The Waitress

Cover of the magazine Ukiyo (うきよ), 11/1921. (Found here)

The word ukiyo is probably familiar to many in the compound ukiyo-e, "images of the floating world". Ukiyo means thus floating world, but the cover reveals through subtle hints that this is a new world - the old-time bijin (美人 - "beautiful person", the female subject-object of countless ukiyo-e woodcuts) has changed into a modern girl (モダンガール), a waitress at a Western-style café.



(Waitresses at Café Printemps, 1922; source)

That is my guess; the little clues consist of her laced apron combined with a fresh blush, a matching comb and a coquettish gesture. She resembles the Taisho era popular image of the café waitress, which still lives on in Japanese pop culture. For a basic introduction to the café boom in 1910's and 1920's Japan, see Elise K. Tipton's article "Pink Collar Work" in the excellent journal Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context.


(Two Taisho era waitresses; more images here)

In some ways, the café waitresses carried on the geisha tradition of providing inspiring company, selling a romantic fantasy over a cup of coffee or tea. Because they were associated with modernity and Westernization, but perhaps even more because their customers were poor students and aspiring intellectuals, the waitresses were often ridiculed and depicted as prostitutes (and some of them doubtlessly had to be; their salaries were extremely low, and Tipton has some interesting stories about waitresses trying to organize themselves and join the labour movement). (Some examples of cartoons here.) Today, the "maid café" fad plays on similar strings - it is the fleeting dream that is desirable, not the fulfillment of desires. In this case, nostalgia enhances the value of the fantasy. Because the 21st century waitress is no longer a threat to the social order, the early 20th century waitress is seen as an innocent and plucky character in a historical romance. She is even desirable (and marketable) as a costume, like other characters from bygone times: the samurai, the ninja, the courtier.


A Taisho waitress costume from a contemporary costume rental service.

Anita Berber

Apropos.

Celebrating my soon-to-be Ph.D.

- Dad, I got my degree now.
- Well done! Now you can start looking for a man who can cook, tend to the children and keep the house in order.

From the satirical magazine Kurikka, Finland 1926

Interesting Blogs

Added some new internet friends to the blogroll:

The Flapper Girl - Feminism, fashion, 1920's, music, culture... In Croatian.

Modärna Tider - Style, events, literature, moving pictures... In Swedish.

How come those people 80 years ago still seem so terribly ahead of their time? For I assure you, I and my friends are not love with the original modern times because we are nostalgic (well, maybe a little), but because we are the very opposite of conservatism...

Though, what's wrong with conserving the good stuff? Maybe it won't taste as fresh... but it will cheer up long winter nights.

Yosano Akiko

***

与謝野 晶子
(1868-1942)

The day the mountains move has come.
I speak, but no one believes me.
For a time the mountains have been asleep.
But long ago they all danced with fire.
It doesn't matter if you don't believe this,
my friends, as long as you believe:
All the sleeping women
are now awake and moving.

Published in the women's magazine Seitô, 1911

The New Woman

Famous Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai wrote an article in 1918 about "the New Woman" as a literary character in her revolutionary work The New Morality and the Working-Class. Some of her summaries of different "New Women" in contemporary novels remind me of Goldenbird characters! I haven't read any of the quoted books before, so I hope that this is a sign of "being in touch with the Zeitgeist", not plagiarism...
In Colette Yver's The Princesses of Science (1907), Kollontai finds a Goldie lookalike:

[...] the woman doctor Laucorojelo, the typical single woman, strides with sure step, her beautiful head held high. Science and the practice of medicine constitute the substance of her life. The clinical wards are at once her temple and her home. She fights for recognition and respect among her male colleagues; gently but unyieldingly she rejects all attempts to win her over to marriage. She needs to be free and alone for her beloved activity, without which she cannot live. She is severe in dress, she apportions her time strictly, she struggles to acquire a practice and experiences the triumph of self-love with the victory over her male colleagues as diagnostician.

Mayann is easily recognizable in the summary of Grete Meisel-Hess' heroine Maya in The Voice (Die Stimme, 1919):

The restless, temperamental Maya's impetuously pushes forward. She has an ironical disposition. To her, all experiences are but stages on the way to herself – to the shaping of her personality: struggle with her relatives for independence, separation from the first husband, a brief romance with an Oriental hero, a second marriage [Cut! Cut! Don't spoil the story for us, Comrade Kollontai!] until Maya finally finds the man who exhibits respect for her inner "voice," this symbol of personality, who recognizes her importance and knows how to create an inwardly free love bond about which Maya has dreamt all her life.
[...] Unconsciously, she follows Goethe's counsel: "to begin one's life anew every day, as though it were just beginning ..." "My stronger, more courageous will, which nothing could break, saved me – my unconscious will to self-preservation. It led me through life like a guardian angel," says Maya of herself.

But where's Lou?...
Although Kollontai made an important point about the "New Woman's" independent attitude in relationships with men, this "New Woman" still maintained relationships to men and was defined by them as modern and "single". Even the woman doctor mentioned above had a harmonious long-distance relationship, which transformed her to a "feminine" creature in private life. Thus, there is no place for Lou among Kollontai's "New Women", because Lou essentially refuses to be defined through heterosexual relationships. (She certainly has male friends like Andy, but she insists in treating them according to the rules of "male" friendship, whether they like it or not.) But Lou would never say: "I curse my female body; because of it you do not notice that there is still something else in me – something more valuable", as one heroine exclaims. She dresses in men's clothes to get attention, not to avoid it. This makes her a *real* New Woman in the sense of Kollontai's conclusion:

The influence of women earning their own livelihood spreads far beyond their own circle. With their criticism, they "poison" the minds of their contemporaries, they smash old idols, they raise the banner of revolt against those "truths" with which women have lived for generations.