This paper attempted to analyze the notion of ‘home’ as conceived by Masako Miwada (1843-1923), a Meiji era educator who contributed a long series of articles on girls’ education to a women's magazine ‘Jyokan’ (1891-1909). How she had sought to have her readers accept the idea of ‘home’ was analyzed by extracting the parts where the word ‘home’ appeared from the series of the magazine articles. The findings may be summarized in the following five points: 1. She insists that women should display feminine virtues at home, 2. that moral education of children by women at home is more important than that taught at school, 3. that affectivity should be maintained in the home, the responsibility for which rests with women, while the family order should be based on monogamy, 4. and that women, who are responsible for the domestic affairs, should apply the knowledge of home economics acquired at school, 5. Masako Miwada shows the difference between the Japanese and the Western families. She maintained that the women's education as summarized above was the way for the girls to become the respectable Japanese citizens. In other words, she regarded the ‘home’ as providing a foundation for female citizenship.

View full abstract

One of the serious problems confronting the aged Japanese society is the weakness of human-relationship. Enabling the elderly to spend the final leg of their life with ease, it is urged to build a social environment or human network in or by which the desirable human relationship may be constructed since the early childhood. Offering a system to help achieves such a skill pertains to education. What is considered as hindrance in building such a system should be the traditional sense of gender role among many other things. What is strongly suggested, therefore, is an androgynous way of life aimed at living one's life freely, transcending the sexual barrier. In this report, the author tries to examine the validity as well as reliability of the androgynous way of living scale. The scale is composed of 10 real sex-role items and 6 ideal sex-role items. The α-coefficient of the 16 items is 0.807 which attains the content level. Of the 16 items, 3 factors were extracted by factor analysis. The 3 factors show significantly high inter-correlations. As a result, we can say that this scale is quite adequate for the androgynous way of living.

View full abstract

We studied the influence of food restriction through puberty and the puberty-pregnancy period in rats and the effects on the growth of offspring. We prepared three groups of 7 week old female rats: the CC group was fed ad libitum a diet containing 10% casein and 10% soy protein; another two food-restricted groups were fed 30% less than the CC group through puberty (RC group) or through the puberty-pregnancy period (RR group). Pair-feeding of the food-restricted and ad libitum–fed animals was carried out. All groups were fed ad libitum during the lactation period. Food restriction through puberty or the puberty-pregnant period reduced the maternal body weight gain of the RC and RR groups comparing with the CC group. The number of newborn pups per litter of the RC and RR groups was significantly smaller than that of the CC group. Body weight and organ weight of newborn pups of the RC and RR groups were significantly lower than those of the CC group. Survival rate in the period from birth to weaning of RC and RR groups was lower than that of CC group. At 3 weeks after birth retarded growth was observed in the weaning offspring of the RC and RR groups compared with the CC group. We concluded that food restriction through the puberty-pregnant period markedly affected maternal body and the growth of offspring. Moreover, food restriction through just the puberty period also had a remarkable influence on the growth of offspring.

View full abstract

We studied the cooking method for rice gruel made from vacuum-packed rice and water. An electric stove was used for heating the vacuum-packed sample in a pot filled with water. The time leading to boiling of the cooking water was set to short (5 min), medium (20 min) and long (30 min), these cooking conditions being respectively referred to as the S-, M-, and L-methods, the whole cooking time for each sample being 35 min. Three further cooking conditions were subsequently applied: the first was to continue cooking for 15 min. With the second and third conditions, the electric stove was switched off and the vacuum-packed rice gruel left in the hot cooking water for 15 min. This treatment is referred to as “murashi.” The hot holding the vacuum-packed rice for the second condition of murashi was left on the switched-off electric stove which maintained a high temperature by retained heat. The pot for the third condition of murashi was removed from the electric stove. The rice gruel cooked by the S-method with subsequent murashi under the first and second conditions was characterized by less separated liquid and free water from the rice, longer and larger area granules, lower hardness, and higher cohesiveness and adhesiveness. The rice gruel cooked by the L-method had the opposite characteristics to those resulting from cooking by the S-method. The rice gruel cooked by the S-method was evaluated as significantly more crushable and soft. The best method for cooking rice gruel from vacuum-packed rice was to use the short time leading to boiling, boiling for the long time, and conducting murashi at the continued high temperature.

View full abstract