As we saw in the enthronement ceremony in 2019 as well as the abdication message of the Emperor (now Emeritus) in 2016, the phrase “always staying together with the people” is characteristic of the Japanese constitutional system called symbolic monarchy. But we must be careful in interpreting what that phrase really means to the Emperor system in Japan.

This paper will discuss this phrase in reference to the change in the British constitutional monarchy, partly because the British monarchy was and has been an ideal or model for the Japanese symbolic monarchy after 1945, and partly because both Emperors, Hirohito and Akihito, once confessed that they had been influenced by the British constitutional monarchy, particularly that of King George V (1910-1938). The important point is what types of monarchy George V had inherited under a constitutionally organized government from his father, Edward VII (1901-1910).

In Britain, the phrase “staying together with the people” or “sympathy to the people” became widely applied to the monarchy during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), especially after the mid 1870s. This is usually discussed in relation to the idea of “the invention of tradition”, represented by the Golden (1887) and Diamond Jubilee (1897) of Queen Victoria. But the critical moment resulting in “the invention of tradition” and changing the essence of the monarchy, was during the 1860s, when the British monarchy lost one future that might have existed by the sudden death of the Queenʼs beloved husband, Prince Albert, and the Queenʼs withdrawal from public life to mourn him. This period led Walter Bagehot to write his farsighted essay on monarchy which was to be collected in his famous book, the English Constitution (1867). In addition, the peopleʼs feeling towards the monarchy also dramatically changed at that time. Since then, the importance of the monarchʼs popularity, as well as the sympathy between a monarch and the people, has grown.

The monarchy the two Japanese Crown Princes observed while they visited Britain, in 1921 and 1953 respectively, and thought ideal under the new Japanese Constitution when they were Emperors, had been the one personalized and de-masculinized, even if we do not call it “feminization of the monarchy”.

During the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the settlement movement that extended a helping hand to impoverished urban residents, in particular immigrants, was at the vanguard of the Progressive reform movements in the United States. Significantly, the majority of the movement participants, including its prime movers, were women. These women, many of whom were single, made settlement houses their “home” and actively took part in a variety of social activism through their female networks.

These settlement workers have in the past been treated as “secular humanitarians,” since they often avoided expressing their religious positions in order to create a more inclusive and diverse society. Contrary to this view, however, this article shows that the religious beliefs of settlement workers were instrumental in shaping their activism. In order to show this, the paper takes up the lives and activities of members of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross (the SCHC). The SCHC, an Episcopal women’s religious association, was founded in the late nineteenth century under the influence of Anglo-Catholicism in the Episcopal Church. In contrast to liberal Protestantism, which had a particular affinity for the view of progress as driven by human efforts with the aid of modern scientific knowledge, Anglo-Catholicism had a tendency toward anti-modernism. It idealized medieval society—an organic egalitarian society—as an antidote to utilitarian, individualistic, modern capitalist society. By exploring the lives and activism of three members of the SCHC, who were also the founders of the leading settlement houses in northeastern US cities, the article argues that their activism was significantly influenced by their religious beliefs, based on an inclusive communitarianism. This idea differed from the notion of liberal pluralism advocated by settlement leaders like Jane Adams, whose activism was influenced by liberal Protestantism.

New trends of women’s history in Poland developed after the collapse of the communist regime. This paper reviews some characteristic studies about women’s history in Poland over the last 30 years. One of the most important works is the series “Women”. The series includes nine volumes, with about 250 articles. The series was edited by Anna Żarnowska and Andrzej Szwarc, professors of the Institution of History in Warsaw University. The first volume of the series, “Women and Society — Polish lands in the 19th century —” was published in 1990. In this book, the writers of articles analyzed the situation of women in the social and economic structure of Polish lands in the 19th century. Most of these articles were based on studies during the period of communism.

Thereafter the following volumes of the series were published; “Women and Education” (I, II, 1992), “Women and the Political Sphere” (I, II, 1994), “Women and Culture” (1996), “Women and their Daily Lives” (1997), “Women and Work” (2000), “Women and Leisure” (2001), “Women and Marriage” (2004), and “Women and Revolution of Custom” (2006). The writers of these volumes analyze different ways of life and thinking of Polish women in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The works changed the image of Polish women that had previously been suggested by the words: Matka Polka (Polish mother). The words show the stereotype of Polish women; naïve and religious peasant wives or mothers of sons fighting for the independece of Poland.

After 1990, many other works show us various Polish women’s activities, too. Particularly, these works remind us of the existence of an active feminist movement in Poland at the beginning of the 20th century. Polish womenhad demanded voting rights before the First World War.