女性誌를 통해 본 근대 일본 신여성 복식에 관한 연구 ‒大正期 『主婦之友』를 중심으로‒

Abstract

“Friend of Housewives” (主婦之友) was a relatively long-time published women’s magazine widely read by many of educated middle-class Japanese women as its core readers during the Taisho period (大正期: July 30, 1912-December 25, 1926), and its contents (and editorial stance as a whole) tend to reflect, in many respects, the then transformation in their clothing style. The analysis of the clothing style of modern Japanese women shown in women’s magazines (女性誌) of this kind shows that “Friend of Housewives” in the Taisho period was, particularly, keen on depicting ideal image of woman as that of a good-wife-and-wise-mother figure wearing traditional Kimono, broadly in line with that period’s mainstream current of capitalizing on traditional image (and role) of women; what it valued as ideal image of woman related more to wise housewives taking care of households than to career women (職業婦人). However, the emergence of career women as a “new class” in the then Japanese society as urban culture started developing, whose concept/image tended to be differentiated from that of traditional housewives, paved the way for transforming this new class of women (i.e. career women) or the new women into becoming represented as the modern girl. Both new women and modern girls started emerging as the new role model of a woman different from the old women (舊女性) who were forced to play a role as a good-wife-and-wise-mother housewife in traditional patriarchal society. And the former’s overall clothing style tends to be reflective of then women’s values about clothes that emphasize their frugal lifestyles and, at the same time, their determination to catch up with this new trend agilely.