Japanese Girls and Women

Japanese Girls and Women by Alice Mabel Bacon was first published in 1891. The book elaborates on the life of Japanese women and girls concerning subjects such as childhood, education, marriage, being a wife and mother, old age, samurai women, peasant women, court life, life in the cities, and domestic service. The author was an American foreign advisor to the Japanese government in mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Japan. After receiving an invitation to serve as a teacher at a school for girls in 1888, Bacon found herself going back again in 1900 to help establish the Joshi Eigaku Juku (Women's English Preparatory School). Having such close ties with Japan and Japanese women, her insights into their lives make a remarkable read.