메이지(明治)기 근대 여학생과 제국주의 담론

Abstract

This study aims at examining women’s education and the discourse of imperialism appearing in the 1905 novel Youth. The novel reveals the love and marriage of a ‘female student’, the discourse surrounding women’s education at the time, and the customs of the Meiji era. Modern Japan has always taken conflicting positions with regard to women’s education. Women were educated to be good wives and wise mothers but were also given the mission as teachers to teach Japanization to women in the colonies. In Youth, Shigeru was a profligate girl, but she avoids destruction to be renewed as a teacher upon her graduation, which is something vastly different from the general structure of female student novels. Nonetheless, it is difficult to view this as independent self-reliance from a true female liberation perspective. Youth still fails to go beyond a male-centered viewpoint, as the novel is closer to accepting the existing system rather than rebelling against the discourse of the era criticizing women’s education. Furthermore, its narration is woven in such a way that it more closely resembles the discourse of the era than any newspaper novel at the time. Influenced by nationalism, Youth served the role of reproducing the discourse of the era while reflecting the contradictory discourse about women’s education which was needed by both mothers and women. This was the limitation of popular novels issued in newspapers, which served a role in terms of education and discipline at the time.