Episode 543 – A Day in the Life of Meiji Japan, Part 1

Facing Backward Podcasts

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History Footnotes: what was it like to live in the Meiji Era? Join us on a journey through a day in 1900, as we discuss breakfast foods, education, and factory jobs in the “new Japan.”

Sources

Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan.

Hane, Mikiso. Peasants, Rebels, Women, Outcasts: The Underside of Modern Japan

Hunter, Janet. “Japanese Women at Work, 1880-1920”, History Today 43, No 5 (1993)

An overview of the history of education in Japan provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. It tries to put a better spin on the Meiji system than I did, but in broad strokes it’s a decent overview.

Kayashima, Nobuko. “Chapter 5: Educational Development in Modernization in Japan.” Seven Chapters on Japanese Modernization, JICA-Open University of Japan.

Images

The former Kaichi Elementary School, set up in Meiji fashion.

A print of the “ideal classroom” from some Meiji era teacher training manuals.

A print of the Imperial Rescript on Education from 1890. Copies of this text would have been omnipresent in the Meiji Education system.

An external view of the Tomioka silk mill.

Women working in the Tomioka silk mill.