Obaachama

I was anxious to go back to Tokyo this spring break to see my family and friends but unfortunately because of the recent earthquake and tsunami that hit the northern part of Japan and with the devastating problem of the nuclear power plant, my family had to cancel our trip. I was hoping to sit down and talk to my grandma and interview her life and everything she’s been through, but instead I skyped her. I titled this post Obaachama, meaning grandmother in Japanese. 

To be honest, I’m not close with my dad’s side of the family. I used to live in Tokyo whereas my grandma lived in Osaka, a 3 hour train ride away from Tokyo. So I never get to see her that often and in fact, the last time I saw her was about 4 years ago! But thanks to technological advancement, we get to video chat via Skype. 

During this interview, I was actually quite upset because there was so much about my grandma that I never knew about. We never had a conversation about her life and it was so fascinating to hear all the stuff she had done in the past and the challenges she faced living in a male dominated society. 

One of the things I noticed during this interview was when she was describing her mother’s daily life. She recalls her mother cleaning the house, taking care of all her 6 children, and preparing meals for her husband because that was her role; women weren’t allowed to work. She remembers seeing her mother eating leftovers from their husband’s meals because they had to prioritize their husband’s needs before theirs. Her mother was a loving, caring mother who gave up her meals for her 6 children during WWII when resources were scarce. My grandma looks up to her as a role model and respects her for all the sacrifices she had to make in raising all her children and being able to send all of them to a two-year college. 

She sees a great difference between her girlhood and the lives of girls today and she believes it’s changing for the better. Girls today have far more freedom than girls during her time because they are able to have part time jobs and make money for themselves. Girls today live a more independent lifestyle whereas before, most girls had very strict curfews, strict parents, and were restricted on things they wanted to become because they were expected to marry young and have a family of their own. Although she says women’s status has changed for the best, she believes that girls as well as boys today don’t appreciate the things they have because Japan is rich in resources and they can have whatever they want, whenever they want. 

During the interview when asking about the difficulties during her young adulthood, I could really tell that my grandma had a rocky and difficult relationship with her mother-in-law. She was very strict and they both had very different opinions so they didn’t get along very well. She didn’t have anyone to talk to or seek anyone for comfort because all of her 3 sons went off to Tokyo for high school and college. She kept all her frustration inside of her for a very long time and at one point of the interview, she became very emotional because she was telling me how she just wanted to escape and be on her own. But soon after, her father-in-law past away and things began to change because they worked on their relationship and soon enough, they became closer than ever and even lived under the same roof. 

I actually enjoyed interviewing my grandma because we bonded for the first time in a really long time and it made me feel a lot closer to my grandma. This assignment wasn’t something that I felt like I had to do just because it was homework, but it was a way to connect with my grandma. I learned so much about her that I’ve never known and it made me really want to talk to her more.   

Tsuda Umeko

I was watching a documentary about a woman named Umeko Tsuda, a pioneer for women’s higher education in Japan during the Meiji period. She grew up with a father who strongly advocated for westernization and Christianization in Japan. In 1871, she volunteered as the youngest member of the Iwakura Mission (the most important step toward modernization in Japan) to participate in an exchange student program in Washington D.C and studied under the American education system until she was 18. She attended the Georgetown Collegiate Institute to study English, as well as mastering in language, math, science, and music.

By the time she returned to Japan in 1882, she was barely able to speak Japanese and experienced a culture shock when she saw the inferior position of women in society. Even her father, who was relatively westernized, still held onto traditional patriarchal authoritarianism. Having witnessed American women’s liberated position and their independence, Umeko was shocked by their dependence. Although the Meiji government promoted girl’s education, it did not emphasize the development of women’s intelligence and personality, but rather trained women to support their husband and their children.

She began teaching English at Peeresses’ School but she did not agree to the school policy which stated that education was intended to polish girls as ladies and train them to become obedient wives and good mothers. She returned back to the United States to study biology at Bryn Mawr College and although she wanted to remain in the United States to continue her study, she was still concerned about Japanese women’s education. Her experience in the United States strengthened her to contribute to Japanese women’s education and social status.

During her second stay in the United States, she decided that other Japanese women should have the same opportunity she had to study abroad as well. She believed that higher education was crucial in improving women’s status. She spent her last year in the United States making public speeches about Japanese women’s education and raised $8,000 in scholarship funds, named the “American Scholarships for Japanese Women”.

After her return to Japan, she published several theses and made public speeches about the status of Japanese women and continued teaching at Peeresses’ School. Although girl’s education was expanding due to the booming economy after the Sino-Japanese War and the 1889 Girl’s Higher Education Law, these schools were still emphasizing women’s domestic rules. She resigned from the Peeresses’ School and opened Joshi Eigaku Juku (The Women’s Institute for English Studies), and introduced western-style education, and emphasized building students’ personalities and encouraging creativity.

However, the school faced a funding shortfall and Umeko spent her time fundraising and teaching at other schools in order to support herself and the school. After her death in 1929, Joshi Eigaku Juku changed its name to Tsuda Eigaku Juku in 1933 and after the Second World War, it became known as Tsuda Juku, still maintaining as one of the most prestigious women’s institutes of higher education in Japan.

I thought this tied in really well to The Vindication of the Right’s of Women because in the pages that I had to summarize from page 102 to 104, the author kept on talking about how women should follow after what they want to do, not what they’re told to do. In the last paragraph on page 102,

               

                “How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have

                practiced as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect,

                supported by their industry, instead of hanging their heads subcharged with the

                dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it as first gave lustre;”

this relates to what Tsuda Umeko was doing; she followed in her footsteps and did what she wanted to do. Both Tsuda Umeko and Mary Wollstonecraft wanted women to do what was best for themselves, not what men wanted them to do. Despite that Tsuda Umeko argued for equal education rights for women and Mary Wollstonecraft urged for equality among both men and women, they both make the same argument that women should become independent and do something for themselves. Tsuda wanted more women to join her to improve their status through education. She wanted women to step out of their comfort zones to change the inferior position of women in society and evolve the Japanese society into a modernized country like the United States. Wollstonecraft argued that if women continue to depend on men and just rely on them forever, they will not be valued any longer once their beauty fades away because “it is the fate of the fairest flowers to be admired and pulled to pieces by the careless hand that plucked them” (103). She also encourages men to influence women “to make her a helpmeet for them” (104), meaning that she wanted the men to realize that women should get equality and independence just like the men.

Atwood's Use of Language

In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, her style of writing is not only distinctive but also effective in depicting the deterioration of women’s rights in the Republic of Gilead. Through her choice of words, she entitles men as Commanders and ranks women according to their gender roles as Wives, Marthas, Handmaids, and Unwoman. She effectively portrays the difference in hierarchy between men and women to emphasize the returning of traditional values and gender roles of both men and women in the terrifying dystopian society of Gilead. 

The Handmaids in this novel have names that begin with ‘Of’ because they are referred to as the ‘Property of’ then the commander’s name. When Offred met the new Ofglen she even says ‘that is how you can get lost, in a sea of names’ because their new name strips them from their previous identity (295). The name of these Handmaids truly shows the inferiority of women and how they are regarded as their Commanders piece of property, rather than an actual human being. I thought it was clever of Margaret Atwood to use these names because I think it draws attention to the idea that this dystopian society disregarded gender roles of women, which was something that the author wanted her readers to recognize. 

Another effective style of writing she used was her use of irony. The narrator said that ‘being here with him (Nick) is safety; it’s a cave, where we huddle together while the storm goes on outside’ which is ironic because it contradicts to the sentence after that which was ‘this room is one of the most dangerous places I could be. If I were caught there would be no quarter, but I’m beyond caring’ (281-282). To me this was ironic because Offred felt safe in the most dangerous room and could have been severely punished if someone ever found out. I think this was her intention to suggest the readers that a powerful connection like love can never be overruled, even in a society like Gilead. And personally, I felt like this irony was emphasizing that Offred wasn’t scared to face her consequences. I mean Luke is gone and so is her daughter so even if the Eyes found out what she was doing with Nick, what did she have to lose? 

Atwood’s choice to name the district where all the hanging occurred as ‘Salvaging’ was very interesting (284). The word salvage means to save or to rescue so why did she decide to name the city Salvaging? This ironic name made me really curious and question why out of all the words in the English dictionary, why she chose that specific word for the name of the city. I thought about this for a while and I think her purpose was for her readers to realize that by hanging those who have done wrong, it was actually helping Gilead to grow into a better society. It’s similar to Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest; those who obey the rules will survive while those who commit sin will not.