GORDON SUGGESTS the new government cautiously encouraged select

women to play an active role in support of its programs. It included five

young women (ages nine through sixteen) in the group of students who
accompanied the Iwakura Mission. These youths stayed on in the United
States to receive an American education and become model women for
constructing a new Japan. the youngest of these students, Tsuda Ume (nine
years old when she left Japan), became a powerful figure promoting
expanded social roles for women. Upon her return, she founded a college
for women today known as Tsuda University, and she became a leader in
women’s education.
In these same years, a vigorous debate on appropriate roles and rights for
women and men unfolded among those outside the government. this
debate began with men discussing how women ought to be treated. The
best known forum was the Meiji Six Journal. Some of the most important
intellectuals of the time, including Fukuzawa Yukichi and Mori Arinori
(later to be minister of education), wrote on the meaning of equality
between men and women, the value of education for women, and the
demerits of legally recognizing concubines and giving their children rights
of inheritance.
the Meiji rulers by the 1880s had concluded that their own wives might
play a semipublic role as models and representatives of the nation to the
world.. Elite men and women took up ballroom dancing and entertained
foreigners at grand parties in the heart of Tokyo. And in public discussions
among men, even in the government, the idea that women might support
the nation with a political role had some support. Top officials as well as
journalists discussed whether it might not be appropriate for female as
well as male children in the imperial line to ascend to the throne. In the
mid-1880s some prominent government figures supported this idea.
The beginning of the woman's school education The woman’s school education began. And then, the
women started to be gotten opportunity of education. But the principle of education proceed to the
principle of “Good wife and wise mother”.

MARA PATESSIO also points out how the number of women in public
sphere increased especially after the introduction of prefectural assemblies
in 1879 .Newspapers articles on women’s presence at political meetings
showed that women too were getting educated in local politics . Infact,
some were not just passive listeners but also helped raise money towards
the expenses that men would incur once the diet would be established like
the women reminiscent of the french revolution .