When she was prepared at sixteen years of age, she was entrusted to a woman whose business it was to find employment for geisha in hotels and tea-houses. This woman took her to a house in Osaka, where there were already many geisha and regular prost.i.tutes. Learning the nature of the duties expected of her, she positively refused to comply. In spite of the fact that it was twenty miles to her home and that there were but two sen in her pocket, she escaped from the hotel, spent one sen on bridge toll, one sen on a lunch, and succeeded in walking all that distance alone, reaching home after midnight, the home from which she had been sent out with hopes that she should win for her stepparents an ample support. The reception accorded her can be fancied. She held firmly however to her resolve, preferring poverty and hard toil to luxury and fine clothing along with that service on which these were conditioned. Work was found for her in a factory, then as a family servant, and finally at a small tea-house, where during the winter she was especially exposed to the cold. An attack of rheumatism developed into paralysis. With no hope of recovery she longed for death, for her stepparents, considering the case hopeless, neglected to care for her properly, although she was so helpless. She could not feed herself, nor even crawl to the well in which she wished to drown herself,--the final resource of many a despairing j.a.panese woman. But, by a strange series of circ.u.mstances, or should we not say by a merciful Providence? a Christian man discovered and befriended her, told the story of Jesus, and revealed the Savior. Her faith soon became so strong and her words proved so thoughtful and helpful to those Christian friends who came to see her, that her influence began to spread. She found she could manage to write with her crippled hand, and as what she wrote was like her spoken words, simple and strong, it soon found its way into print. She was finally led to write the story of her life, and this book, with other articles written by her, has afforded a small income, which with additional help from friends has secured a comfortable home for herself and the family of which she is now the center. Her name is Zako Aiko, and she lives in Hyogo.

A few geisha, coming under Christian influences, have been converted, and so far as I know, such persons leave the calling altogether, as incompatible with Christian principles. But condemnation of the whole geisha system is not confined to Christians. Many j.a.panese, entirely outside our Christian circles, regard it as a disgrace to the country, and wish the whole business, along with licensed prost.i.tution, concealed from public view. For instance, a man of high official rank, president of a large inst.i.tution, tells me he regrets that there is no first-cla.s.s j.a.panese hotel in Kyoto at which he may entertain foreign guests in j.a.panese style, except where geisha serve the meals. Rather than countenance the geisha system, he prefers to take his guests to a hotel where the service is not so perfect but where the women employed are above suspicion. He deplored the fact one day that all foreigners coming to Kyoto in the spring visit the _Miyako odori_, commonly known in English as the "Cherry Dance." I myself have seen this performance more than once, and found nothing objectionable in either the so-called dancing, its setting, or its accompaniments. It nevertheless affords opportunity for the display of something like eighty or ninety geisha, and helps to maintain the business and the system. As indicating the status of geisha in the best j.a.panese society, it is significant that all geisha are rigidly excluded from every entertainment where any member of the Imperial household is present.

It is often said by foreigners that geisha and prost.i.tutes not infrequently make happy matches, and by legal marriage escape from their unhappy lives of shame. This is one of those pretty fables one would like to believe, but the facts do not seem to support the theory. There are, no doubt, rare instances where such has been the case. I have known two women who had been geisha and who married men of some position. In one case the man was a physician. When I knew the family the ex-geisha had been in the home a number of years and was a lovely, modest, capable woman, a regular member of my wife's cooking cla.s.s. But it was noticeable that she always took a "back seat" among the ladies; she was tolerated by them and treated not unkindly, but it was clear that they looked down on her. The man's kindred never favored the match, and would not let him marry the woman legally, so she lived in his house, took excellent care of his first wife's children, and was to them all that a stepmother could be, yet, so far as I know, she has never gained her full position in the home of her husband nor among his relatives.

The other case I knew but slightly, as she died but a few weeks after I made her acquaintance, but she must have been a woman of exceptional character. She was a Christian and highly respected in the church.

Such cases, however, are rare. A geisha may be in high favor during the decade or more when at the height of her physical charms, though even then her inner life is empty and loveless; but when no longer attractive she is cast aside as a faded flower, to spend the rest of her life forlorn, unloved, and uncared for. Truly, the way of the geisha is hard!

Geisha naru mi to; Michi tobu tori wa Doko no idzuko de Hateru yara,

is a popular ditty regarding the final disappearance of geisha from sight. It may be roughly translated: "What becomes of geisha, do you ask? I ask in turn, where end their lives the birds that fly along the road?"

In regard to the number of geisha, Mr. Murphy's statistics show that from 1887 to 1897 they increased throughout j.a.pan from 10,326 to 26,536, and since then the increase has been relatively small, the number being now in the vicinity of 30,000.

So far as is known to me, no regular Christian or philanthropic work is done for this cla.s.s.

CHAPTER XI

_SHOGI_ (LICENSED PROSt.i.tUTES)

It may seem strange to cla.s.s prost.i.tutes among working women, but the facts require such cla.s.sification, for, not only so far as the parents and brothel keepers are concerned, but also so far as the girls themselves are concerned, it is entirely a matter of money. If the business did not pay splendidly, the keepers would not erect their handsome buildings, pay the heavy license fees, nor buy the girls from the parents at considerable cost. And on the other hand, if the parents did not receive what they regard as large sums for their daughters, the latter would not be sold to such lives of shame and disease. And so far as the poor victims are concerned, there is abundant evidence that they often go into the wretched business solely at the command of their parents, for among the lowest cla.s.s the n.o.ble doctrine of obedience to parents is shamefully perverted to this vile end. Children are taught that obedience is a child's first duty, regardless of the question whether the thing required by parents is right or wrong. The girl goes to the brothel in obedience to her parents, who send her there to earn a living for herself and to help them out of special financial difficulties. Thus from first to last, so far as the girls, the parents, and the keepers are concerned, the question is economic.

Among the working women of j.a.pan prost.i.tutes surely are the most pitiful of all. They give the most and get the least. They receive no training, like the geisha; have no liberty; to prevent their running away, are imprisoned in brothels, or if diseased or ill, in hospitals; and have no friends except possibly other prost.i.tutes. Most of them soon loathe the business, but are helpless, hopeless prisoners,--for the keepers who paid their parents a few score or hundreds of yen and loaded them with beautiful clothes, charge all these items to their account, so that they are under a heavy debt which must be paid before they can leave. This debt the laws of the land theoretically ignore but practically recognize, for the "keeper" keeps the books as well as the brothel, and the police and officials are often on his side. In this way licentiously inclined officials, merchants, and travelers provide for the easy, economical, and legal satisfaction of their desires.

I do not propose here to give a detailed account of this distressful and disgusting "business." Those who desire more information should procure _The Social Evil in j.a.pan_, by the Rev. U. G. Murphy. Some years ago Mr.

Murphy, by grit and pluck, carried certain test cases through the courts and secured legal opportunity for girls to quit the business if they wished. The Salvation Army and some of the daily papers took pains to let the brothel girls know their legal rights, and in a short period over twelve thousand, at that time over one third of the whole number, left the brothels, so that for a while the business was prostrated in many quarters. This single fact shows the spirit and att.i.tude of a large number of the girls. Since then the wily keepers and all interested in maintaining this lucrative trade have succeeded in modifying the administration of the regulations, so that the girls are again closely controlled.

There is however a rising public conscience and an abolition movement is gathering strength. The virtual slavery of the girls; the fact that they are openly bought and sold, and that, too, under governmental supervision and sanction; the cruelty inflicted on many girls by their keepers; the fraud practised in connection with their accounts, whereby a girl is kept hopelessly in debt, so that, however faithful she may be, release is impossible, and indeed the more faithful the more profitable she is to her keeper--all these facts are becoming widely known and are beginning to arouse public indignation. The government is openly charged with protecting slavery, and that of the worst kind. High government officials are being condemned for licentiousness.

As signs of the times, I give a few facts. In the summer of 1909 the wealthiest and most centrally located prost.i.tute quarter in Osaka was completely wiped out by a great fire. Before the flames were fully out, the anti-brothel forces realized their opportunity and under the leadership of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation and Young Women's Christian Union began to agitate for refusal to allow the rebuilding of the business in that region of the city. A pet.i.tion was prepared and signed by one hundred thousand people. Large numbers of Osaka's best citizens allied themselves with the movement. The result was that the authorities in charge saw fit to yield to the pressure and arranged that the new buildings for prost.i.tution should be erected on the outskirts of the city.

In the winter of 1911, the city of Tokyo suffered from a great conflagration which completely destroyed the section of the city known as "Yoshiwara,"[6] which for three hundred years has been a.s.signed to prost.i.tution. This center of the social evil had become enormously wealthy, and such magnificent buildings had been erected for the business that it had become one of the famous sights of Tokyo. Before the fire was fairly over, the anti-brothel forces began to organize their campaign, which continued for months. A magazine called _Purity_ (_Kaku Sei_) was started. In this case, however, success did not crown their efforts.

[6] Foreigners commonly, but mistakenly, suppose that "Yoshiwara"

means "Prost.i.tute Quarter."