the creation of public spaces by women in the early meiji period and the to m kyo m fujin kyo m fu mkaiOther than a few remarkable exceptions, and because of their lack of social, educational, and political rights, women of the early Meiji period have often been regarded as powerless actors in the formation and expansion of the bourgeoning Japanese public sphere. Following the research that feminist scholars have developed over the past twenty years on the redefinition of Jürgen Habermas' concepts of "public" and "private" in relation to Western women's lives, I would like to demonstrate how, even when lacking the possibility of changing their lives, some groups of Japanese women during the 1880s were nevertheless able to gather together, bring forth demands in public settings, and make public topics of discussion that had hitherto been considered unworthy of public debate and pertaining only to the private lives of Japanese male citizens. In order to do so, I will take into consideration some of the activities organized by the women belonging to the To mkyo m Fujin Kyomfu mkai 東京婦人矯風会, the Japanese branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.).It has been suggested by some scholars writing in Western languages that it was only during the Taisho m (1912)(1913)(1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918)(1919)(1920)(1921)(1922)(1923)(1924)(1925)(1926) and Sho m wa periods that a large number of Japanese women found a public space from which to voice their demands. The exclusion of women from public spaces during the Meiji period , it is argued, was due to their social subordination and their lack of political rights. 1 To be sure, women's visibility in the Taisho m and Sho m wa periods accounts for a great deal of what we know about female political activists, writers and journalists, and their battles for what they perceived as their rights. However, the existing historiography in Western languages presents a picture of Meiji women's activities, struggles and lost battles that is still fragmented, and the reliability of this fragmented picture is open to question on account of the lack of comprehensive studies. Without a better analysis that links Edo (1600-1867) women to Taisho m women, I argue, we shall not be able to understand how women's activities developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The lives of some early Meiji women who were present in the public sphere have already been investigated by a few scholars, and therefore we know a great deal about the activities of, for example, Kishida Toshiko 岸田俊子 (1863-1901) and Kageyama Eiko 1 See, for example, Hirota 1999, pp. 213-14 and Tokuza 1999, p. 48. the creation of public spaces by women 156 景山英子 (1865-1927, a.k.a. Fukuda Hideko 福田英子). However, this research has been on women as individuals rather than on women who were able to organize themselves and work together. 2 It is not my purpose to understate the importance of "public" women such as the ones mentioned above, who did indeed find public spaces from which to voice their demands and cre...
