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Oh Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 192, No Country for Young Women, Part 1.

Now, I initially struggled as to whether to make this topic a one or two-part episode, and in the end, I felt the subject matter justified having two episodes for one simple reason.

Generally, mainstream history is pretty male-dominated, the simple fact that women's liberation and feminism are both, historically speaking,

relatively recent movements, means that for a large chunk of recorded history, influential

women, particularly influential women who aren't anti-feminist caricatures created by male

writers, are pretty hard to come by.

My particular interest in political history does tend to exacerbate that problem.

As a result, we just haven't spent as much time with powerful female figures as I'd like.

So when I came across a story of three very influential women who operated just off the main stage of one of my favorite periods in Japanese history, well, I couldn't say no to that.

Our story starts in 1871, when five young women were summoned to the imperial palace in Tokyo.

In 1871, Tokyo only recently renamed from its old moniker of Edo, was a city on the rise.

The groundwork for the nation's first railway, connecting Tokyo to the nearby port of Yokohama,

was busily being laid, as were designs for New Western schools, a new European-style police force,

and many other new oddities imported from the West.

...