Japanese Girls and Women
by Alice Mabel Bacon, Keishu Takenouchi, KEISHU TAKEUCHI, Alice M.
Bacon
Hardcover: 348 pages
Publisher: Kegan Paul; Rev&Enlrg edition (November 15, 2000)
ISBN: 0710306911
Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
because it was SUPER cheap on Amazon....now here is the interesting
part...my copy isn't from 2000....the seller didn't tell me that I
would be getting a book from 1902 !!!!
Alice Mabel Bacon info can be found here, she was the daughter of
Minister Leonard Bacon and she had the opportunity to live in Japan
on 2 occasions due to her "sister" Yamakawa Sutematsu (Oyama
Sutematsu)
http://www.shinsengumihq.com/saitouhajime.htm
The book was dedicated to
"Stematz, the Marchioness Oyama
In the name of our girlhood's friendship
unchanged and unshaken by the changes
and separations of our
maturer years
this volume is affectionately dedicated"
Stematz was the name used by Sutematsu in the USA and Oyama is her
last name after marrying Oyama Iwao....
Bacon page 172
"Two ladies of the finest samurai type had, with absolute loyalty to
a lost cause, aided by every means in their power in the defense of
the city of Wakamatsu against the victorious forces of the Emperor.
They had held on to the bitter end, and had been banished, with other
family and clan, to a remote province, for some years after the end
of the war. In 1877, eleven years after the close of the war of the
restoration, a rebellion broke out in the south which required a
considerable expenditure of blood and money for its suppression.
When the new war began, these two ladies presented a petition to the
government, in which they begged that they might be allowed to make
amends for their former position of opposition to the Emperor, by
going with the army to the field as hospital nurses. At that time,
no lady in Japan had ever gone to the front to nurse the wounded
soldiers; but to those two brave women was granted the privilege of
making atonement for past disloyalty, by the exercise of the skill
and nerve that they had gained in their experience of war against the
Emperor, in the nursing of soldiers wounded in his defense."
*perhaps these two Aizu women had husbands or brothers who like many
former Aizu samurai joined the police force and the army during the
outbreak of the Seinan War (SAtsuma Rebellion)
She also writes about the warrior training of samurai women, and
ofcourse the information was from her Aizu friends. Thus the book is
not merely a general snapshot of women in Meiji Era Japan, but women
during the end of feudalism and provides valuable insight into the
lives of those who lived in Aizu. There is even a painting of a
woman using a chain and sickle against another woman wielding a
naginata.