Sewing Education at Jiyu Gakuen in the 1940s: Focusing on the Affinity of the Movement for Rationalization of Life and the Wartime Regime

Abstract

  Focusing on the affinity between the prewar movement for rationalizing living and the wartime regime, this paper clarifies the aspect of Jiyu Gakuen's practical sewing education in the 1940s, that is, during wartime, by analyzing Gakuen Shinbun and Fujin no Tomo. Three things came to light. The first point is that “cooperative sewing,” which was the school's practice of sewing education during wartime, had a direction of “rehabilitation use” and “saving,” which had a strong relationship with the “rationalization” of life – the school's educational policy since before the war – and that it was possible to adapt to the wartime regime in line with the school's ideal of “immediate life education.” The second point is that, unlike the prewar practice, cooperative sewing had a strong tendency to seek higher efficiency and had shifted to factorization and labor rather than rationalization. The third point is that cooperative sewing had maintained a consistent perspective since the prewar era of not only “rationalization” but also “beautification” in daily life.