Protecting the health and welfare of Japanese women: Yoshioka Yayoi and her visit to Nazi Germany in 1939

ABSTRACT

In 1939, Yoshioka Yayoi embarked on a trip to Nazi Germany on behalf of the Japanese government, to observe local maternal healthcare and welfare policies and facilities. As a prominent woman doctor and women’s rights activist, Yoshioka actively engaged in social and medical activism in Japan in the interwar years, eventually becoming a key leader in various government-sponsored women’s groups during World War II. Through an analysis of Yoshioka’s 1939 trip hosted by the Nazi Women’s leader, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, this article looks to uncover salient features of the transnational network established between Japanese and Nazi women leaders. With reference to Yoshioka’s observations on maternal protection in Nazi Germany, this article also evaluates her strategic adaptation of Nazi policies to improve maternal welfare and healthcare in Japan, as well as the reception of these policies in a global context. Furthermore, it examines the alignment and disparities between Yoshioka’s perspectives and those of the wartime Japanese government, revealing the complexities faced by women leaders in navigating between women’s and national interests during the wartime period.

KEYWORDS:

• Maternal protection
• Yoshioka Yayoi
• women leaders in World War II
• Japan
• Nazi Germany

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Ellen Nakamura for her invaluable feedback and thoughtful review of my articles. I also extend my appreciation to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2 Akiyama Chōzō, Nihon joishi (Tokyo: Nihon Joikai Honbu, 1962), 280, 290.

3 Harold S. Quigley, ‘The Great Purge in Japan’, Pacific Affairs 20, no. 3 (1947): 299.

4 See, for example, Sheldon Garon, ‘Women’s Groups and the Japanese State: Contending Approaches to Political Integration, 1890–1945’, Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 5–41; Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Barbara Molony, ‘Equality Versus Difference: The Japanese Debate Over “Motherhood Protection”, 1915–50’, in Japanese Women Working, ed. Janet Hunter (London: Routledge, 2003), 133–58; Ellen Nakamura, ‘Ogino Ginko’s Vision: “The Past and Future of Women Doctors in Japan” (1893)’, US-Japan Women’s Journal (2008): 3–18; and Marnie S. Anderson, A Place in Public: Women’s Rights in Meiji Japan, Vol. 332 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010).

5 Yoshioka Yayoi and Kanzaki Kiyoshi, Yoshioka Yayoi den, ed. Yoshioka Yayoi Jōshi Hensan Iinkai (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1998), 12, 243. The first edition was published in 1941.

6 Yoshioka Yayoi, Kono jūnenkan (Tokyo: Gakufu Shoin, 1952), 62–63; Wakita Haruko, Reiko Hayashi, and Kazuko Nagahara, Nihon joseishi (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1987), 244.

7 Akiyama, Nihon joishi, 248; Yoshioka Yayoi, ‘Fujin Dōshikai no seiritsu’, in Yoshioka Yayoi senshū, Vol. 4, ed. Yoshioka Hiromitsu (Tokyo: Mokumokusha, 2000), 289–90; and Shino Shaku-ō Kanshakai, eds, Shino Shaku-ō den (Tokyo: Shino Shaku-ō Kanshakai, 1935), 211.

8 Japan Medical Women’s Association, ‘Nihon Joikai no yakuwari to rekishi’, https://www.jmwa.or.jp/

9 Suto Mikako, ‘Yōchien kyōiku to jidō hogo senden (1920–1922): kōsaku suru shisen’, The Japanese Journal of the Historical Studies of Early Childhood Education and Care 30 (2008): 34.

10 Onshi Zaidan Boshi Aiikukai, ‘Boshi Aiikukai sōritsu no keii’, http://www.boshiaiikukai.jp/keii.html

11 For more about the Japanese Eugenic Marriage Popularisation Society, see Sumiko Otsubo, ‘Feminist Maternal Eugenics in Wartime Japan’, U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. English Supplement, no. 17 (1999): 39–76.

12 Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, ‘Kokka sōdōin hō’, https://www.digital.archives.go.jp/img.pdf/677300

13 Nishikawa Yūko, William Gardner, and Brett de Bary, ‘Japan’s Entry Into War and the Support of Women’, U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. English Supplement, no. 12 (1997): 57, 59.

14 Nishikawa, ‘Japan’s Entry into War’; and Tokyo Women’s Medical University, ‘Sōritsusha no ayumi’, https://www.twmu.ac.jp/univ/about/history.php

15 Sandra Wilson, ‘Family or State?: Nation, War, and Gender in Japan’, Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 2 (August 2006): 212–14; and Thomas R. H. Havens, ‘Women and War in Japan, 1937–45’, The American Historical Review 80, no. 2 (1975): 914–5.

16 ‘Bosei hogo hō seitei undō’, in Nihon josei undō shiryō shūsei, Vol. 5, ed. Suzuki Yūkō (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1995), 769–71.

17 Ibid.

18 Yoshioka Yayoi, Fujin ni atau (Tokyo: Hōdō Shupansha, 1943), 138; Fujino Yutaka, Kyōsei-sareta kenkō: Nihon Fashizumu-ka no seimei to shintai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan), 26.

19 Shinmura Taku, Nihon iryōshi (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2006), 270.

20 Yoshioka, Josei no shuppatsu (Tokyo: Shigensha, 1941); and Watase Noriko, ‘Seikatsu kaizen wo mezasu “jissenteki sōgōkagaku” toshite no kaseigaku: 1940 nendai no Wajiro Kon no gensetsu wo motoni’, The Journal of Clinical Research Center for Child Development and Educational Practices 14 (2015): 233.

21 Yoshioka Yayoi, ‘Senran no ōshū wo miru’, in Yoshioka Yayoi senshū, Vol. 2, 258.

22 Yoshioka Yayoi, ‘Senran no ōshū yori kaerite’, in Nihon Kōkyōkai Kōen, Vol. 9 (Tokyo: Nihon Kōkyōkai,1939), 14.

23 Ibid.

24 For an in-depth exploration of the interactions between German and Japanese medicine, see Hoi-eun Kim, Doctors of Empire: Medical and Cultural Encounters between Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2014); and Hiro Fujimoto, ‘Women, Missionaries, and Medical Professions: The History of Overseas Female Students in Meiji Japan’, Japan Forum 32, no. 2 (2020): 195–6.

25 Yoshioka, Josei no shuppatsu, 243.

26 Yoshioka, ‘Goaisatsu’, in Yoshioka Yayoi senshū, Vol. 6, 316; and Yoshioka, ‘Senran no ōshū wo miru’, 14.

27 Jill Stephenson, ‘The Nazi Organisation of Women 1933–1939’, in the Shaping of the Nazi State, ed. Peter Stachura (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 188.

28 Yoshioka, ‘Yōroppa yori’, in Yoshioka Yayoi senshū, Vol. 5, 55.

29 Elizabeth Harvey, ‘International Networks and Cross-Border Cooperation: National Socialist Women and the Vision of a “New Order” in Europe’, Politics, Religion & Ideology 13, no. 2 (2012): 148–50.

30 Yoshioka, ‘Yōroppa yori’, 55.

31 Ibid., 57.

32 Harvey, ‘International Networks’, 149–50.

33 Yoshioka, ‘Senran no ōshū yori kaerite’, 23–4.

34 Lisa Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1997), 39–40, 46.

35 Vandana Joshi, ‘Maternalism, Race, Class and Citizenship: Aspects of Illegitimate Motherhood in Nazi Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 4 (2011): 839.

36 Charu Gupta, ‘Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany’, Economic and Political Weekly (1991): WS40.

37 Kåre Olsen, ‘Under the Care of Lebensborn: Norwegian War Children and Their Mothers’, in Children of World War II: The Hidden Enemy Legacy, ed. Kjersti Ericsson and Eva Simonsen (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2005), 24.

38 Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 24–31.

39 As cited in Leila J. Rupp, Mobilising Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 17.

40 Joshi, ‘Maternalism, Race, Class and Citizenship’, 850.

41 Yoshioka, ‘Doitsu junyū suikan’, in Yoshioka Yayoi senshū, Vol. 5, 62.

42 Yoshioka, ‘Senran no ōshū yori kaerite’, 23–4.

43 Yoshioka, ‘Doitsu ni okeru haha to kono tame no kensetsu’, in Yoshioka Yayoi senshū, Vol. 5, 63–4.

44 Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 26–27.

45 Ibid., 28.

46 Yoshioka, Fujin ni atau, 127–8.

47 The Aikoku Fujinkai was established in 1901 in response to the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) under the advocacy of social activist Okumura Ioko (1845–1907), aiming to provide relief to the families of military personnel. It became a government-sponsored group from 1937. Aikoku Fujin Kai, ed., Shōwa 15 nen no Aikoku Fujinkai wo kaiko shite (Tokyo: Aikoku Fujin Kai, 1941), 7; and Imai Konomi, ‘Aikoku Fujinkai to shakai jigyō: Taishō kōki no Yamaguchi Shibu no katsudō ni shōten wo atete’, Human Welfare 12, no. 1 (2020): 71.

48 Jerome Bernard Cohen, Japan’s Economy in War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1949), 272.

49 Sōrifu Tōkeikyoku, Sangyōbetu shūgyōsha no hikaku: Taishō kunen naishi Shōwa nijyūgonen kokusei chōsa (Tokyo: Nihon Tōkei Kyōkai, 1952), 5.

50 Yoshioka, Fujin ni atau, 134.

51 Maki Kenichi, Kinrō bosei hogo (Tokyo: Tōyō Shokan, 1943), 95.

52 ‘First International Labour Conference (1919)’, International Labour Organization, https://libguides.ilo.org/c.php?g=657806&p=4636553.

53 ‘C003 – Maternity Protection Convention, 1919 (No. 3)’, International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C003.

54 Yoshioka, Fujin ni atau, 145.

55 Monbushō Kyōiku Chōsabu, ed., Monbushō Kyōiku Chōsabu chōsatsu shiryō (Tokyo: Monbushō Kyōiku Chōsabu, 1942), 7.

56 Monbushō Kyōiku Chōsabu, Monbushō Kyōiku Chōsabu, 48–9.

57 Yoshioka, Fujin ni atau, 135, 145.

58 Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 31.

59 Ibid., 118.

60 Shizuko Koyama, Ryōsai Kenbo: The Educational Ideal of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’ in Modern Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 35.

61 Yoshioka, Fujin ni atau, 131.

62 Stephenson, ‘The Nazi Organisation’, 193–4; and Melissa Kravetz, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics, and Professional Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), 158–9.

63 Yoshioka, Fujin ni atau, 131.

64 Itō Megumi, ‘Senkanki niokeru “hanayome gakkō” no seisei to tenkai’, Waseda Educational Research 4 (2013): 40.

65 Uno Riemon, Shokkōsaku Kakushin no kiun (Osaka: Kōgyō kyōikukai, 1933), 47–55.

66 Itō, ‘Senkanki niokeru hanayome’, 45–51.

67 German Propaganda Archive, ‘An Illustrated Report from the Reich Brides’ and Housewives’ School at Husbäke in Oldenburg’, https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/fw8-22b.htm

68 Yoshioka, ‘Manshū wa rakudo’, in Yoshioka Yayoi senshū, Vol. 2, 37–8.

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Haiying Hou

Haiying Hou is a specially appointed associate professor at the Foreign Languages College of Shanghai Normal University. She holds a doctoral degree in Asian Studies from the University of Auckland. Her previous research has primarily centred on investigating the connections between women, health, and the state in pre-war Japan. Her research interests extend to the history of women’s health, women doctors, and women’s popular magazines in modern Japan. Additionally, she explores the modern history of women’s medical exchanges between China and Japan.