Written during the Meiji Period, the pivotal period in the history of Modern Japan, its unique work offers a fascinating view of Japanese women and girls at the turn of the century. A the author writes in her preface "While Japan as a whole has been closely studied, and while much and varied information has been gathered about the country and its people, one half of the population has been left entirely unnoticed, passed over with brief mention, or altogether misunderstood. It is of this neglected half that I have written, in the hope that the whole fabric of Japanese social life will be better comprehended when the women of the country, as so the homes that they make, are better known and understood." As the main Western writer in Japan at the time wrote, "The whole question of the position of Japanese women - in history, social life, education, employment´s, authorship, art, marriage, concubinage, prostitution, benevolent labour, the ideals of literature, popular superstitions, etc. - discloses such a wide and fascinating field of inquiry that I wonder no one has as yet entered it." This was taken from Griffin´s important work The Mikado´s Empire and this is the challenge that Alice Mabel Bacon took up and executed so brilliantly.
