HISTORY GONE WRONG? 419prosperity and greatness, gave women much more influence than a
simplistic view of etiquette would lead one to think.
In the face, then, of conventional constraints on female behavior
and rules for male precedence, the larger interest came first.
Whatever the traditional discriminations, the educational authorities
under Meiji (1870s on) mandated universal elementary schooling:
four, later six, years for girls—enough to ensure literacy and more.
Why the girls? Because the aim was modernization and equality with
the West. This entailed a generalized ability to read, write, and
reckon, and to help children with their lessons. Industrial
development would see fathers working outside the home and farm;
government and military service would also draw men away. Mothers
had to fill the gap. At first, many poor families rebelled against this
loss of children's earnings; school and school supplies did not come
free. Some rebels went so far as to burn schools down. But the
sacralization of the home as enterprise, as building block of national
wealth and achievement, converted even the laggards. In 1890, only
30 percent of eligible girls attended school; twenty years later, the
figure was 97.4 percent.^41
At the same time, women's actiivities changed to fit the needs of a
new economy. More and more of them found jobs outside the
home, primarily in light industry (textiles, etc.), where the workforce
was 60-90 percent female. These branches produced 40 percent of
the GNP and 60 percent of foreign exchange at the end of the
nineteenth century.^42 How were women wageearners going to rear
and teach children? Answer: By leaving work upon marriage and
focusing on household and family—unless of course they needed the
earnings (a big "unless"). Priorities were the key: country and
household first; gender next. As a result, the role of a woman was
never simply reproductive. She was more than a vessel. She was a
toiler, a consumer, a saver, a manager. And she always, both by right
and by necessity, had access to public space. (The contrast here with
Arab Muslim societies is striking and crucial.)
What Japanese women did not have was political rights. They
neither voted nor governed, and Japanese men made a point of the
justice of exclusion. Politics, to say nothing of military matters, were
male by right and calling. (On the other hand, the Japanese military
cheerfully accepted women nurses, because they released men for
destructive activities.) Not until after World War II did Japanese
women get the vote—no different in that respect from French
women and quicker than the Swiss. Even so, they play litde part in