Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/246

186 young women, concerning two of which it is necessary to speak more particularly.

One is a kind of English normal school in charge of Miss Umé Tsuda, herself a type of the best kind of "new woman" in Japan. She was the youngest of the first group of Japanese girls sent over to the United States in 1871 to be educated; and ever since her return to Japan she has been trying to elevate the condition of her sisters. Her school is intended primarily to train young women to be efficient teachers, particularly of English. Another important institution is the University for Women, opened in 1901 in Tōkyō, the first of its kind started in the first year of the new century, as a harbinger that the Twentieth Century in Japan will be largely the women's century.

What the new woman in Japan is able to accomplish in business lines is well illustrated in the following paragraphs: —

"Mrs. Asa Hiroöka, of Ōsaka, is well known in business circles as the actual guiding spirit and organizer of the famous banking firm of Kajima. A daughter of the Mitsui family, she was married at the age of 17 to Mr. Shingorō Hiroöka of Ōsaka a few years previous to the restoration. The Hiroöka family was one of those celebrated banking agents of the feudal barons who flourished at Ōsaka during the Tokugawa régime, and, like many of the rest, had its affairs thrown into disorder and was itself reduced to a precarious condition by the political convulsion of three decades ago. The Kajimaya,