Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan

Abstract

Investigating the enormous contribution made by female textile workers to early industrialization in Meiji Japan, Patricia vividly documents not only their hardships but also their triumphs. While their skills and long hours created profits for owners that in turn benefited the state, the labor of these women and enabled their tenant farming families to continue paying high rents in the countryside. shows that through their experiences as Japan's first modern workers, these factory girls developed an identity that played a crucial role in the history of the Japanese working class. Much of this story is based on records the themselves left behind, including their songs. It is a delight to receive a meticulous and comprehensive volume on the plight of women who pioneered [assembly plant] employment in Asia a century ago...--L. L. Cornell, The Journal of Asian Studies Tsurumi writes of these rural women with compassion and treats them as sentient, valuable individuals...[Many] readers will find these pages informative and thought provoking.--Sally Ann Hastings, Monumenta Niponica

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 69 citations exist upstream.