Feminist Japanese social reform or how to get on the ¥5000 bill? A Tsuda Umeko (2022) review
[Music] what she said from 2020 from from 2022 also known as the foreign exchange student who will be on the 5,000 bill. Uh 5,000 yen yen. Yeah. And she is there. I will show you Bill. Well, they showed it in the movie as well. Yes. I’m going to try there in the in the movie right at the end. So, if you if you ever if you watch this movie, go stay for the end credits because the end credits actually show some of the um photographs, real photographs. I’m going to try and see if I can get some clean ones as well, but otherwise I’m just going to capture those and show those because I don’t think there are that many. They have like four of three or four of them and I think that’s probably it. Well, for a bofilm I I I really like being able to see at the ends like who what was she really like were in her in her office and in the school and when she was young, you know, it’s like what was she wearing? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Did you notice that she pretty much always wears western clothing? Yes. Not not not until the very end where you get the very very last thing where she finally like 30 years after she opens this the school she opens it in a in full Japanese garp. Yes. Yeah. I did not. But quite plain and and serviceable Japanese clo that’s that’s norm that’s normal but for for because she is not a young lady anymore. She’s not going to be wearing anything garish. But the girl, if you even when you see the scene, the the girls that are she talking to, young girls are wearing, even though they’re like 14, they’re wearing pretty much the same thing as she’s wearing. It’s just modest scarp basically. Whereas a young girl is allowed to wear lots of pretty colors because young girl, but because you’re in school and you’re being serious, I think probably something like that. Uh this movie is on Daily Motion. I’ve seen it and it’s also on Drama Cool. So you can absolutely see it. Um yeah, I can Yes. Yeah. It’s it’s really worthwhile. We also a few years ago watched the entire drama series, the tiger drama Atsuime, which is the Princess Atsu. Um, this was the story of a young woman who was selected to become the consort of the Shogun. Um, just before just before all of this happens, the Maji before the Maji era starts. And the Maji era is when they have to change everything over from the Shogun era to modern what we would call say say modern western opening society. And in Atsu in Atsuhime she she has to transfer from a shogun society too but also take the women with with her. And basically that’s what this this in continuation is indeed. Um is trying to not not reinvent because it is 1870s and 1880s. She’s trying to invent emancipation and uh suffragy and uh but she’s sort of trying to discover what it is because she nobody gives her the words. These words actually never are not in this movie at all. No. No. No. Um but she’s trying to circle around the thing until she tries to pinpoint what is the problem? Why does this not work for women? And because she’s put uh at a very young age, she’s put overseas in the states in the 1870s, 1880s. She’s put into the states at 6 years old and she gets a completely different view and then is brought back. And that’s when you can tell that for her it was an uncsurmountable problem once she got back. She almost drowned in it. She almost gave up and like, “Right, that’s it. I’m going back to America.” She didn’t do that. uh her father had given her the the mandate. You must bring this education, you must bring this to Japan and then you must educate the girls. That was what the the idea was by the time that she got back 11 years later and she was only 17 11 years later. um that whole uh uh train of thought that they had started at the beginning of that turnover, the revolutionary new way of doing things is they had like no we’re not doing that anymore. Yeah. And she was a relic at 17 and the funding that came with the with the thought also went away and just and and it put her in a vacuum and nobody would employ her. They and when they did employ her as a teacher, they were uh paying her was it a fifth of what they were paying the foreign teachers. So she was being she was teach being exploited. She was being exploited and she she she was teaching English to the upper class young women, young girls in upper class schools and she was being paid pittance because she was Japanese. So her teaching must be worse than anybody else. And it took it took her a while to get to the point that she realized she was being exploited because all Japanese women are always exploited. And that was normal and acceptable. And she sort of goes, “No, that is neither normal nor is it acceptable. But getting the rest of the world to go with that is of Japan is difficult. the what what she had going for her is that she had been raised in a society where there was some sort of expectation of equality where really wasn’t. But comparatively speaking, women had a lot more going for them. And teaching has always in the west has always been a thing that women did and that they got paid for and that they were, you know, it’s maybe not get you high standing, but it certainly gets you standing. Um so for her to be a teacher was absolutely normal in the line of the 1870s and ‘ 80s and even for western women and earn a living wage because the at the time even the wage in America for teachers was a living wage male or female teachers. And in Japan nobody no these women not anybody was getting a living wage. a foreigner maybe but the foreign women were but not the Japanese per people and it was not expected and that’s you cannot make equality on that but she came off a farm it’s they don’t explain how her dad was actually so high up in this this modernization thing her dad was ahead of things sent her everybody it looks like I mean in in Dutch terminology would say people were talking scandal about the fact that they would send such a young girl they had intended to send her older sister But that older sister, I I forget the plot line for that. She was eight and she was old enough to say no. So six six years old, she she just couldn’t say no. So they sent her and that was that was too young. Um that also meant that she didn’t get a proper Japanese education. So she also fell out of Japanese society and meaning that she can’t write the properly to write the kanji. kanji it takes a lot of time and she didn’t actually speak it properly when she came back took a few years clearly to catch up on her that is actually the film trying to shorthand in that she had trouble reing graduating because I don’t think you would because she was with other Japanese students and she would have talked it’s unlikely but what I found very interesting and it’s just a little tidbit there’s a couple of little tidbits in the movie where I go yeah that’s interesting when she comes back at age uh 18 uh 17. Yeah. Uh she was seven when she was there and it was there for 11 years. She when she arrived she was seven. Yeah. It’s about 18. She comes back and then comes back to live with her parents and suddenly her parents have a whole bunch of new kids and they sit down for dinner and they have a proper uh prayer for dinner which is not a Japanese things. And it actually ends in amen. He says amen. And I was going yeah they’re Christians. If he’s Christian, now it makes sense that she was sent desent because he he would have been in with he would have been in with the western idea of and and maybe sent her there and and learned that uh he didn’t say anything to her. He should have said some some more to her or at least kept a correspondence or something because she gets nothing from him in in the way of zero. Yeah. But I think they were Christians and that is why uh his family was chosen and he had only had two daughters. One was eight, one was six. And the eight one of eight said no and the one of six said, “Daddy, I love you and we’ll do whatever you want. Anything for daddy. Anything for daddy.” Six her her uh problem. She’s mulling around after 18, let’s call it 18 to 25 year olds. She’s mulling around about how do I pay Japan back? They sent me there. They paid for my education. I need to pay back and not her give back. And not her, but every single one of those girls had that exact same problem. Every single one. So you they’re not giving you anything. Most of the other girls get married cuz it’s one after the other. They have plans. They have plans, but then there’s this guy and then they get married because that’s easier. But it does derail their paying back plan. And one of them gets to combine it by marrying a high up uh was he a general? I think he was something like a general something like that. And and so she paying it back in that way because that’s definitely what she’s feeling there. And then Ume uh she gets this guy who uh clearly this is going to is going also educated in the west. He’s going to be something like a politician. uh this would be perfect. She says no. And I think that that’s the point where where she made the decision is like I am actually going to do something with my life as myself because the moment you’re a wife, you’re an extension of somebody and then you’re going to be a mother of somebody. And as good as this guy looked just before she said no, he looked pretty good. But then she said no and he turned nasty. He did. Oh my god. She made the right decision. And this is very interesting because this is exactly the time when in the Netherlands there was suffrage going on and we have a really famous suffragette called Yakobs. It was about the same time and she had exactly the same problem. She had a guy and but the Dutch marriage vow says that you have to obey the man and she I don’t want to be doing that. I want to be a a modern woman. And basically him their her friend, her best friend sat her down and and they assured her, okay, just swear that because it’s in the law. You had to swear it that way. Not not anymore, but at that time, swear that and we’ll just, he says, I will not hold you to it. And she says, how can I trust you not to force it? And and in the end, she did marry the guy. Power corrupts. Yes. Absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. And you have to find the one guy who you can trust. She did find she did marry this guy and it was turned out fine. But you know if it’s and it’s in the Netherlands we’re much further along than than Japan was at this time. But the problem is the same. She cannot say yes to a guy because she has no idea what this guy is going to do with her. And it’s not a question of enforcing. It was literally she would not have any time to be her own person. She would have to immediately her job. She cannot open her own school for girls. Only if he if if he said that it was okay like then it would be okay. It would be in his uh he’d have to be magnaminous enough. Exactly. And what the other one of the other girls did there was the the one girl who was a little bit older. uh uh she had her father sponsor her for the school and she ended up not marrying because she if if she had married she would have to be doing what he wants to be doing or talk him into doing something and basically that’s what it comes down to. You in in Japan at this time you marry somebody and you do what they want to do and in and have a baby. So she then goes into the household of Itto who later becomes the prime minister but at this point he not is not yet and he’s a highly placed official of some sort and her father didn’t tell her about that he had offered her her a job and the reason she finds out that he didn’t tell her was because he knew that if she as a single woman goes into the household of this high placed official who was married and had daughter and it doesn’t matter who else was there, she was going to get used. And I think he was right. I think she was very lucky that this this didn’t happen. The reason that Itto actually wanted her was not for her feminine uh youth, but he wanted her because he wanted to pick her brain. And so he did invite her into the office late at night. And she went in bold, but she at least she was aware of what what could happen. I think she was ready to run out if it was needed, but I think she would have been too late. Um, she should have left the door open. That’s I was thinking you keep the door open and literally you you stack it open with something with a chair the gentleman and the lady and that would have been actually ask one of the servants to be in the room if I’m not sure they had many servants because they did that in the middle. They they did that all the way up to the Janeire era. You just put the servants in and they just sit there and crochet or knit or whatever or sew. Yeah. But they would sit there because you needed a chaperon and but it would have been perfectly acceptable in the west and I don’t know about Japan for for for this situation for her to say I need the MS here or we need to leave the door open. The door open. Yes. I think the MS couldn’t be there because they were literally going to be talking politics and that would have been not uh but the the door open is is a thing. Yeah. Any kind of like chaperon type of situation, but they didn’t do that and she was lucky that that the guy literally only wanted to pick her brain. And the guy was smart. He does make it to uh first prime minister of Japan. Um and and so he needed to know from people. There were several of these people in her life that kept that she kept touching base with that that said, “You know stuff that nobody else knows. You’ve experienced it. What can you do with that?” And then she’d have to think about it and it takes a few years to form a plan because you have to kind of make it up out of nothing. The only thing that they knew was make a school for girls where we teach them more than manners. We teach them society. We teach them. They didn’t even know quite what to teach them to start with. What what does she teach? But she knew that just teaching them English and teaching them how uh the the the manners makeup makeup how to walk with a book on your head. She knew that that you shouldn’t stop there. You need it needs to be more than that. But how and what you have to teach them history, you have to teach them society or something. Yeah. And and there was there was this scene uh much later on when she gets to the school where she does have a chance to teach and there’s an interesting scene in it where she uh this so this this class of maybe 13 year olds ladies old ladies uh young ladies and uh doing English and she keeps badgering at them talk louder and she speak up speak up and but the way she does it and I have I do have I think we have to explain that because it looks really bad when you watch it from our point of view. This she is really going at these kids. But the problem is for the Japanese kids are especially girls are taught to be timid. Whereas in America, girls are not especially taught to be completely over the top. That’s that’s what going that that’s not what they want. But at least to be outspoken. And for that, you just need to speak up. And that’s the that’s what she’s trying to push through these kids’ heads. And it’s very difficult for the Japanese people in a way that we don’t understand. She’s got she’s got that that big staff and she bangs on the table when she says it, which is very intimidating, very scary. But I So I’m thinking, of what they did in those days, so that’s fine. You know, they’re they’re representing what what was done in in the the 19th century. But I could also think that she was so uh out of her depth to figure out how to get a rise out of these girls is let’s let’s just I’m I’m going to be loud so you can be loud. Yeah. She’s modeling it because there’s of course the Japanese society is more about we all need to be doing the same thing before it’s all right. Yeah. So you need to show that you can be loud. So I will shout at you and you see it in American te coaches as well, the the the high school coaches and the the university coaches is that they start shouting at there’s usually men shouting at boys, but there’s a lot of shouting going on that it’s that same kind of dynamic is like if I can show you that you need to oomph this then maybe you can do it. It’s not actually teaching. It’s more like a very rough way of modeling something. Um, but a lot of teaching is is also I will I will show you how to do it because I don’t know how to teach it to you. Yes. a long time ago and I don’t think it’s on I’ll see if it if I can find it on YouTube. There was a documentary about uh Japanese a Japanese uh group of girls trying to learn wrestling uh like fighting and they were training and this training as oh you expect like froze and moves and stuff. No, the entire training consisted of getting these girls to do anything at all. And basic this is exactly what this look what this looked like trying to get through their heads that if you’re in a fight, you need to actually otherwise you’re going to get pummeled. And that’s what this this reminded me so much of that, you know, frustration on part of um Yeah. And and also it shows you how impossible this is actually is. Yeah. I mean, she was trying to teach them a language that they couldn’t speak, didn’t understand, and they wouldn’t even speak up. Uh so even if they had learned the language, nobody would understand them because they’d never speak. No, it’s really, really hard. And she didn’t even really want to teach him the language. That wasn’t what she was there for. It’s a step to something. You you do stuff in school where you go why did we even spend years on that and sometimes it’s for a completely different reason. Why did you spend so many years on mathematics? Because you need to learn how to use your brain not because you need to learn how to do algebra. You know, you’re not going to use algebra in most of your professions. But if you’ve done it once, then your brain has actually had exercise. And so if you come across something that’s hard, you can actually sit there and figure it out. And some of the things that you learn in school and which she doesn’t even get to that point is is learn how to learn. And at the moment she’s just trying to cram in information into these kids’ heads and get get some anything to come out of them at all. Yeah. And and what I found interesting because it didn’t go anywhere was the the time they spent on the theater group that they started that was with all the let’s call it the the former expats all the the kids who had studied abroad and are now adults and they all wanted to do something with the language. So they did was it the Shakespeare or No, I don’t think so. Like Shaw it was it was something it’s too early for Shaw but it wasn’t a Shakespeare. Yeah, but they did they did an an English play, English language play, and it was very cool to watch them do it. And I think something like that actually does a whole lot of things. You can teach if if they they often do plays in school and this is there’s also it’s formative to do plays and it’s fun and it’s fun and you can do it together and that’s very important in Japanese society that you all work as a team and that you’re all doing going for this thing together. So I think that would have been a lot more uh useful to to start a theater group within that school than to bang with the poll. And there was about Oh yeah, but we don’t know if because the school and the theater group are not at the same time. Some of the That’s right. That’s why I said it didn’t go anywhere. But that really was interesting. I I think they implied that that once she gets to a school, she can start another theater group within the school. the the the story takes place over like 40 years in and and you don’t have time to do everything. And and this kind of movie, this is kind of a bog standard Japanese TV movie. These are TV movies in which they do a little bit and leave a lot on the table. Yeah, they do. Um, they also uh show her, as we’ve discussed, in western dress, in western fashion, and she also she’s comfortable sitting on chairs. She’s she has a chair and a bed in her room at the end as well. She’s this is like this this lazy chair that she that we see her in the final scene, but it’s in her own house, not in her parents house. Yeah. So, in her and it it’s in her own house. I from what I thought is that that was actually the school that she had opened up. She was uh the head of that school for the last 40 years. Yeah, that last bit is a little bit hard to follow. So yeah, you’re probably supposed to know all this. Um it is some of it’s just shorthand uh filmic shorthand to show oh she lived a life and she had has a good ending because there is a beautiful line at the end and stuff like that. But some so films are always shorthand for things and they have things that the corners that need to be cut. One of the corners that they very much cut was uh as wonderful the is the wardrobe because everything is off the rack. Uh the the the outfits for the little girls are absolutely wrong. They had to get something that fit fitted. And basically the only dress that’s any good is that one completely white dress. Yeah. Yeah. And all the rest is Was it horrible? There’s one where I think she’s actually wearing the wearing something backwards to try and make it look right. Oh no. There was there was one or two with a bustle in the 1880s. Yes. And and some of the flounces were correct, but there it’s a lot of I think that the Japanese garb was actually better than than the western garb. What about the head the hats? Cuz she did properly wear hats where she wore a hat, but it wasn’t the right kind of hat. It it it’s again it’s from the prop department and and I think that if you have a choice between making a movie from prop department stuff and just do it and make not making a movie at all is make make the movie. Make the movie. Do it. Always do it. Uh you can always make a better movie later. And it and the actors all of them are are wonderful. Yeah, I loved every one of them. Very different. Um, one of the problems that Westerners is going to have for watching Japanese is that you have to identify all the characters pretty quickly and the demographic is pretty much the same, but they make sure that these girls look quite different. Yeah, I had no problem with it. The guys mostly look different. I have a couple where but the guys are not that important. The girls, they look very different. even the mother who’s the the fifth fifth lady in it is diff very different look um in a way that anybody can can see um I know that they they take particular attention to that I’ve seen in another thing where people absolutely looked too much like they simply colorcoded them because they realized okay that’s that’s going to be difficult or they for modern things they do like a gent one gentleman with curly hair there’s no gentleman with curly hair in Japan So they curl their hair here. They couldn’t do that because they wouldn’t have had that. They have uh they have actually have the Gibson girl hair a little bit too early, which is very good for Japanese hair, but it’s too early. Yeah, it’s a bit on the early side. Yeah, it it’s not that important, I think. But for this movie, it doesn’t really matter that that the fashion is off. Um the the father and the mother really that showed us the dynamic very clearly about where they had come from and what would be good not to continue with. Yeah. And worse that because he was he was trying to be progressive and the way he was with his wife was not progressive. He shouting for that bath over and over again every single day. He had a very weird idea of of what is uh what should be good for his wife and what should be good for his daughter. It’s very normal, very different from each other. And yes, I think the reason that she got as far as she did was because of the father, but um but he also kept her kept her back at at some point. So once she was an adult, he he was more of a hindrance than a fact that he had had a a push forward in her at all. Mhm. Sending her off to the States at age six was Yes, it was cruel, but yeah. What’s the alternative? Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, she would have been just another housewife in uh in Japan. And um spoiler for the movie, but one of these girls just after all of that just dies of cholera. Yeah. Could happen to you anytime. The color epidemics were a thing in the 19th century in in Japan. It could happen to anyone anytime. So you might as well go to send your kid off to to to the states to to do no god good God knows what what. Yeah. I do assume that he sent them off with with uh was sent off with an official institute and there were people overseeing it. So he was not sending them off to to really whatever but kind of yes. You don’t know if if if the girl comes back at all because anything can happen in those 10 10 11 years. She could marry locally. Yeah. He can he can marry at 16 15 even. Yeah. Yeah. and she’d probably she could be Americanized and say, “No, forget it. I’m not going back.” And I think it’s quite possible that the guardianship of her would have been with with the the the people who she was staying with because she cannot have a guardian that’s halfway across the world. That doesn’t work that way. So, they may they specifically say it didn’t work because they they’re given into the guardianship of the ambassador there. Oh. And so he’s like, I wasn’t I I’m suddenly taking care of five girls. What what’s happening here? One of turned out to be six years old. And then he gets called back, I think. And then the girls have to be some of the girls get need to go back. Two two of the five girls need to go back uh after only one year. And then they just simply divide the other girls over whoever is there. And she ends up with uh the American uh family there. Very nice American family. Yeah. who help her to to then go back once again um after she realizes that she can’t do anything with just a high school education in Japan. So, she needs to go get a university degree and so she uses Yes. she uses her network and that starts with those uh foster parents. Yeah. um one of the other girls who was a little older I think one of them is actually as 13 I think when she comes gets does get a chance to go to college and she fares better when she comes back so that’s where where gets the idea of I need to get better more education and somebody needs to fund it which was a problem but she worked it out and you know this is this film is about suffragy about uh women position of women and uh and this is why she’s on the bill because she got there in the end. I don’t think the film actually gives you like like I’m sure she was parted to some some laws here and there but the film doesn’t tell you. It doesn’t tell you. So, there’s stuff that you’re supposed to for the wiki. I’ll look it up on the wiki, but it sort of gives you a background picture uh landscape picture, you know, of what happened. Yeah. O of of all the um emancipation waves that we’ve had, there’s always been key names, you know, Germaine Greer and Alleta Yakobs and people like that who have been catapulted into the the the social consciousness of look those people have done so much in that social improvement uh time to help because that that they’re worth remembering. So maybe it’s not clear which one thing they did that was important. What this what Umeo did was she organized that school finally in the end she is actually doing that school all by herself. It takes her a long time to get going and once she’s got that going all the other women are off uh on different tracks. Yeah. So that’s maybe why she is specifically remembered because she actually followed through on that school. But it can’t be just one school because that is not a re that is not enough of a revolution for to be on the bill. She was clearly she had the ear of the prime minister. She had all these ambassadors that she continuously that’s why she’s on the bill. And you you see that from the time that she comes back to Japan, she is actually in the higher regions of everything. She’s like in high society because she can’t not be in high society. She is so well educated comparatively speaking. Yeah. Um this is an really good movie. Um I would suggest watching it. The the one on Daily Motion has subtitles baked in so go at it. And I think the other one also the several different versions. Uh, when you watch a Japanese subtitled version on something like that, you sometimes watch out. Sometimes there’s stuff written at the top of the page. Sometimes they get and they they might, you know, have when the new person arrives on the screen, they might have an actual signage saying this is this person for that became my prime minister and so and so. And those sort of things are worth freezing the screen for and taking the time to read. Uh we were watching Atsuhime was it now 10 years ago or so and it’s 50 episodes or 49 episodes. It’s a long long thing and they did that all the time and it was very necessary because you had so many political figures. Oh god. And they all look the same the same and they’re all wearing the same thing, all having the same hairdo and one might be older and younger than the other. And uh and then but they would repeat over the course of this very long series. They would repeat like, “Oh, that was the guy from that general over there.” And yes, um, I very very much appreciate that in Japanese historical pieces. Yes. And I think that’s my opinion. And that’s my opinion and we’re sticking to it.
For #AsianHistoryMonth we are reviewing “Tsuda Umeko: The Foreign Exchange Student who will be on the 5000 Bill”, a Japanese movie from 2022. Umeko was a pioneer in women’s education, who was sent to the United States to study in the 1870s. What does she encounter upon her return to Japan as a young woman? Will she be able to further the cause of emancipation? What are the things that Japan has honored her for to put her on bank notes?
0:00 Tsuda Umeko on the 5000 Yen bank note
2:12 Watch the movie on Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8m9j20
Mention #AtsuHime (taiga drama) 2008
3:15 Umeko inventing emancipation and suffrage
4:06 Coming back to Japanese life
5:00 Becoming a teacher & standing up
6:45 The Tsuda family sending a child
9:24 Young adulthood – giving back to Japan
10:20 Marriage versus working
Mention: Aletta Jacobs (Dutch physician and women’s suffrage activist)
12:57 Prince Ito Hirobumi (first prime minister of Japan)
15:05 Inventing the future of women
16:00 Teaching English by repetition and shouting
17:40 Teaching by “modelling”
19:33 Teaching to develop the student
20:40 The English language theater group
22:08 Fashion western outfits
24:40 Actors
26:13 Umeko’s parents and life choices
28:18 Guardianship over Umeko in the US
29:55 Umeko’s effect on women’s suffrage in Japan
31:10 Umeki’s status
32:10 Watching the film with subtitles
Watch the movie on Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8m9j20
Mention #AtsuHime (taiga drama) 2008
===============================
Music: Magnetic Rag by Scott Joplin
===============================
Find us here:
https://twopeopleopnion.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/2PeoplesOpinions
#twopeoplesopinion
#movie
#film
#tvreview
#japenesedrama
#japenese
津田梅子 ～お札になった留学生～
#TsudaUmekoOsatsuniNattaRyugakusei (2022)
https://mydramalist.com/717031-tsuda-umeko-osatsu-ni-natta-ryugakusei
Director: #FujitaMeiji
Screenwriter: #HashibeAtsuko
#HiroseSuzu as #TsudaUmeko
#HaradaMieko as Tsuda Umeko [Old] | [Narrator]
#IkedaElaiza as Yamakawa Sutematsu
#SakumaYui as Nagai Shige
#MiyazawaEmma as Yoshimasu Ryo
Inowaki Kai as Kanda Naibu
#ItoHideaki as Tsuda Sen [Dad]
#UchidaYuki as Tsuda Hatsu [Mom]
Inoue Nozomi as Tsuda Kotoko [Umeko’s older sister]
Dean Fujioka as Mori Arinori
#TanakaKei as #ItoHirobumi