How to Manage a Household: Creating Middle Class Housewives in Modern Japan

Abstract

During the late 1910s to early 1920s leaders in women's education sought to rationalize and modernize daily life through the promotion of ‘domestic science’. Their writings, aimed at young educated middle class women, focused on ways to reform the running of their households to fit their changing roles as modern women and the changing conditions of Japanese society more generally. They assumed the sexual division of labour, but as reformers, they envisioned that middle class women would play a key role as household managers in the ‘new era’. Following their instructions for efficient, scientific management of clothing, food and housing would ensure young women's social standing as exemplary middle class housewives, to the benefit of themselves personally as well as their families and the nation.