A sociological study of the student culture in girls' secondary schools in pre-war Japan

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This research attempts to throw new lights on the education and the life in girls' secondary schools in pre-war Japan and investigate the character and the meanings of their culture. More concretely, we chose 10 girls' schools and their 3500 graduates for our informants to carry out the questionnaire we employed. Also, we made interview to some of them to know more in detail of their life stories. Our findings are based on the analysis of them as well as the analysis of the literature of school histories, school registers and personal documents.These analyses have led us to the following findings: they enjoyed a wide range of cultural practices which include reading books, taking lessons of varieties of music and arts, which constituted the common culture of girl students despite the school differences. Also, it was sustained by the close relationships among their classmates or upper(under)-class students which was characteristically seen in the girls' student culture. On the other hand, when analyzed further, we found some different types of student subcultures according to the areas, school types or their family background. Those different characteristics of the student culture were mixed up with the educational ideal of each school to constitute the tradition of the school, which made the bases of the identity and the network of the graduates.