The Ladies' Journal
The Ladies' Journal was a Chinese monthly women's magazine published from 1915 to 1931. Produced by the Shanghai-based Commercial Press, the largest publishing house in Republican China, the journal was the longest-lasting and widest-circulating women's magazine during the period, seeing a circulation of around 10,000 copies by 1921. The magazine began publication under the editorship of Wang Yunzhang, who also edited the Fiction Monthly. Described by later commentators as conservative in its early years, The Ladies' Journal included coverage of domestic issues, women's education, and serialized short stories, mainly of the "Mandarin duck and butterfly" genre of Chinese romantic fiction. Initially written in Classical Chinese, it began publishing short stories in written vernacular Chinese in 1917 and had fully transitioned to vernacular by 1920.
Accompanying criticisms for its conservative stances and a cultural shift towards feminism among New Culture journals following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, The Ladies' Journal took a turn towards coverage of social issues and translations of foreign literature, especially after Zhang Xichen became editor-in-chief in 1921. Although Zhang had no prior experience or interest writing about women's issues, he became a dedicated liberal feminist and recruited like-minded contributors to the journal, including his assistant editor Zhou Jianren. As a follower of Swedish feminist Ellen Key, Zhang promoted a more open attitude to sexuality and love marriage over arranged marriages. A 1925 special issue on the "new sexual morality" attracted significant backlash. This, alongside political disagreements with the Commercial Press, led to Zhang and Zhou's removal as editors. Zhang established a competitor journal entitled The New Woman, while The Ladies' Journal returned to a more conservative stance and a focus on domestic topics. Already struggling financially due to decreased advertiser investment during the Great Depression, the journal was cancelled after the press's headquarters were destroyed in a month-long battle between Chinese and Japanese forces.
History
The Chinese publishing industry expanded greatly over the 1890s and 1900s, spurred on by the introduction of Western printing technology and the creation of joint-stock companies. As the Chinese state ended its reliance on scholar-officials following the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform and the 1911 Republican Revolution, many intellectuals turned to the publishing industry. Tabloids and magazines were the most lucrative fields. Although many different women's periodicals were founded in China during this period, none lasted for more than a few years, most ceasing publication within a year. The self-financed nature of these early publications led to their editors accumulating debt and needing to cancel their magazines. They were informally distributed through peddlers or small bookstores, often resulting in difficulties in collecting the proceeds. Many saw circulations of only hundreds or a few thousand copies. Early journals tended to focus on feminist issues, advocating for gender equality, women's education, and the abolition of foot binding. In the early 1910s, around thirty new women's periodicals were founded. Press restrictions by Yuan Shikai's regime slowed the rate of new establishments from 1912 to 1916, but two hundred more women's periodicals emerged over the following two decades.1915–1920
The Commercial Press entered into magazine publishing with the Diplomatic News in 1902. They began the Eastern Miscellany in 1904 and the Chinese Educational Review in 1909, both of which saw commercial success. Throughout much of the early 20th century, they were the largest publishing house in China. Between 1902 and 1937, they published 76 periodicals, of which 16 ran for more than ten years. They began publishing a monthly women's magazine in January 1915, with the Chinese name Funü Zashi and the English alternate title The Ladies' Journal. It initially saw a circulation of around 3,000 copies. Unlike previous women's magazines, it was distributed across the country thanks to the Commercial Press's established infrastructure. Based in Shanghai, the magazine was available in twenty-eight cities in China, as well as Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore.The magazine was aimed at urban women; it was necessarily also aimed at the middle- and upper-classes, as literacy was seen as a marker of class status during its period of publication. Much of its readership was likely male, attracted to the journal by its short stories and a desire to learn more about modern women. Similar journals such as the Women's Eastern Times purportedly had as much as 90% of their readership consisting of men. One December 1915 announcement in The Ladies' Journal stated that "those who like science and the arts can buy our magazine; this journal is not only for women, but if women read it, we would appreciate it." One of its initial competitors was Woman's World, a Shanghai magazine edited by Chen Diexian, which was first published in December 1914. The Ladies' Journal was more commercially successful, and Woman's World was forced to close in 1915 after just seven issues.
Wang Yunzhang served as the journal's first editor-in-chief. He also served as the editor for another Commercial Press periodical, Fiction Monthly. During The Ladies
Wang became only an ostensible editor-in-chief in 1920, when the Commercial Press hired the writer Shen Yanbing as the de facto editor of the magazine. Shen thought poorly of Wang, criticizing him for being a member of the "Saturday School" of low-brow popular fiction. Already unpopular with many of the other contributors to the journal, Wang left the Commercial Press in November 1920. Shen was offered the editorship of both The Ladies' Journal and Fiction Monthly; unwilling to manage both journals, he chose to take over editor duties at Fiction Monthly'' only.
1921–1925
In the aftermath of the May Fourth Movement, many other women's magazines were established, although The Ladies' Journal had a longer duration of publication and a wider circulation than any of its competitors. Zhang Xichen, formerly a staff member of the Eastern Miscellany, took over as editor-in-chief of The Ladies' Journal in January 1921. Zhang later wrote that the Commercial Press cared little about the content of The Ladies' Journal, valuing it solely for profit, and that they were unable to find anyone else to take over after Shen's departure. Zhang was given largely unrestricted control over the journal, despite having no previous writing experience in women's issues nor interest in the topic.Soon after becoming the editor, Zhang lowered the cost of the magazine from three to two jiao. Alongside a shift towards a more explicitly feminist perspective, this significantly increased readership, and circulation soon tripled to 10,000 per issue. This was extremely high for a women's journal in China, although it was quite small in comparison to similar magazines in Japan and the United States. There were likely several times more readers than the number of copies sold, as copies were often passed among many readers. The American sinologist Roswell S. Britton wrote in 1933 that individual magazine issues were passed between an estimated ten to twenty readers.
Despite the growth, the journal continued to receive the vast majority of its submissions from men, prompting Zhang to write editorials proclaiming that The Ladies' Journal was a "discursive space for women with lofty ideals" and calling on women to take an increased role in the call for their emancipation. In January 1922, Zhang took on the activist Zhou Jianren as the assistant editor of the journal.
The Commercial Press's head editor Wang Yun-wu took Zhang and Zhou off the editorial team following public criticism of a January 1925 special issue on sexual morality and a dispute over Zhang's participation in the May Thirtieth Movement. Their last issue was in August 1925. In response to crackdowns and censorship by the Beiyang government, the Commercial Press had begun to avoid publishing progressive literature, lessening their tolerance for Zhang's radicalism. Zhang was moved to another Commercial Press journal, Natural World, before leaving the Commercial Press entirely later that year. After leaving the magazine, Zhang and many of his close colleagues followed him to his new publishing house,, and worked on a new feminist journal named The New Woman. The New Woman was a direct competitor of The Ladies' Journal until the former ceased publication in 1929, and Kaiming became one of the five largest publishing houses in China.
1926–1931
Wang appointed a long-time employee of the press, Du Jiutian, to serve as editor of The Ladies' Journal from September 1925 to June 1930. He was viewed as incompetent by some editors. The scholar Jin Jungwon characterized him as a "headache" for the press but unable to be fired, as he was the cousin of Du Yaquan, a prominent Commercial Press science editor. His uneventful tenure saw the magazine return to a more traditional stance. Seeking to revitalize the magazine and possibly facing financial problems, the writer and activist Ye Shengtao took over in mid-1930.Ye left only nine months later, when he was replaced by Yang Runyu, a female writer who had previously studied abroad in France and wrote columns on French literature for the magazine. Some sources claim that Yang was only a nominal director, and that the former assistant editor served as the de facto editor-in-chief. The journal remained popular in its later years despite the changes in editorial staff. Surveys in 1925 and 1930 found that The Ladies' Journal remained one of the most popular magazines among the Chinese public. An analysis of reader letters from a health advice column in the magazine suggests an increasing female readership during the mid-1920s, the proportion of letters from women rising from 20% in 1925 to around 50% after 1928.
The journal's last issue was in December 1931. Beginning on 28 January 1932, Shanghai was the center of a month-long battle between Chinese and Japanese forces. Shortly after fighting broke out, the Commercial Press headquarters were destroyed, their printing works bombed and magazine offices burned to the ground; the Commercial Press leadership presumed the attack was an attempt to halt the production of their anti-Japanese publications. Already facing financial difficulties due to decreased advertising revenue in the wake of the Great Depression, the Commercial Press cancelled The Ladies' Journal, although the Eastern Miscellany soon returned to publication. The Ladies' Journal had a total of 17 volumes and 204 issues over its publication.