Histories of women in and around Japan, 1868-1945

Kishida Toshiko was born in 1863 in Kyoto, where her father Kishida Mobei owned a kimono shop (although he was prone to amusing himself in the nearby red-light districts, and it was Toshiko’s mother Taka who ran the shop and taught Toshiko the classics). She was top of the class throughout school, dropping out of the Kyoto Normal School to run her own tutoring business when she became frustrated that her own intellect exceeded that of her teachers. At age seventeen she entered the Imperial Household to tutor Empress Haruko (more than a decade her senior) in the Chinese classics, Mengzi in particular. She was the first commoner to take up a role of this kind.

Unable to acclimate to the strict class divisions and practices such as concubinage within the Palace, she left after eighteen months (although the Empress tried to persuade her to stay) and became involved in the Risshisha civil rights movement, which developed into the Liberal Party founded by Itagaki Taisuke. Toshiko spoke on women’s rights at political meetings around West and South Japan, drawing acclaim for her well-reasoned arguments as well as her youth and elegance, and often sharing the podium with Itagaki’s right hand Nakajima Nobuyuki. In May 1882 she spoke in Okayama, inspiring Fukuda Hideko to join the movement as well.

In October 1883, however, Toshiko spoke in Otsu on “sheltered maidens” (using a Japanese term literally translated as “daughters kept in boxes”), and was arrested for violating the Assembly Ordinance. In this famous speech she had called for women’s social independence and the societal reforms this would require, advocating women’s education and greater freedom rather than the destruction of the “boxes” of society altogether. The police, who considered her speech to have crossed the line from academic discussion to politics, detained her for eight days.

Thereafter, as a law forbidding women to participate in political meetings came into force, Toshiko spoke less and wrote more, publishing a series of articles called “Addressing my Sisters” in the Liberal Party organ. She expressed respect for love between men and women while criticizing the patriarchy of Japan (including the men demanding liberty and civil rights) and its insistence on women’s subservience to men. “Destroy the daydream they live in!” Toshiko demanded.

She also wrote for Iwamoto Yoshiharu’s Jogaku Zasshi and taught classics at the Shin’ei Girls’ School and the Ferris Seminary. In 1884 she married Nakajima Nobuyuki, thereafter often using “Nakajima Shoen” as her pen name. Their marriage—criticized as wanton for its basis in individual love rather than arrangements for the sake of the family—was said to be a very happy one; unfortunately, both developed tuberculosis during Nakajima’s diplomatic service in Italy. Nakajima, who was eighteen years older than his wife, died in 1899 and Toshiko followed him in 1901.

Sources
Ishii, Nakae
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=hst_facpubs (English) Article about Kishida and other female speakers of the time
https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1001325826 (English) Text of Kishida’s “daughters in boxes” speech