Licensure of Teachers from Women\u27s Colleges in Pre-War Japan

This paper describes and analyses the demands for automatic licensure of high school teachers in the light of institutionalization of higher education of women in the pre-war Japan by tracing the movement of the students and the educational organizations and examining the response of the govenment. In the latter Taisho to the early Showa era, many women enrolled in college and completed their college course to get licensure of teachers. The govenment started authorizing selected educational institutions to give license to their graduates who completed their teacher education program. Many women\u27s colleges applied for accreditation primarily because it ensured automatic licensure for their graduates. But it was not only reason. By being formally allowed by the government to issue teachers licenses, those schools could show that they have enough contents to take part in such an important function of the modern state. To be short, they were legitimized in the apparatus of modern state. This caused the expansion of the higher education of women and this expansion acceralated the institutionalization of the higher education of women