British Cultural Influence and Japan: Elizabeth Phillips Hughes's Visit for Educational Research in 1901–1902

Abstract

The ideal of Japanese womanhood was created according to an educational ideology suited to a modern nation state. One regularly used concept was ‘ryōsaikenbo’, a mixed ideology, drawing together idealised images of the British lady and traditional Japanese women. Another imitated concept was Japanese athleticism called new Bushidō influenced by British boys' public school morality during the era of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. However, there was a strong sense of Japanese cultural nationalism that grew in reaction to the threat of foreign enemies and the hardship of two wars, the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–1895, and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905. This created a potential problem. Despite an occidental veneer, those new values were combined with traditional Japanese religion. Elizabeth Phillips Hughes' articles published in Japan during 1901 and 1902 reflect this process of inventing a tradition of both Japanese women's and men's ideal that was originally influenced by the values of the British middle class and the fact that early feminism was trapped within imperialistic ideology. Eventually, girls' physical exercises were recommended as long as they did not damage femininity. Less feminine sports took popular underground paths. Girls' physical exercises flourished after the First World War in Britain and the Second World War in Japan.