DOMESTIC SERVICE IN INDUSTRIALIZING JAPAN: THE JOB CHOICES OF UNMARRIED YOUNG WOMEN IN THE SENNAN DISTRICT, OSAKA PREFECTURE, 1893–1927

Abstract

This study examines the manner in which the significance of housework affected the job choices of young Japanese women over three decades spanning the beginning of the twentieth century, by focusing on domestic servants hired by the Hiroumi family, a merchant family living in the Sennan District, Osaka Prefecture. The family recruited unmarried young women from within Sennan as domestic servants. These women benefited from domestic service because it enabled them to become skilled in housework. Around the late 1890s, however, they preferred to work in the textile industry, the mainstay of Sennan's economy at the time, not recognizing the value of domestic work. Consequently, the Hiroumi family experienced a labour shortage. After this period, though, young women attached increasing importance to housework, and by the 1920s, they were as willing to be employed in domestic service as in the textile industry. This made it less difficult for the Hiroumi family to recruit domestic servants.