Waseda’s women students
Tue, Jun 30, 2015-
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Waseda University Archives
Professor Mizuki Hiwa
In prewar Japan, women were excluded from higher education. Present day institutions such as Tsuda College and Japan Women’s University were deemed vocational schools under government ordinances. The first higher education institution to accept women as regular students was Tohoku Imperial University in 1913. Although other institutions such as Tokyo Imperial University accepted women as auditing students in 1917, Tohoku Imperial University’s acceptance of women as regular students was unconventional.
Image taken from a banquet of national literature students before being deployed to the battlefield ( 1944)
The first women to attend Waseda University were twelve auditing students accepted in 1921. At that time, University President Yoshiro Hiranuma expressed that the idea of liberalizing universities to accept women as regular students was not new and in fact, universities were behind the times on the issue. In 1920, universities considered measures that would accept women as regular students. However, opposition from the Ministry of Education prevented them from coming to fruition.
In 1939, Waseda began accepting women as regular students. The first year saw one student enter the Law School and three enter the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Up until April, 1945, there were 51 women who studied at the School of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, four in the School of Law, and one in the School of Economics. Following the end of the war, women were accepted as regular students in the Higher Normal School.
Image of Higher Normal School mixed choir group (1948)
However, according to written records, women students faced many hardships due to a lack of sufficient facilities. Examples include a lack of suitable space for women students to eat lunch, and the absence of women-only bathrooms. There were also instances where male students who were not used to being around young women would keep their distance and refrain from conversation with women in their classes.
