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

本研究试图透过对战前日本女子中学教育与生活的新观察，探讨其文化特质与意义。更具体地说，我们选择了10所女子学校和他们的3500名毕业生作为我们的受访者进行问卷调查。此外，我们还采访了他们中的一些人，以了解他们的生活故事。通过对她们的分析，以及对学校历史、学校登记和个人文件的分析，我们得出以下结论：她们享有广泛的文化习俗，包括阅读书籍，上各种音乐和艺术课，这些习俗构成了女学生的共同文化，尽管存在学校差异。此外，这是由他们的同学或高（下）级学生之间的密切关系，这是典型的女孩的学生文化。另一方面，进一步分析发现，学生亚文化因地区、学校类型或家庭背景的不同而有不同的类型。这些不同的学生文化特征与各学校的教育理念相融合，构成了学校的传统，为毕业生的身份认同和网络化奠定了基础。

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.