| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
|
|---|
| Research Abstract |
This paper argues, from the reading of letters written home by a wife of amissionary in Meiji Japan, who survived her husband and stayed there to establish and run Nemuro Baptist Church, that we can recreate the voice of Japanese women usually unheard in the history. Through her description of those women, we can guess that the encounter with the Other, with themodernity brought by Christianity, encouraged them to become independent. Special attention was paid to the social status of women at the turn of the century America as to begin to send overseas missionary women, the modernization policy of Meiji Government, and the particular regional conditions of the frontier Hokkaido. Mrs. Carpenter's other literatures, like the missionary reports and a lecture manuscript are also considered. The paper concludes that, in spite of the overall collaboration of Christianity with the imperial policy of the Meiji Government and Carpenter's apparently conservative view of women, her activity, her strongwill of power itself, embodied the liberation of women. Her silent lessontaught Japanese women the meaning and the value of self-development and financial independence.
|
