Jogaku Sekai

Jogaku Sekai (女学世界; the World of Women's Learning or Women's Education World) was a Japanese women's magazine published by Hakubunkan in Tokyo, Japan. It was in circulation between January 1901 and June 1925 during late Meiji era. The magazine became very popular among the Japanese women and was the highest circulation title of Hakubunkan.[1][2] It was the first Japanese periodical in which schoolgirl speech was covered.[2]

Jogaku Sekai
CategoriesWomen's magazine
First issueJanuary 1901
Final issueJune 1925
CompanyHakubunkan
CountryJapan
Based inTokyo
LanguageJapanese

History and profile

The first issue of Jogaku Sekai appeared in January 1901.[3][4] It was one of the titles produced by the publishing company, Hakubunkan.[5] The magazine targeted girls and young women without no political or feminist approach.[6] Instead, it had a traditional approach towards women and attempted to provide and emphasize the points lacking in women’s education in Japan and to produce "wise wives and good mothers."[1]

Jogaku Sekai mostly covered fiction and published articles on hobbies of Japanese women, including as tea ceremony and composing waka poetry.[1] It contained a readers' section in which letters of the readers were published.[7] It was one of the early ways in Japan to create community of girls and young women.[7] Major contributors were Japanese educators and intellectuals such as Nishimura Shigeki and Miwata Masako.[1]

From its inception in 1901 to the early 1910s the circulation of Jogaku Sekai was 70,000 to 80,000 copies per issue in contrast to other popular magazines which sold 7,000 to 10,000 copies on average.[2] In 1911 it was the second best selling women's magazine after Fujin Sekai.[2]

However, with the introduction of other women's magazines such as Shufu no Tomo the sales of Jogaku Sekai dropped dramatically and therefore, it folded in June 1925.[2][8]

References

  1. Barbara Sato (February 2018). "Gender, consumerism and women's magazines in interwar Japan". In Fabienne Darling-Wolf (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Japanese Media. London: Routledge. pp. 39–50. doi:10.4324/9781315689036-4. ISBN 9781315689036.
  2. Miyako Inoue (Winter 2007). "Things that speak: Peirce, Benjamin, and the kinesthetics of commodity advertisement in Japanese women's magazines, 1900 to the 1930s". Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique. 15 (3): 511–552. doi:10.1215/10679847-2007-004. S2CID 143712271.
  3. Barbara Sato (2003). The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan. Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press. p. 91. ISBN 0-8223-3044-X.
  4. Ai Maeda (25 March 2004). Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity. Duke University Press. p. 167. ISBN 0-8223-8562-7.
  5. Sarah Frederick (2006). Turning Pages: Reading And Writing Women's Magazines in Interwar Japan. University of Hawaiʻi Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-8248-2997-1.
  6. William Jefferson Tyler (2008). Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938. University of Hawaii Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-8248-3242-1.
  7. Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase (2019). Age of Shojo: The Emergence, Evolution, and Power of Japanese Girls' Magazine Fiction. SUNY Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-4384-7391-8.
  8. "Woman in Blue Kimono". The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
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