Shimizu Shikin

Like many of her contemporaries, was actively engaged in the political, social, and cultural
milieu of her day. By the time she reached the age of 20, she had been married and divorced, was
making speeches at rallies for the Jiyū minken undō (Freedom and popular rights movement),
and, at the request of well-known activist Ueki Emori, had contributed a preface to his work
Tōyō no fujo (Women of the Orient), proclaiming the vital importance of “the woman question”.
In 1889 Shikin moved to Tokyo to become and editor for Jogaku zasshi (Woman’s education
journal), where she worked under the director of Iwamito Yoshiharu and interacted with other
influential Meiji thinkers who were promoting new roles for women of her class in the modern
family and state.

Shimizu Toyo was born in Okayama prefecture, the 5th child of Shimizu Sadamoto. Sadomoto
was from a relitively whealthy and powerful family. The family moved to Kyoto when he was
asked to oversee the goverment bureau responsible for the modernization of the old capital.
Shimizu Shikin advanced to the Kyoto Municipal Women’s teacher training school and
graduated at the young age of 14, having completed a high level of education for a woman of her
era. She also had access to her father’s library, where she probably continued to study on her
own after leaving school. Neverthless, it is likely that her desire to preceed with her studies came
into conflict with her father’s wish to see her suitably married.

At the age of 18, she married a young lawyer Okazi Masaharu who was also somewhat
connected to the Freedom and popular rights movement. It is tought that, trough him, Shikin met
Ueki Emori, Kageyama(Fukuda) Hideko, and others. Early in 1899, they divorced. After this she
became more onvolved with the movement.
Shimizu began lecturing on social issues throughout the country. She was one of the activists who presented a
petition in 1888 hoping to reform the penal code, which among other things made adultery by women a
punishable crime, she spoke out against polygyny and its impact on women. 

During that year, Shikin herself began to make speeches advocating women’s rights. Such
speeches most likely formed the basis for her early essays. Later the same year, Shikin met
Nakae Chōmin and outspoken proponent of heiminshugi (commoners rights) who argued for
improvement in the status and living conditions of the outcast group known as burakumin. Shkin,
now 22, accomapmied Buddhist priest and other Jiyū minken undō activist to Yanagihara-chō,
Zeniza Village, a buraku neighbourhood in south Kyoto, where she spoke before a large
audience, possibly on the importance of women’s rights. Almoust a decade later she would draw
on her impressions of this visit in one of her last works of fiction “Imi gakuen” (School for
emigres).

Shikin was 23 when she moved to Tokyo to work for Jogaku zasshi. She arrived in the capital at
a time when importany legal reforms where under debate. The Imperial Constitution had been
promulgated in 1889, but on 25.july 1890, an act was passed prohibiting women from
participating in political assemblies, Shikim responded by writing several polemically charged
essays in which she argued strongly for a woman’s right to equal participation in politics. In the
forst of these, “Why have women been prohibited from participating in political assemblies?”,
published in august of that year, Shikin protested the barries preventing women from political
hearings and debates. Within six months, she had become the journal's editor in chief, she began working as
the writing instructor at the Meiji Girls' School. Around this same time, Shimizu began an affair with Ôi
Kengarô, common law husband of Kageyama Hideko, who had become her best friend. Shimizu became
pregnant during the course of the relationship and took a leave of absence, returning home to Kyoto, where her
father was gravely ill.
Several weeks later, she wrote “To my beloved sisters in tears”, in which she again argued
strongly against the exclusion of women from the lestener’s gallery of the diet. Shikin, with a
rhetorical shill remarkable in so young a writer, argued that these prohibitions were “tantamount
to one half of society controlling the other.”

On january 1891 Shikin published in. Magazine “The broken ring” under the name “Tsuyuko”.
This work addresses in fictional form some of the social problems Shikin had discussed in “ How
determined are today’s women students?” Employing a lively and direct first-person narrative,
the story explores the personal dillema of a graduate of a women’s school. Copies of the issue in
which the story appeared quickly sold out, indicating that readers found the worj timely and
convincing.

Soon after that she was called back to Kyoto to take care of her father, who had fallen ill. One
month later, she applied for a leave of absence from her work as editor at Jogaku zasshi and, in
late Novemberof that year, She gave birth to her son. Ôi, pressuring Shimizu to marry him, confused the
addresses in letters he sent to the two women, Hideko learned of the affair. The rift between her and Hideko
never healed. 
Shikin arranged for the child to be adopted and raised by her brother’s family. She then returned
to Tokyo early i. 1892. But the stress caused by these events in her personal life led to her
hospitalization twice that spring. It was not until September that she was able to resume her work
at magazine.

Returning that same year to journal, her brother introduced her to Kozai Yoshinao, a faculty
memeber at the Tokyo school of agricultulture. In spite of the era’s low opinion of divorced
women and single mothers, and Shimizu’s confession of her past, the relationship flourished.
They were married later that year and Shimizu had their first shild the following year. In 1895,
her husband went abroad to study in Germany, and Shimizu moved back to Kyoto, living with
her mother-in-law and wirting as a correspondent. Shimizu used number of pseudonyms
including Tsuyuko, Toyo and Fumiko, predominately using Shiking after 1896. She employed
different names for different genres, such as using Tsuyuko for fiction. Her husband returned
from studies around 1900 and Shimizu’s last known writing appeared the following year. She
joined hi min Tokyo, where he became the president of the Tokyo University of Agriculture and
she retired from writing. She raised 6 children and cared for her elderly father and brother after
she stopped writting, maintaining a home and the social responsibilities of a universitity
president.
Shimizu died in 1933. Shimizu was the first professional woman journalist in Japan, forced to turn to
writing when public activism was barred. 
Shimizu's writing is centered on social issues, she wrote about the right to equality, evaluating such themes as
women's education, divorce, double standards towards men and women, discrimination towards
the Burakumin.
Works:
 “How determined are today’s women students?
“How many young women students are there in our country today? And how many of
you are ready to take it upon yourselves to become reformers or leaders someday? I am
not asking that every single one of you have this kind of determination because I belive it
is absolutely vital to our country today.”

Talking about every girls dream after graduation get married, find good husband and
create a happy home.
“If we approach the question in this way, it becomes clear that today’s women students must be
determined to become leaders and reformers. And if you can find neither a husband who suits
you nor a family where there is hope of reform, you may even decide not to marry at all.”

 “The broken ring”

“It was on that unforgettable day five years ago, in the spring of my eighteent year, that I came to
wear this ring. That was the day I married, the day my husband gave it to me.”

“My mother was a woman who too pride in modeling herself after the ideal of womanhood.
When she spoke to my father, she would kneel respectfully in the doorway. She always treated
him like an honored guest, so I was astonished when I saw other fathers who seemed to get along
well with their children. I was greatly influenced by my mother’s subservient and reserved
behavior towards my father and couldn’t help thinking a woman’s fate was pitiful and
unfortunate.”

When she was 15..16 years old, parents started to look for good partner for their daughter, but
she refused each time.
After 18th birthday her father guilt mother for making their daughter so selfish. Made Ahimizu
get married, but she wanted to go to Tokyo teachers school and continue studies.

The marriage was difficult. Husband could not come home for many days, and return with the
smell of alcohol and judging Shimizu as a wife. She was dreaming about her alternative future
and being not happy in current marriage.
When she was 19, her mother passed away.

 “School for emigres”(1899)

 "Tōkon jogakusei no kakugo wa ikan?" (How Determined Are Today’s Women Students?) (1890) in
Japanese[8]
 "Onna bungakusha nanzo derukoto no osoki ya?" (Why Are There so few Women Writers?) (1890) in
Japanese[24]
 "Nani yue ni joshi wa seidan shukai ni sanchō suru to yurusarezuka?" (Why have women been
prohibited from participating in political assemblies) (1891) in Japanese [8]
 "Koware Yubiwa" (The Broken Ring) (1891) in Japanese[25]
 "Ichi seinen iyō no jukkai" (A Young Man's Surprising Reminiscences) (1892) in Japanese [20]
 "Naite Aisuru Shimai ni Tsugu" (Cry of Appeal to my Beloved Sisters) in Japanese [28]
 "Hanazono zuihitsu" (Essays from Hanazono) 1895–1899 serial in Japanese [29]
  "Tðsei futarimusume" (Two Modern Girls, 1897) in Japanese[30]
 "Kokoro no oni" (Devil in the Heart) (1897) in Japanese[31]
 "Shitayuku mizu" (The Downflow) (1898) in Japanese[31]
 "Imin gakuen" (School for Émigrés) (1899) in Japanese[8]
 "Natsuko no mono omoi" (Natsuko remembers) (1901) in Japanese [23]
 Kozai, Shikin (1983). Kozai, Yoshishige (ed.).  Shikin Zenhu, zen ikkan  紫琴全集  [Complete works of
Shikin Shimizue in one volume] (in Japanese). Tōkyō, Japan: Sōdo Bunka. OCLC 13126579.


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