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SOCIAL CLASSES IN JAPAN, OLD AND NEW

IN old Japan, next to the Imperial family and court nobles, came the feudal lords (Daimio), upheld by the warrior class (Samurai), below whom in turn were ranked the three chief working classes,—farmers, artizans, and tradesmen. These three classes produced and distributed the nation's wealth and paid taxes to their respective feudal lords by whom the warriors were supported. Below all were day laborers and palanquin bearers,—in those days a large and important though a despised class, for they lived entirely by bare, brute strength, lacking all special skill. Still lower were the eta or pariah class, excluded from towns and villages, except when they entered to do the foulest work, such as digging the graves of criminals and the slaughtering of animals, and curing their skins. And lowest of all were hi-nin, literally translated "non-humans." These were beggars and criminals, who would not or could not work. The name, popularly given, well indicates how they were regarded.

With the fall of the feudal system, in the early seventies, society was reorganized. Those above the Samurai were divided in 1886 into five grades, not counting the Imperial princes, namely: prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron. These constitute to-day the hereditary peers of Japan, and possess considerable wealth and, of course, overwhelming prestige.

They numbered, in 1903, 1,784 families. Besides the 1,784 heads of these families, there were 1,786 male and 2,485 female members of these families of rank. The number of these peers is constantly being increased by Imperial favor, the conferring of rank being the customary method of rewarding distinguished service. According to the Japan Year Book for 1914, the number of peers in 1911 was 919, there being 17 princes, 37 marquises, 101 counts, 378 viscounts, and 386 barons. Promotion from one rank to another causes constant change in the numbers of the various ranks.

The Samurai, deprived of their swords and military privileges, were given the name shizoku (Samurai families) and were paid off in lump sums, thereafter being thrown on their own resources. There are 439,154 shizoku families, numbering altogether 2,169,018 individuals. The remaining classes were designated as heimin (common people). Statistics show that they number 8,471,610 families, totaling 44,558,025 individuals. The eta were elevated, hence popularly called shin-heimin (new common people) and allowed to live anywhere and take up any desirable calling. The hi-nin also were classed along with the rest of humankind. As a matter of fact, the eta and hi-nin were but a small fringe of the whole population, the descendants of the former being now estimated at something less than one million, and those of the latter amounting to about 35,000.

With the national reorganization it was inevitable that the new executive offices from the highest to the lowest should be given to men of experience. At first, therefore, the reorganization amounted to little more than a great shuffle of names and titles. Peers took the highest governmental positions, while Samurai and their sons as a rule filled the lower posts. Many Samurai, however, received no appointments and had to go to work. In time, as education has progressed, sons of farmers and merchants have become qualified and have been appointed to government offices. The new departments, such as the educational, the postal and telegraph offices, the railroads, and especially the army and navy, call for large numbers of efficient men. These posts are filled almost entirely on the basis of fitness. While ancestry is not entirely ignored in the making of appointments, nevertheless old class distinctions are gradually being obliterated.

The fortunes of the women have naturally followed those of the men. All families that lost their hereditary income had to go to work; this was true chiefly of the Samurai. Where the men were fortunate, the women could maintain the old customs, limiting themselves to their familiar domestic work, with a servant or two to help, but tens of thousands of Samurai families found themselves reduced to the direst poverty; women having generations of genteel ancestry were forced to enter the ranks of the workers.

Let us define what we mean by a working woman. Women whose husbands or parents provide the support of the family are not to be included in this term. These women may, and indeed doubtless do, labor abundantly and fruitfully in the home; their time is fully occupied. Probably no working women toil more diligently or for longer hours than do these wives and mothers in hundreds of thousands of homes, in most of which there are no servants. All the cooking, sewing, and housecleaning is done by them, so that they are indeed workers. But they are not "working women." They are the true gentlewomen of Japan, whose culture, graces, and charms are not easily described.

By "working women" we mean only those women who, in addition to the regular duties of the home, must share in the labor of earning the daily bread. In Japan the number of such is exceptionally large, if compared with that of some countries of the West. They may be divided into eleven classes, according to the nature of their occupations, namely: school-teachers, nurses, clerks and office girls, farmers, home industrial workers, factory hands, domestics, baby-tenders, hotel and tea-house girls, geisha, and prostitutes. Omitting the teachers and nurses, these are the classes whose conditions, numbers, education, and character we are now to study. Taken as a whole we do not hesitate to say that the working women of Japan, while probably lower in point of moral and physical energy and personal initiative than corresponding classes of the West, are not inferior to them in point of personal culture. And if civilization is defined, as it should be, in terms of personal culture rather than in those of mechanical contrivances and improvements, then Japan will surely take her place among the highly civilized nations of the world.