Youth and Rural Modernity in Japan, 1900s–20s

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, social leaders in Japan and around the world saw the development of youth movements as having an essential role to play in the creation of modern society. In their eyes, youth represented the potentiality of modernity. An industrializing Japanese society ushered youth to the fore in a variety of ways. By the 1920s, elite students in the modern school system, highly trained in Western knowledge and destined for careers as bureaucrats, were referred to as ‘the engine of the nation’. Other students led socialist and communist movements as self-styled ‘vanguards’ of society. On the street, an increasing number of culturally subversive urban youth — sometimes called ‘moga’ (modern girls) and ‘mobo’ (modern boys) — embodied modern consumer culture and urban decadence. But while these archetypes of youth prevailed in big cities, the countryside also witnessed the rise of youth — pure, strong, and hardworking agrarian youth came to symbolize Japan’s masculine empire.