Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 9, Number 39, DeMotte, Jasper County, 17 August 1939 — Japan’s Girls Replace Men In Industry [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Japan’s Girls Replace Men In Industry

Women Fill Factory, Farm Jobs as Army Claims Manpower. Prepared by National Geographic Society, Washington. D. C.-WNU Service. When a Japanese soldier leaves his native soil to fight an “undeclared’’ war what happens to the job he left behind him? For just as important as a battle against some Chinese war lord is the battle on the nation’s labor front. Japan, struggling for national self-sufficien-cy, is finding the answer to ' this problem by filling vacant jobs with its native girls and women. In the large cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, are many west-ern-type factories. Some of these are thoroughly tip to date—cement buildings, large window’s, running water and modern toilets, clinics, and lunchrooms. I 4 In a toothpaste factory in Tokyo, the majority of jobs are filled by girls—3so girls and only 70 men. The girl workers fill tubes, paste on labels, and ‘pack the cartons, on labels and pack the cartons. They

No. 2. MANUFACTURE. Because the army needs men factories of every \type have been forced to replace male workers with young girls. Here is a Japanese maid bringing in wood to be made into charcoal. Other industries in which these girls find employment include the manufacture of shoes, clothing, glass, pottery, toothpaste and a host of others.

st;.nd at long tables from 7 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. Forty minutes for lunch and two rest periods of ten minutes each are their only chances to sit down. The manager who shows you around points proudly to the rooms where the employees change from street to work clothes, and to the laundry with running water where the uniforms are washed. Outnumber Men 4 to 1. In a stocking and rubber shoe factory near Osaka again the majority of workers are women and girls—--4.000 girls to 1,000 men. Some work at sewing machines, others pack the finished product. The girls wear white cloths over their hair, but no masks to protect their lungs. To questions as to age, hours of work, and living conditions, the pro-

Ao. 4. AFTER HOURS. Western ideas have made inroads into the workaday life of the Japanese girls but with these new ideas of work has also come a trend toward new recreational activity. These two Japanese girls are walking out on the court for a game of tennis. The one on the"left oxen wears snorts like many an aspirant for court honors among American women players.

prietor answers that the girls live in the neighborhood and have lunch in the factory. One of Japan’s largest industries is the preparing of the raw silk (skeins of silk thread) to be sent to Europe and America. This work is done in factories called silk filatures which are practically staffed with girls and young women. To the onlooker, the job itself

No. 1. BUSINESS. The commercial field in Japan has claimed many young girls as stenographers and clerks. Some of these girls are educated in the United States and have adopted American office technique. However, the stenographer pictured here is using a typewriter with an oriental keyboard. This keyboard has 2,200 symbols and as a result is much slower than the western type machine.

seems most trying, since each girl has to w’atch constantly the silk feeding onto 20 spindles. To do this, she must stand all day, and her •hands are continually in and out of basins of hot water, pulling the silk strands from the cocoons and directing them over the tiny wheels to the spindle above. The-workers of the silk filature are on a contract basis and live in one part of the factory called; the dormitory. To any section suffering from famine managers of factories go and make contracts with the families of girls. The family receives a sum of cash to help them carry on until the next good harvest, and the girl pays for it by I serving three or four years in the filature. After her contract is fulfilled, she goes home and is married to a young man whom her family has chosen. By far the greater number of Japan’s factories are small workshops manned perhaps by two or three workers, or at most by 10 to 25. Some of these are family concerns, in which the women and girls of the family help. Others are neighborhood enterprises, to which the local girls and women flock. Tokyo Glass Factory. In any street may be heard the soft w’hir of looms or the clang-

No. 3. FARMING. One of Japan's chief needs at the present time is food for its soldiers on China's war fronts. Now, as at no other time in history. Japanese women have turned to the fields to provide this food. Pictured here are young girls picking weeds from a field of rice.

ing and banging of heavy machinery. A few of these illustrate how vast numbers of Japan’s women are employed. In a glass factory in Tokyo, housed in fragile wooden buildings, women sort, wash, and pack the glassware. Floors are simply wellpacked earth, and the window openings small. The furnaces make the heat insufferable even on a cool day. Tokyo also has a concern which makes metal fixtures, heads for electric-light bulbs, tops for candy bottles and vanity cases—heavy machine work. Machinery is placed so close together that you fear to pass through a room lest you be caught by some, part of your clothing. Women and girls with rounded shoulders squat before machines crudely made by the concern itself, fashioning the covers and bulb ends. Some of the girls are barely 14 or 15; some are middle-aged or old women. One woman with bad eyesight bends and squints over her work. As you ascend the scale of employment, the Japanese woman is not missing. Telephone girls, typists, or copyists throng the business offices; The telephone girls are, on the whole, older than the clerks. Many of them are married. The typists are higher school students, ranging in age from 18 to 20. Some use the native instrument; others, who know English, are trained to use the modern machine. The oriental typewriter has a board containing more than 2,200 symbols, including some 2,000 Chinese ideographic characters, two kana, or syllabary systems of 51 symbols each, the English alphabet (both small and capital letters), and the Arabic numerals.