ABSTRACT
Florence Nightingale has been an important figure for Japanese nurses since modern nursing was introduced. The ‘Florence Nightingale Oath’ is still sometimes made when successful nursing students are given their ‘caps’, symbols of trained nurses, on their graduation at many nursing schools. However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Nightingale was also a significant moral figure to women in general. She was seen as a great woman from whose example good Japanese women should learn female virtues. The central authority emphasized moral training for all pupils and students in which the stories of ‘great men and women’ were introduced to teach moral ethics based on Japanese Confucianism. Florence Nightingale was a useful female ‘sage’, and girls were expected to absorb the Confucian-interpreted moral qualities of Nightingale. For nurses, there were of course more meanings that the ‘sage’ conveyed. Nightingale was a courageous woman, who not only devoted herself to taking care of others, but also sacrificed herself for the good of the nation in war. In this context, she was an icon of an ideal nurse, particularly for nurses who worked in wars. This chapter will focus on ‘Nightingale-ism’ in relation to Japanese-Confucian female virtue in general and on the significance of Nightingale as a ‘sage’ for contemporary nurses.
