The Rise of Women’s Education and the Modernity of East Asia: Focusing on the Education of “Virtuous Wives and Worthy Mothers” in China and Japan

Abstract

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. Looking back on the past and forward to the future, we realize modernity has become a critical issue that not only China and Japan, but the whole East Asian region should pay attention to. China and Japan are both within the “Circle of Confucius Culture” and are both modern latecomer countries. As they were coerced by western countries to enter the modern age, they shared multiple common features. An exploration of the two countries’ respective rising of modern women’s education is an important path to discuss the reconstruction of gender and an important method of the course of the embodiment of east-Asian women into modernization drives. With regards to conclusion, entering the modern age, Chinese and Japanese intellectuals reshaped the female gender in terms of interpersonal relationship, value system, and knowledge structure by advocating the idea of “virtuous wives and worthy mothers” education. In the concept of virtuous wives and worthy mothers in East Asia, the Confucian ethics of “docility and virtue” is the soul, and modern scientific knowledge serves this core value. On the other hand, in the course of localization in China and Japan, this imported concept from the West has encountered a completely different historical fate. from the angle of history of systems: discussion of the initiation, development, and transitions of the systems of modern education for women, (2) from the angle of history of thoughts: analyzing the connotations and features embodied in education for women at different times, mainly focusing on thoughts of modern educators on education for women and their practices, (3) from the angle of case studies, examining the institutions, curriculum design, students’ family background, and conditions of studies of modern women. In a word, previous studies focused on individual countries, with confined focus on for women itself.