Abstract
“Keizaishogaku Kaseiyoshi” is the translated book on home management which spread most widely in the early Meiji Era.
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of Mrs. E.F. Haskell's “The Housekeeper's Encyclopedia” which is the original text of “Keizaishogaku Kaseiyoshi” in comparison with Beecher's three books on domestic economy in order to grasp the starting point of home economics as a science in Japan.
The conclusions are as follows :
Haskell's book may be considered to take an approach interposing between “A Treatise on Domestic Economy” and “Domestic Receipt Book” which make up two lines of Beecher's works on domestic economy. The systematization and scientific method are seen to be employed by the two authors. However, less principles guiding all the subjects of domestic economy are present in Haskell's work than in Beecher's works.
The translator Nagamine Hideki's contribution to the construction of the domains of home economics in Japan is great because he systematized the domestic economy by choosing the acceptable household ideology and contents in Japan from the original text.
Haskell published her book for the young housekeepers in order to cope with the change of life in the period of the Industrial Revolution in the United States. It is considered that Haskell's household ideology discharged an anticipational roles to educate housekeepers in the middle class who would appear later in Japan.
