CHAPTER XIII.

TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS.

The woman question in Japan is at the present moment a matter of much consideration. There seems to be an uneasy feeling in the minds of even the more conservative men that some change in the status of woman is inevitable, if the nation wishes to keep the pace it has set for itself. The Japanese women of the past and of the present are exactly suited to the position accorded them in society, and any attempt to alter them without changing their status only results in making square pegs for round holes. If the pegs hereafter are to be cut square, the holes must be enlarged and squared to fit them. The Japanese woman stands in no need of alteration unless her place in life is somehow enlarged, nor, on the other hand, can she fill a larger place without additional training. The men of New Japan, to whom the opinions and customs of the Western world are becoming daily more familiar, while they shrink aghast, in many cases, at the thought that their women may ever become like the forward, self-assertive, half-masculine women of the West, show a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with the smallness and narrowness of the lives of their wives and daughters,--a growing belief that better educated women would make better homes, and that the ideal home of Europe and America is the product of a more advanced civilization than that of Japan. Reluctantly in many cases, but still almost universally, it is admitted that in the interest of the homes and for the sake of future generations, something must be done to carry the women forward into a position more in harmony with what the nation is reaching for in other directions. This desire shows itself in individual efforts to improve by more advanced education daughters of exceptional promise, and in general efforts for the improvement of the condition of women. Well-to-do fathers are willing to spend more money on the education of their daughters, to send them abroad, if possible, to complete their studies, or to postpone the time of marriage so that plans for higher education may be carried through. Where, ten years ago, the number of women who had been abroad for study might be counted on the fingers of one hand, there are now three or four times that number in T[=o]ky[=o] alone. Another sign of the times is the fact that husbands going abroad on business or for pleasure are more inclined to take their wives with them, even if it be only for a few months. There are now to be found, in all the larger cities, women who have spent a longer or shorter time in some foreign country, whose minds have been opened and whose horizons have been enlarged by contact with new ideas. All this cannot fail to have its effect, sooner or later, upon the country at large.

The efforts for the improvement of women in general may be grouped into four classes: by legislation, by education, through the press, and by means of societies for mutual improvement.

Of the recent legislation concerning marriage and divorce and its effect on the family, I have spoken in a preceding chapter. The latest statistics show that, while before the new laws were enacted divorces were one to every three marriages, they have now been reduced to one in five. It must be said, however, that the law is still somewhat in advance of public opinion. While the chance of permanence in marriage is better now than it was before the new code came into force, custom is still stronger than the law, and marriage is too often a temporary arrangement. In many cases the wife knows little or nothing of her new rights, and even when she does know, she has seldom the self-assertion to make a stand for them, but meekly submits to the dictates of those whom she is bound by custom, if not by law, to respect and obey without question. But the fact that the laws have actually been improved means, in a country like Japan, in which the government is the moulder of public opinion, that the custom will some day conform to the law.

In the matter of property owning, women, under the new code, are fairly independent. As I have already stated, every woman in Japan is expected to become a wife, and as a matter of fact, the number of unmarried women is so small that it is hardly necessary to mention them. Wives, under Japanese law, are divided into two classes: the wife who enters her husband's family, and the wife whose husband becomes a member of her family. In the latter case the wife is the head of the family, is responsible for the debts of the family, and has the right to use and profit by the husband's property. In the former case (and as I have already stated, the great majority of wives enter their husband's families), the husband is responsible, and has, consequently, the right to use and profit by his wife's property. In all cases, unless the husband is physically or mentally unfit, he has the management of his wife's wealth. In case of the husband's disability the woman takes care of her own. A wife may, by application to a court, cause the husband to furnish security for the property that she has intrusted to him; and she may, with her husband's consent, engage in independent business. The property that she thus acquires is her own and not the husband's. Any property in the family, the ownership of which is not perfectly established, belongs to the head of the family, whether male or female. We thus see that the law of Japan fully recognizes the right of married women to hold property, although only in exceptional cases are they allowed the management of their own holdings. The law also regards the wife, in household matters, as her husband's agent.

In actual practice, it is not uncommon for the wife to manage the entire income of the family, receiving it from her husband and acting as his treasurer. The wife's own earnings are seldom given to the husband, and her position is one of entire independence in the disposal of whatever she adds to the family revenue. But should the wife bring into the family at marriage property which passes into the husband's management, the chances are that, unless a divorce should occur, she will never lay any claim to the principal, or think of it again as her own. While her husband cannot actually dispose of it without her consent, she is pretty certain to give her consent should he ask it, and he may do very nearly anything that he chooses with it. We thus see that the tendency is to give the management of the income, as a part of the management of the household, to the woman, and leave the disposal of the principal, as a part of the outside business, to the care of the man. This system of domestic finance seems not unlike the common practice in thrifty and well-managed homes in America, and shows that a spirit of mutual confidence between husband and wife belongs to Japan as to Western nations. As the result of my own observation in a number of homes, I should say that the judgment of the wife in money matters is quite as much trusted in Japan as in America, and that, in this one respect at least, her place in the home is as responsible a one as that of the Western housekeeper. One instance may be cited of a woman whose business ability is so well known as to have a national reputation. By birth a member of a family which is remarkable for its success in all financial undertakings, she has inherited a large share of the family characteristic, and is credited with the personal management of a large bank, as well as other successful business undertakings. Her husband's name and not her own appears on the prospectuses and in the newspapers, but unless report is very far astray, she is the business man of the family, and her sound sense and good judgment have built up the fortune which is their common possession.

In the educational system of Japan, schools for girls are provided by the government, but no provision for studies more advanced than those of the middle schools for boys is included in the scheme, with the single exception of the Higher Normal School in T[=o]ky[=o], in which a limited number of young women are trained to take positions as teachers in the ordinary normal schools for girls. To quote from the Annual Report of the Minister of Education for the year 1898, the latest to which I have access, "Higher female schools are institutions designed to give instruction in such higher subjects of general education as are necessary for females." This shows with considerable completeness the idea that dominates all government and much private effort for the education of women in Japan. The schools are to teach simply such subjects as are necessary for females; anything more would be superfluous, possibly dangerous. The thought of women as individuals, with minds and souls to be trained and developed to their highest possibilities, is still somewhat foreign to the mind of the average Japanese man. In its stead is the idea that females must be instructed in such subjects as are necessary for a proper understanding of their duties as wives and mothers. But if Japan to-day is where England and America were in the first half of the nineteenth century, the country is certainly moving forward, as the statistics in regard to education for the three successive years 1896, 1897, and 1898 show. Great efforts are being made to increase the attendance of girls at the common schools, and with gratifying results.[43]

[43] The following in the report for 1898 may be of interest:--

Percentage of pupils of school age receiving instruction:--

Year. Girls. Boys. 1896 47.54 79.00 1897 50.86 80.67 1898 53.73 82.42

The total number of girls of school age not receiving instruction is 1,552,601; of boys, 662,985; while the total number of girls of school age is 3,642,263, and of boys, 4,067,161.

As we advance into the higher schools, the discrepancy in numbers between the two sexes grows greater. In the kindergartens the attendance of girls is nearly equal to that of boys; in the elementary schools there are three boys to two girls; in the higher elementary schools, seven boys to two girls. The boys' middle schools, which are equivalent in grade to the girls' high schools, have fourteen boys taking their courses to every two girls in the high schools. In the apprentice and technical schools, there are fifteen men to every two women. Even the normal schools, which in our own country are almost given over to women, in Japan have six male students to every female. The "special schools," mainly professional, have, to 11,069 men, 73 women, all enrolled in private schools, and presumably taking medical courses. Beyond this point women have no opportunities offered to them. In the higher schools, equivalent to the college and graduate courses given by universities in America, 7,224 young men are given opportunities that women must go abroad to obtain.

These figures are, as I have said, for the year 1898. The year 1901 sees two hopeful movements well begun. One of these is the opening of an institution bearing the title of "Female University," endowed and supported by Japanese, through the strenuous efforts of Mr. Jinzo Naruse, a prominent Christian who has spent some time in America. At its opening, five hundred girls were glad to enter, but of these very few are ready for college work. Mr. Naruse, however, believes that in time he will be able to enlarge his college department and diminish the preparatory, which is now almost the whole of the school. He has the support and encouragement of many wealthy and influential Japanese, among them Count Okuma, the well-known progressive statesman. On the day of the opening of the school, Count Okuma, in a speech from the platform, said that the nation would be twice as strong if its women were well educated. This he called "setting up a double standard." He pointed out that Turkey, Egypt, Persia, and China were countries which had tried to get along with a "single standard," and which had fallen conspicuously behind. He called attention to the fact that Japan's primitive religion had for its central figure the Goddess of Light, but that, unfortunately for the well-being of the state, woman had been gradually dethroned and thrust down into a low place. After speaking of the debt that Japan owed to China for the civilization and the ethical system that had stood her so long in good stead, the veteran statesman went on to say that society in Japan was disfigured by abuses which were beyond any simple remedy. The only effective medicine was to be found in a radical reform of the ideals of family life, and this could only be effected by an improvement in the status of woman,--an improvement which such institutions as the one that day opened would greatly aid in bringing about.

These words from one of the most honored leaders of Japanese thought voice the feeling that is prevalent throughout Japan in this thirty-fourth year of Méiji. That it is actually moving both government and people is shown by the words of Mr. Kikuchi, Minister of Education, to the Council of Provincial Governors held in T[=o]ky[=o] in June, 1901. In speaking of the progress of education throughout the country, he stated his intention to push forward the work of secondary education for girls, saying that a prefecture which refused to make provision for such education by 1903 might be compelled to do so by the government.

The other hopeful educational effort to which I have alluded is a school started on a small scale, but with a high standard, by a Japanese woman whose name is almost as well known in America as in Japan, as an educator of great ability and earnestness of purpose. After many years of work as a teacher in the Peeresses' School, a place of great honor from the Japanese standpoint, she has resigned her position to carry out a long-cherished plan. With the pecuniary aid of friends in America, she has founded a school for the preparation of young women who have finished the courses heretofore open to them, and who wish to become teachers of English in the Government schools. The examinations for such positions have always been open to women, but, because of the difficulty in securing proper preparation, there are few who pass them. Since its opening in September, 1900, the school has been crowded with promising pupils, and the small accommodations with which it began, although already once enlarged, are stretched to the uttermost. The girls come from the government high schools and from the mission schools, and the course offered to them of three years of study in English literature, composition, translation, and methods of teaching has proved a strong attraction. In recognition, perhaps, of this effort on behalf of her countrywomen, certainly, of her position at the head of her profession, this same woman has this year been appointed on the examining committee for the government English examinations, an honor never before given to one of her sex,--in itself a sign of the change in thought that the last few years have wrought.

There can be no doubt that the education of women is moving forward, pushed by the leading men of the country and aided by the earnest work of the women themselves. It is still far behind the education offered to men, and the ideal of most of its promoters is limited to the purely utilitarian; but as long as it moves forward and not backward, and as long as the years of work show an increased number of women fitted to meet the changing conditions of the time, we do well to approve rather than criticise, remembering that the problem is an exceedingly intricate one, and one of which even the best-instructed foreigner can see only a small part of the difficulty.

The year 1901 sees the printing-press almost as much of a power in Japan as in the Western world, and it is interesting to notice that among the innumerable newspapers and magazines now published in the country there are some twenty or more devoted exclusively to the interests of women. To be sure, these women's magazines do not undertake to furnish the loftiest intellectual pabulum, the best of them covering, perhaps, the same range of subjects that is included in "Woman's Journals" in the United States. They devote themselves largely to lectures on morals and manners, and instruction as to how best to perform the duties of the home. These magazines are for the most part written and edited by men, many of them very young men, and serve to show rather what men desire that women should think and do, than to give any insight into the minds of the women themselves. With a combined circulation of perhaps 40,000, they enter many homes, and do something, at least, toward the general enlightening and quickening of the feminine mind that is so noticeable in the Japan of to-day. In regard to the general reading of Japanese women who have had the new education, my own observation leads me to believe that they keep themselves well informed of what is going on in their own country, and of the outside world so far as it affects their own country; but that their interest in the world at large is less than that of American women, and only in exceptional cases do they care much for the sayings or doings of foreigners. In this respect they differ widely from the men, whose minds are reaching continually for new things to graft upon the old civilization.

In the whole list of publications on the woman question, nothing has ever come out in Japan that compares for outspokenness and radical sentiments with a book published within a year or two by Mr. Fukuzawa, the most influential teacher that Japan has seen in this era of enlightenment. It is in two parts, the first an attack, conducted with much skill and humor, upon Kaibara's "Great Learning of Woman," a book which for nearly four hundred years has been supposed to contain all that a woman should know. The last part of Mr. Fukuzawa's work is a constructive essay upon the "New Great Learning of Woman." So revolutionary are the sentiments expressed in the book that many Japanese men hesitate about allowing their wives and daughters to read it, and in at least one modern Christian school it has been ruled out from the school library as too advanced for the reading of the girls. A brief survey of the sentiments and ideas thus boldly set forth will show how far is the attitude of the Japanese from that of the American public on the woman question. We find in Mr. Fukuzawa's book the lofty ideal that belongs to the most advanced modern thought, but its promulgation as a practical working ideal in Japan was of the nature of a thunderclap. Among less tolerant races, men have been lynched, or burned at the stake, for slighter departures from the average code of thought and morals.

Mr. Fukuzawa starts out with the proposition that women are quite equal to men, and should hold equal position and influence. Although he allows that woman's work in the world is quite distinct from that of man, he holds that it is as important, and that she should have the same property-holding privileges and rights. The greatest stress is laid on the point that the same moral obligation for purity of life rests on the husband as on the wife. He goes into the details of the unhappiness resulting from concubinage, putting the duty of the husband in this respect as equal to that of the wife to preserve her chastity, and as this is, next to obedience, the virtue of virtues for a Japanese wife, his argument is as strong as it could well be made. He insists that women should demand as a right from their husbands and families the same privileges and opportunities that men have in society.

Such sentiments are a matter of course in America, and they have been held by a few advanced thinkers in Japan, but no one hitherto has dared in so vigorous and positive a way, and with arguments that come so near home, to try to break the chain of custom that holds women down as inferior beings. Kaibara says that if a woman finds her husband doing wrong, she should gently plead with him, choosing a time when he is most inclined to listen. If he refuses, she should not insist on his hearing her, but wait until he is willing to listen, and though she may try two or three times, she should never anger or irritate him. Fukuzawa says that if this applies to the woman, it should also to the man,--that is to say, if a man finds his wife unfaithful, he is to wait for an opportunity when she is in good humor before he remonstrates with her. Fukuzawa also throws new light on the duty of husbands and fathers to their wives and children in another respect. He says that no man should let the sole responsibility for the happiness of the home fall upon his wife; that a man is responsible for the peace of the home as well as the woman. This view of the matter is entirely new in Japan, as the responsibility for an unhappy home is laid as a matter of course upon the wife. The duty of a wife to her parents-in-law is also treated after the same revolutionary manner. Is it to be wondered at that many men fear the influence of such a book upon their gentle, submissive wives? In this connection it is interesting, however, to note that at a recent Shint[=o] wedding, after the religious ceremony, which in itself marks a great step forward in the Japanese ideal of marriage, the priest who united the couple presented to the bride a copy each of the Kaibara and Fukuzawa books, perhaps with a view to letting her take her choice between the old style and the new, perhaps that she might instruct her husband out of the Fukuzawa book while she put in practice herself the time-honored precepts of Kaibara.

* * * * *

One feature of the times in T[=o]ky[=o], that is perhaps worthy of passing notice, is the tendency of women to form themselves into societies and clubs for the attainment of some common object. Of these women's clubs, the greater proportion are perhaps educational, the members meeting once a month or once a fortnight to listen to a lecture upon some subject that helps to keep them up with the times. There is also a patriotic society, that concerns itself with raising money for sending supplies to soldiers in the field, or for widows and orphans of soldiers, or to help along some other patriotic enterprise. There are societies, too, for general benevolence, or to help in carrying on the work of some one institution. A glance at the membership lists of these associations shows that the motive power is, in almost all cases, the same group of earnest, educated women, who are, in this way and in countless others, doing their utmost to broaden the horizons of their countrywomen, and lead them out into a larger life. This is probably true in the other cities in which a movement of women into clubs and societies is noticeable.

It is when the active women of the new way of thinking, whose lives and thoughts are devoted to work and endeavor rather than to the passive submission and self-abnegation of the old days, find themselves suddenly placed among the surroundings of thirty years ago, that the change of conditions becomes most evident. I cannot think of a better way to illustrate this than to tell the story of one of my Japanese friends and her visit to her husband's relatives in a distant provincial city. The lady who told me the story is a stirring, capable young matron, educated after the modern ways, who has spent most of her happy married life of some fifteen or sixteen years entirely in T[=o]ky[=o], except for a visit of a year to America. She bears a closer resemblance to many kind-hearted, strong, energetic young American women than to the old-time Japanese lady portrayed in these pages. She rises every morning at five, attends to every detail of her housekeeping, watches carefully and with educated common sense over her family of young children, believes in good food, fresh air, and exercise, for boys and girls alike, and is a helpful friend and good neighbor, filling to the full the position of work and influence in which she is placed. Her husband is a successful business man, whom frequent journeys across the Pacific have made thoroughly cosmopolitan, and their children are accustomed to a freedom from conventional restraints and a healthful diet and regimen such as old Japan never knew.

Last year the plan of spending the summer with the husband's relatives, which had been long projected, was actually carried out, and the whole family migrated to the provincial city from which the husband had sprung. The aged mother, a gentlewoman of the old type, was delighted to meet and entertain her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and did her best, with all old-fashioned courtesy, to make the visit a pleasant one. The house was clean and spacious, the mats soft and white, the bows of the lowest, the voices and speech the politest that Japan could furnish, but the healthy, restless children found the conventional restraints irksome, and the old-fashioned diet of rice and pickles, with hardly a variation from morning till night and from week to week, was quite different from the bountiful table to which they had been accustomed. The younger woman could not criticise her mother-in-law's arrangements, neither could she bear to see her children growing thin and pale before her eyes. She consulted her husband, who, in accordance with the antique ideas of propriety, was served his meals at a different time and in a different room from his wife and family. To his food his mother had always added various delicacies which her old-time Spartan spirit would not allow her to set before her daughter-in-law and grandchildren. It would have been quite contrary to her ideas of rank and etiquette for her to make any modification of her ordinary fare for them. As the son was already supplying the funds for carrying on his mother's establishment, it occurred to him that he might increase her allowance on the plea that her summer expenses must be heavy with so large an addition to her household. But the old lady was sure that nothing more was necessary, and would not think of burdening her son with any larger expenses, and could not be induced to accept the offered increase.

Another effort was made to get along upon the meagre fare, but the youngest boy fell ill and had to be taken to a hospital, and the mother decided that something must be done if all the family did not wish to follow him. The happy thought occurred to her of buying something that would be an addition to their scanty menu, and giving it as a present to her mother-in-law. Now a present in Japan can never be refused, so it seemed to the younger woman that she must have found a way of escape from her difficulties. Of course, the present was accepted with many thanks and expressions of unworthiness, and when the meal-hour arrived, each member of the family found an infinitesimal quantity of the delicacy in a small plate at his side. But as soon as the meal was over, the dear old lady, who had by strict economy managed to leave the greater part of the gift untouched, sent out to all the neighbors presents from what had been intended to feed the hungry children at home. The experiment was tried again and again, but always with the same result. No present could be kept for family use alone. Of everything but the barest necessaries, the greater part must be sent out in gifts to others.

At last the husband and wife put their heads together to decide on some course of action that, without hurting the feelings of the older lady, would secure sufficient nourishment for the children, and forthwith began a series of all-day picnics to the noted places in the vicinity,--picnics that included always a good meal at some well-kept restaurant before the return to the old-fashioned fare of the grandmother's house. In this way the summer was passed without further illness, though the poor mother on her return to T[=o]ky[=o] spent several weeks in bed,--what with starvation and worry and the effort to bear heroically, and with a smiling face, the hard life and scanty fare that were the life and fare of most of Japan only a few years ago.

In the changes that the past few years have wrought, perhaps nothing is more striking than the new openings for work that Japan now offers to women. The growth of the public school system has made a demand for women as teachers that is steadily increasing. Although in the normal schools the proportion of women to men is still only one to six, and while teaching, even in the primary schools, is not yet mainly in feminine hands as it is with us, there is still a good showing of women employed as teachers. From the figures of the school report of 1898, we find over 10,000 women as teachers and assistants in the public and private schools. The profession of nursing, too, which ten years ago was just opening, has already drawn many women into its ranks. In the Red Cross hospitals alone there are this year nearly a thousand nurses taking the course, and a thousand graduates scattered throughout the country hold themselves ready to answer the call of the society in the time of need, in the mean time practicing their profession wherever they may chance to be. The quality of the Red Cross graduates has been tested now in two wars, and they show the soldierly virtues of their nation, as well as the more womanly qualities of tenderness and gentleness; and a self-respect that has kept them pure and free from stain in the midst of severe temptation. It is impossible for me to gather statistics of the work done by other institutions for the training of nurses, but the figures given above may, I think, be doubled with absolute safety in making an estimate of the total number of nurses trained and in training throughout the empire.

The growth of commerce and industry has greatly increased the demand for feminine labor outside the home. In the old days the two most important industries of the country, tea and silk, were mainly carried on by women in their homes, but the use of modern machinery is rapidly taking the weaving industries out of the homes and making factory hands of the women and children.[44]

[44] In the Japan _Mail_ of July 8, 1901, the following statistics of women employees in factories in Japan were given:--

Manufacture. No. of Women. No. to 100 Men. Raw Silk 107,348 93 Cotton Spinning 53,053 79 Matches 11,385 69 Cotton Fabrics 10,656 86 Tobacco 7,874 72 Matting 1,641 59

One of the most noticeable effects of this new demand for female labor is the extreme scarcity of servants. Although wages are nearly double what they were ten years ago, it is extremely difficult for Japanese housekeepers now to find servants to replace the old ones as they drop out of the ranks, and the women who apply for positions are apt to be far inferior to those who came to the same families to do the same work ten years ago.

In other ways, too, women are learning to fill new places in the world. The telephone, which now connects towns and cities and villages in Japan, employs girls in large numbers. In the printing-offices we find women at work, not as compositors, but as compositors' assistants, darting from case to case about the room and selecting for the compositor the ideographs that he needs in his work. Inasmuch as a small printing-office cannot get along with less than four thousand characters, and as larger ones may have several times that number, the need of quick-witted and quick-footed assistants to each compositor may be easily recognized. As the schools turn out each year more girls fitted by education to do this kind of work, and as the number of newspapers and other printed matter is continually on the increase, the demand for and supply of this special variety of labor are likely to increase proportionately for some time to come.

A few women are now making their way as reporters on the daily papers, a few more are engaged in literary work. One of the best of modern Japanese novelists was a woman, but she died several years ago at so early an age that her work was a promise rather than a fulfillment. Artists, too, there are, who are making names for themselves, as well as a living, in a country where art is so common that success in that line means hard work and special talent. A few young women support themselves by stenography, a few more as clerks and secretaries in business offices. Until a writing-machine has been invented that will write four thousand characters, there will not be much demand for typewriter girls in Japan outside of the treaty ports, where a few are now employed. The Japanese government has found, as Uncle Sam discovered some time ago, that for the counting of paper money women's fingers are more deft than those of men, and it consequently gives employment to a few women in that work. One railroad has recently begun to employ women as ticket-sellers, and three medical schools have already graduated some women physicians, though it is still doubtful whether there is any great opening for them in the country. These are some of the ways in which women now find themselves able to gain a little more independence of life. The whole matter is so new that no statistics are available that will show the exact extent of the demand for labor in these directions, but from my own observation I am inclined to think that there is little change in the employments of women except in the neighborhood of the larger cities, and that the new occupations as yet have a very slight effect upon the conditions in this country at large.

It is not possible to understand the actual progress made in Japan in improving the condition of women, without some consideration of the effect that Christian thought and Christian lives have had on the thought and lives of the modern Japanese. If Japanese women are ever to be raised to the measure of opportunity accorded to women in Christian countries, it can only be through the growth of Christianity in their own country, and for that reason a study of that growth is pertinent to a study of their condition.

The past ten years in Japan have been discouraging to the missionaries in many ways, and it is not unusual to hear from the less hopeful of them the statement that their work has been at a standstill, or even going backward, during that time. The statistics of missionary effort show a steady, though slight, increase in the number of professing Christians, but if the sum total of the results of missionary effort were the number of converts made, it might, perhaps, be doubtful whether the money spent on missions in Japan might not be better turned to other purposes. There are now in Japan, of Christians of all sects, Protestant, and Roman and Greek Catholic, 121,000, or about one half of one per cent. of the total population of the country; but the influence of these Christians as leaders of thought is out of all proportion to their number. Christian men are found in the Diet, in the army and navy, in the universities and colleges, and in the newspaper offices, in a proportion far beyond their ratio to the total population, exerting their influence in many ways for the uplifting of the nation to loftier moral ideals. The proportion of Christian men and women in the government schools with which I have been connected is rather surprising. In the Higher Normal School, training young women to go out into the whole country as teachers, the proportion of professing Christians upon the teaching staff is striking; and in the Peeresses' School, which is as conservative and anti-foreign as any educational institution in Japan, there are five professing Christians among the thirty-five teachers. While, on the one hand, the Japanese Christians are not all models of all the virtues, while there is with many of them a tendency to modify their Christianity so as to accommodate a considerable amount of worldly wisdom, it is true, on the other hand, that the most active workers in the cause of philanthropy are men who have accepted the Christian faith, and who are striving in all earnestness to model their lives after the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian Church in Japan to-day has its heroes and its back-sliders, and has between these two extremes a rank and file of every-day, commonplace men and women, who amidst frequent failures and in the midst of many temptations are making the name of Christian stand for a certain kind of life and a certain standard of virtue quite above and beyond the lives and standards of their countrymen. It is largely because of them that a Christian public opinion is growing up among non-Christian Japanese. Men to-day who have no special leanings toward Christianity shake their heads over vices and sins which a few years ago were not even thought of as wrong. There is a great deal of talk about the growth of moral depravity in the country, but as a matter of fact, the standards of virtue have never been so high since Japan was opened as they are to-day: it is only that Christian thought has held up a mirror to an un-Christian society, in which it views all too clearly its own defects. There is, to my mind, no more hopeful sign of the times than the growing discouragement over the present condition of morals. When there is added to this a steadily increasing respect for the honesty and strength of character of Christian men and women, it must mean that a great and lasting impression has been made. To-day banks, business offices, and other places requiring trustworthy clerks and employees, prefer, other things being equal, Christian young men, for it is generally known that they are more worthy of confidence than the majority of applicants for such places.

One instance of this increased moral sensitiveness may be cited in the recent successful efforts to limit the power of the brothel-keepers over their victims and virtual slaves, the _j[=o]r[=o]_ or licensed prostitutes. As I have stated in a previous chapter, the women who carry on this business in Japan are, many of them, unwilling victims of a system which allows parents to sell their children to a life of shame; and they enter upon that life so young that they can hardly be regarded as morally responsible for their condition. Even after the actual sale of girls was forbidden by an imperial ordinance in 1872, the purchase price was called a loan to the parents of the girl, and subsequent loans for clothing entered upon the books of the establishment kept the unfortunates so continually in debt to their masters that they could never escape from the bondage in which they were held except through death, or by purchase by some infatuated admirer. Public opinion, while it indulged in some sentimental pity for the hard lot of the _j[=o]r[=o]_, did little or nothing to aid any one who desired to help them, regarding the profession as a necessary one, and caring not at all for the injustice to which the girls were subjected. Ten or twelve years ago, a movement started by some prominent Japanese Christians against the _j[=o]roya_ fell flat for want of a public opinion behind it. Speeches on the subject were hissed down by audiences of young men, and nothing could be done to help even the most innocent and unhappy of the girls to a better life. In the new code, perhaps as an effect of this movement, a new law provided that the _j[=o]r[=o]_ might leave her calling by giving notice to the police. A police regulation, however, forbade any girl to cease her employment, or to leave the house in which she was kept, unless her official notice of cessation was countersigned by the keeper of the _j[=o]roya_, so that by her own effort she could not free herself.

In the year 1900, one of these girls in a provincial city appealed to an American missionary for help in getting her liberty. Through his aid, and that of his Japanese helpers, her case came before the court, which decided that the contract under which she was held was opposed to the public welfare and good morals, and that the keeper must affix his seal to her notice without regard to her debt. Although the local police refused to act in the matter, and although the missionary and his helpers were subjected to personal violence by the employees of the _j[=o]roya_, an appeal to the authorities at T[=o]ky[=o] resulted in an enforcement of the court's decision, and the girl was freed.

At this juncture the Salvation Army, which has a valiant contingent in T[=o]ky[=o], and which was actually spoiling for a good fight with the world, the flesh, and the Devil, in any form, took up the cause of the oppressed _j[=o]r[=o]_. A special edition of the "War Cry" containing appeals to the girls to leave their lives of shame, and offering aid to any one who might apply to the Army, was published and hawked through the Yoshiwara. When the keepers and their employees found out what the strangely costumed news-venders were about, they charged down upon them, and after a street fight, drove them out of the quarter. Thus the war began, but the T[=o]ky[=o] police took up the matter, the T[=o]ky[=o] press joined hands with the Salvationists, and in the end the whole country was stirred to aid in the attack. In return, the brothel-keepers and their employees, feeling that the profits of their business were at stake, made it extremely warm for any Salvationists or newspaper reporters who dared set foot in the disreputable quarters, and in their zeal sometimes made mistakes and drove out their would-be patrons. The office of one newspaper was wrecked by sympathetic roughs, and it took a squad of fifty or sixty police to escort Army officers when they had occasion to visit any of the houses to secure the release of a girl. No lives were lost, though some hard knocks were received, and the work was kept up with unabated noise on both sides, until every girl held in unwilling bondage knew how she might escape and to whom she could go for aid.

During the month of September, 1900, as a direct result of the attacks of and upon the Army, the number of visitors to these houses in T[=o]ky[=o] was decreased by about 2,000 a night. On October 2, a government ordinance was issued that at one stroke removed all obstacles in the way of a girl's securing her freedom at any moment when she wanted to leave the business. The new regulations made the descent to Avernus as difficult as possible, and the return to the upper world a mere step. In T[=o]ky[=o] alone, in the first four months after the promulgation of this order, 1,100 out of the 6,335 girls who were licensed as prostitutes left the houses in which they were employed, most of them returning to their homes and families, and as many as applied being cared for in the Rescue Home of the Salvation Army. The places thus vacated are not easy to fill, because the keepers will not advance money to the parents of a girl, now that they can no longer hold her as security for the debt. In consequence, too, of the revelations of the evils of the system, the business has fallen off alarmingly. Thus many of the houses have been obliged to close, owing to lack of custom and to inability to pay the heavy taxes.

We have here the story of a successful attack on a system which has existed in Japan for three hundred years, by a Christian agency acting with the support of so strong a public opinion that police and government have felt bound to obey its behests. There has been no more striking example of the effect of Christian thought upon public sentiment in any country than this crusade against the brothels in Japan. When we remember that ten years ago it was not possible for a speaker to attack the institution before an audience of students without being silenced by hisses, it is interesting to note that this year, the students of that same school greeted with applause and respectful attention an address on this very subject.

It seems to me rather striking that in the year 1900 fifty thousand copies of the Bible were sold in Japan--more than of any other book. Although the present translation is regarded as far from perfect, and much of it is unintelligible to the average Japanese without instruction, whether directly or indirectly, by mission workers, it is still sought after and read for the sake of its literature, and because of the reputation that has been gained for it throughout the country. There are few missionaries of any experience in Japan who cannot tell stories of men coming to them from country villages, who, through the reading of a copy of the Bible in some way fallen into their hands, have been brought by the beauty and nobility of the parts that they could understand to seek additional explanation from some teacher or preacher. One case that is amusing, but at the same time striking, I have heard vouched for from a number of sources:--

Two thieves, one night, broke into the dormitory of a girls' school in search of booty, and by chance awakened two of the girls. As they sat up in their beds, wondering what was best to do under the circumstances, one zealous damsel reached for the Bible in which she had been reading before she went to sleep, and handed it to one of the thieves, saying, "If you read this book, you will not want to steal any more." The other girl followed her companion's example and gave her Bible to the other thief. That was all, so far as the girls knew, and it was some years before the sequel came to light.

There is one place in Japan to which released convicts who are trying to get back to respectability again drift from all parts of the empire. It is a prisoners' home in T[=o]ky[=o], where one man, aided by his capable and devoted wife, receives into his own family and gives aid and succor to hundreds of society's outcasts. To this place came one day an ex-convict who told a remarkable story of his conversion, and of his desire to lead a new life. He had received a Bible from a little girl one night in a house that he was robbing, but was too full of professional engagements at the time to follow her advice and read it. Later, however, as he was resting from his labors in the enforced seclusion of a prison, he began to read, and spelled out enough to make up his mind that he did not want to steal any more. Accordingly, as soon as his term was ended, he made his way to the prisoners' refuge, and by the aid of its founder and head, and his good wife, settled down to steady habits of industry. Later, when the prison look had worn off from his face and the prison gait from his walk, he returned to his family and friends, where he is now a respectable member of the society upon which he formerly preyed.

There are other stories showing as deep impressions made on men of culture and respectability, not so striking and amusing as this one, but meaning as much, or even more, for the future of Japan. Such things are hardly possible in Christian countries to-day, for there is little or no novelty in the message that the old book brings to us; but to the Japanese mind the thoughts are absolutely new in many ways, and the reading alone will often change the whole life, because it lifts up the nature to a higher set of ideals.

As a direct effect of Christian thought upon the thought of the Japanese nation, it is interesting to notice the change in meaning of one word. In the teachings of Confucius the highest virtue is benevolence, rendered into Japanese by the word _jin_; in the teachings of Buddhism the highest virtue is mercy, or _jishi_. When the Christian missionaries first came to Japan, there was no term in the language that covered the thought of love as it is taught by Christ. For lack of anything better, the word _ai_, which indicated the love of a superior for an inferior, was made to do duty for the greater thought; and now the old word _ai_, throughout the length and breadth of Japan, is accepted and understood in its new meaning, a continual witness to the effect of Christianity upon the national mind. Is this a little thing in the education of a race that has shown in the past so great a capacity for living up to its ideals?

One more direct effect of Christian teaching upon Japanese society is the great quickening of philanthropic and benevolent effort. Scattered throughout the country are benevolent or educational societies, orphanages, hospitals, free kindergartens, reform schools, and other evidences of a desire on the part of the more fortunate to help the unfortunate by some means or other; and if you study into the history of any of these efforts, you will usually find that some Japanese Christian, or some man who has come home impressed with the philanthropies of Christian countries, has started the scheme, and has created a society, and a public opinion behind the society, which carries on the work. Even in the government institutions there is no difficulty in tracing the influence of Christians and Christianity. The Red Cross Society, with its seven thousand members, and its hospitals in every prefecture of the empire, bears the sign of Christendom upon all its property and employees. It seems to me quite safe to say that but for the Christian influences of the past forty years, there would be very little altruistic work done in Japan to-day; but by means of the Christians and their teachings, the latest and best thought of the world is working its way out in practical service for humanity in Japan, and this service is ascribed by enlightened Buddhist and Shint[=o] believers alike to the spirit of Christianity, which will not let the fortunate rest while their less fortunate brothers are in want or sin.

No one who studies the religious question in Japan at all can fail to notice the extraordinary revivifying of Buddhism for what it feels to be a life and death struggle with an alien faith. The disestablishment of the Buddhist church by the government at the time of the restoration must be credited with its share of the awakening process; for the priests, finding their own support and that of the temples dependent upon the voluntary contributions of worshipers, were forced to bestir themselves as they had not done since the old missionary days, when they were working for a foothold in the country. But without the competition of Christianity, it is extremely doubtful whether their efforts would have been turned so largely along educational and philanthropic lines, whether the standard of intelligence among the priesthood would have been so quickly raised, whether they would have sent young men abroad to study Sanskrit and history with a view to a better understanding of their own scriptures, or whether they would not rather have relied on less radical methods of quickening the religious life within their body. Certain it is that Buddhism, which upon its introduction into Japan actually lowered the status of women, is now making a bid for public favor by holding meetings and founding societies especially for women, and is doing its best to increase their self-respect and the respect in which they are held by society.

An interesting story which throws some light upon the new influence that is at work among the Buddhists came to me not long ago through a Japanese friend. There were two brothers living in a poor little village on the northern coast of Japan, who were joint heirs to a small piece of property. As the land was not enough for the support of two families, the elder brother, a gentle, thoughtful youth, gave up all title to his share of the inheritance and entered a Buddhist monastery. In the quiet of this retreat, amid the beautiful surroundings, the daily services, the chanting of priests, and the mellow booming of the great monastery bell, his thoughts went out to the poor and the sinful among his own people. He began to feel that a life which seeks merely spiritual uplift for itself is not the highest life, and that only as spiritual gain is shared with others is it real and lasting. Forthwith he began a life of helpfulness to the poor about him,--of teaching and preaching and good deeds that won him many humble friends. Within the monastery, however, his work was not approved. His ideas and actions were not in harmony with the teachings of the sect. He was first disciplined and then expelled, and found his way back at last, penniless, to his native village.

Now, in northern Japan the winters are long and hard, and the most industrious of farmers and fisher-folk can wring only a bare subsistence from the conditions of their toil. It is from these villages, perhaps, more than from any other sources, that the girls are obtained to supply the _j[=o]roya_ of the great cities. At any rate, in this particular village, the only hope that any girl possessed of escaping from the hard home toil was by the sale of her person, and the thought of seeing the great cities, of wearing beautiful dresses, of being admired and petted, and perhaps at last of marrying some rich lover and becoming a great lady, was a tempting bait to these poor peasant girls. To this young man, whose soul had been awakened to a new sensitiveness during his absence, the full horror of the conditions that could so warp and dwarf the souls of women appealed as it had never done before. He must do something to help them, but what to do his previous experience did not help him to know. He sought for aid and sympathy in his native place, among his friends and co-religionists; but the state of affairs was too old and too familiar to excite interest, and at last he worked his way to the capital, feeling that somewhere in that great city he would find light on the question that perplexed him. It was a mere question of ways and means--how to begin a work which he felt driven from within to do. In T[=o]ky[=o], as he inquired among his friends, he was told that Christians knew all about the kind of work that he wished to begin, that he must go to them and study their methods, if he would help the people of his native village. So the devout young Buddhist, who had found in his own faith the divine impulse, turned to the study of what Christians had done and were doing for the unfortunate. The story is not finished yet. We cannot tell whether in the end it will result in another addition to the ranks of the Japanese Christians, or whether it will aid in the quickening that has come to Buddhism, but, whatever way it ends, it shows in a concrete example what Christianity is now doing for Japan, and especially for the women of the country.

APPENDIX.

_The following Notes refer to passages marked by asterisks in the foregoing pages._

_Page 3._

The father, or the head of the family, usually names the children, but some friend or patron may be asked to do it. As, until recently, the name given a child in infancy was not the one that he was expected to bear through life, the choice of a name was not a matter of as much importance as it is with us. In some families the boys are called by names indicating their position in the family, the words _Taro_, "Big one," _Jiro_, "Second one," _Saburo_, "Third one," _Shiro_, "Fourth one," _Goro_, "Fifth one," etc., being used alone, or placed after adjectives indicating some quality that it is hoped the child may possess. Such combinations are, _Eitaro_, "Glorious big one," _Seijiro_, "Pure second one," _Tomisaburo_, "Rich third one," and so on.

_Page 4._

To speak with greater exactness, the _miya mairi_ of a boy is on the thirty-first day of his life,--of a girl, on the thirty-third.

_Page 8._

T[=o]ky[=o] just now shows a tendency to change this national custom. Gayly painted wicker baby carriages with cotton awnings are seen in large quantities in the shops, and one meets mothers and little sisters of the lower classes, propelling the baby in a little four-wheeled wagon instead of wearing it on the back, as formerly. These carriages are, of course, the exception, and may prove to be but a passing T[=o]ky[=o] fashion, but they seem to me to mark another step in the modernizing of Japan, and may prove of value in the physical development of the common people.

_Page 11._

In the T[=o]ky[=o] of 1891 butchers and milkmen were very little in evidence, as the demand for their wares came mainly from the few foreigners and foreign restaurants in the city. In 1901 a walk of half a mile or so in the neighborhood of Kojimachi, one of the principal business streets in a purely Japanese section of the city, shows five meat shops; and milkmen, in westernized shirts and knickerbockers, with golf-stockings and straw sandals, draw their gay-colored carts everywhere through the city, and call at a large proportion of the houses. Condensed milk, too, is to be found on the shelves of every provision store, together with canned and dried meats, and the restaurants where foreign food is served are distributed throughout the entire city, and do a thriving business on Japanese patronage. The less extravagant country people declare that T[=o]ky[=o] is "eating itself up," but so far no terrible increase of indebtedness seems to follow the change in the standard of living. It is interesting to note that the scalp troubles referred to on page 11 seem to have greatly lessened in the last ten years, whether because of the change in the food or for other reasons, I cannot determine.

_Page 24._

Twice, after the _miya mairi_ of her babyhood, does our little maid repair to the temple to seek the blessing of her patron god upon a step forward in her short life: once, when at the age of three, the hair on her small head, which until then has been shaved in fancy patterns, is allowed to begin its growth toward the coiffure of womanhood; and once, when she has attained her seventh year, and exchanges the soft, narrow sash of infancy for the stiff, wide _obi_ which is the pride of every well-dressed Japanese woman. Her little brother, too, though now no longer destined to wear the hammer-shaped queue of the old-time Japanese warrior, and whose fuzzy black head is now usually left unshaven in his babyhood, still goes to the temple at the age of three to give thanks, and when he comes to be five years old, the little boy again goes up to the temple, this time wearing for the first time the manly _hakama_, or kilt-pleated trousers, and makes offerings to the god who has protected him thus far.

The day set for these ceremonies is the 15th of November, and there is no prettier sight in all Japan than a popular temple on that day. All the streets that converge on the shrine are crowded with gayly dressed children hurrying along to make their offerings, accompanied by parents brimming with pride and pleasure.

"Small feet are pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering:"

three-year-old tots of both sexes trudging sturdily along on their clogs: square little red-cheeked boys, their black eyes shining with pride in their rustling new silk _hakama_, feeling that they are big boys and no longer to be confused with the babies that they were yesterday: here, too, are the graceful seven-year-old maidens, their many-colored garments and their gorgeous new _obi_ setting off to advantage their shining black hair and sparkling eyes. The children are so many, so happy, and so impressed with the fun that it is to be older than they were, that the grown folks who accompany them seem like shadows; the only real thing is the children.

Within the temple precincts all the candy-sellers and toy-merchants who can find standing-room for a stall are doing a brisk trade. Flags are flying, drums are beating, a _kagura_ dance is going on in the pavilion, about which stands a crowd of youngsters twittering like sparrows, and the steps that lead to the temple itself are as thronged as Jacob's ladder with little ones ascending and descending. Within the shrine the white-robed priests are hard at work from morning to night. A little company forms in the vestibule, goes to the priest in the first room, where they bow and make their offerings, and wait until there is space for them in the inner sanctuary. From within comes the sound of a droning chant, which ends at last, and then a party that has finished its worship issues forth, and those who have been waiting without go in; and when the few minutes of worship are over, and the amulet that rewards the due observance of the day has been received, there are the dances to be seen, and the _o miyagé_ to be purchased, and at last the happy party returns, feeling that one more milestone on the journey of life has been passed propitiously.

_Page 30._

The _shir[=o]zaké_ (white _saké_) used for this occasion is a curious drink, thick and white, made from pounded rice, and brewed especially for this feast. Some antiquarians believe that it is simply the earliest form of _saké_, the national beverage, which has been preserved in this ancient observance as the fly is preserved in amber.

_Page 31._

The keeping of a feast on the third day of the third month is a custom that has come down from very ancient times. At first the day was set apart for the purification of the people, and a part of the ceremony was the rubbing of the body with bits of white paper, roughly cut into the semblance of a white-robed priest. These paper dolls were believed to take away the sins of the year. When they had been used for purification, they were inscribed with the sex and birth-year of the user and thrown into the river. The third month was also, in early times, the season for cock-fighting among the men, and for doll-playing among the women. The special name by which the dolls of the Doll Feast are called is _O Hina Sama_. Now _hina_ in modern Japanese means a chicken or other young bird, and is never used to mean anything else except the dolls; thus the dolls are shown to be associated with the ancient cock-fighting, an amusement which has now almost gone out, except in the province of Tosa on the island of Shikoku.

The oldest dolls did not represent the Emperor and Empress, but simply a man and a woman, and were modeled closely after the old white paper dolls of the religious ceremony. When the Tokugawa Sh[=o]guns had firmly established their splendid court at Yedo, a decree was issued designating the five feast days upon which the daimi[=o]s were to present themselves at the Sh[=o]gun's palace and offer their congratulations. One of the days thus appointed was the third day of the third month. It is believed that the giving of the chief place at the feast to effigies of the Emperor and Empress was a part of the policy of the Sh[=o]gunate,--a policy which aimed to keep alive the spirit of loyalty to the throne, while at the same time the occupant of the throne remained a puppet in the hands of his vice-gerent.

Each girl born into a family has a pair of _O Hina Sama_ placed for her upon the red-covered shelf, on the first Feast of Dolls that comes after her birth. When, as a bride, she goes to her husband's house, she carries the dolls with her, and the first feast after her marriage she observes with special ceremonies. Until she has a daughter old enough to carry out the observance, she must keep up the ceremony. The feast, as it exists to-day, is said by the Japanese to serve three purposes: it makes the children of both sexes loyal to the imperial family, it interests the girls in housekeeping, and it trains them in ceremonial etiquette.

_Page 40._

Because of the complexity of the Chinese language and the time needed for its mastery, there has been a movement to lessen the study of pure Chinese in the government schools, or abolish it altogether, and with this to simplify the use of the ideographs in the Sinico-Japanese. The educational department is requiring that text-books be limited in their use of ideographs; that those used be written in only one way and that the simplest, and that the _kana_ (the Japanese syllabary) be substituted wherever possible. Several plans for reform in this matter are being agitated, one of which is to limit the use of ideographs to nouns and verbs only.

_Page 41._

No one who has been in Japan can have failed to notice the peculiarly strident quality of the Japanese voice in singing, a quality that is gained by professional singers through much labor and actual physical suffering. That this is not a natural characteristic of the Japanese voice is shown by the fact that in speaking, the voices, both of children and adults, are low and sweet. It seems to me to be brought about by the pursuit of a wrong musical ideal, or at least, of a musical ideal quite distinct from that of the Western world. In Japan one seldom finds singing birds kept in cages, but instead crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and other noisy members of the insect family may be seen exposed for sale in the daintiest of cages any summer night in the T[=o]ky[=o] streets. These insects delight the ears of the Japanese with their melody, and it seems to me that the voices of singers throughout the empire are modeled after the shrill, rattling chirp of the insect, rather than after the fuller notes of the bird's song.

The introduction of European music by the schools and churches has already begun to show in the songs of the children in the streets, and where ten years ago one might live in T[=o]ky[=o] for a year, and never hear a note of music except the semi-musical cries of the workmen, when they are pulling or striking in concert, now there are few days when some strain of song from some passing school-child does not come in at the window of one's house in any quarter of the city. The progress made in catching foreign ideas of time and tune is quite surprising, but the singing will never be acceptable to the foreign ear until the voice is modulated according to the foreign standards.

_Page 45._

It is said by Japanese versed in the most refined ways that a woman who has learned the tea ceremony thoroughly is easily known by her superior bearing and manner on all occasions.

_Page 49._

Whatever plant she begins with is taken up in a series of studies,--leaves, flowers, roots, and stalks being shown in every possible position and combination,--until not only the stroke is mastered, but the plant is thoroughly known. In the book that lies before me as I write, a book used as a copy-book by a young lady beginning the practice of the art, the teacher has devoted six large pages to studies of one small and simple flower and the pupil has covered hundreds of sheets of paper with efforts to imitate the designs. She has now finished that part of the course, and can, at a moment's notice, reproduce with just the right strokes any of the designs or any part of the plant. The next step forward will be a similar series of bamboo.

_Page 52._

In the government schools for girls, much attention is paid just now to physical culture. The gymnastic exercises rank with the Chinese and English and mathematics as important parts of the course, and the girls are encouraged to spend their recesses out-of-doors, engaging in all kinds of athletic sports. Races, ball games, tugs-of-war, marches, and quadrilles are entered into with zest and enjoyment, and the girls in their dark red _hakama_ are as well able to move quickly and freely as girls of the same age in America. If it were not for the queer pigeon-toed gait, acquired by years of walking in narrow _kimono_ and on high clogs, the Japanese girls would be fully abreast of the American in all these sports. So strongly has the idea of the necessity for physical strength seized upon the nation, that a girl of delicate physique has less chance of marriage than one who is robust and strong.

_Page 55._

It is in the mistakes and failures made in adapting the education given in the schools to the exact conditions that present themselves in the constantly changing Japan of to-day, that the opponents of all alteration in the education of women find their strongest arguments. The conservatives point with scorn to this girl whose new ideas have led her into folly or trouble, or to that one whose health has been broken down by the adverse conditions surrounding her student life, and say, "This will be the case with all our women if we continue this insane practice of educating them along new lines." Advance in female education, as in all other lines of progress in Japan, is a series of violent actions and reactions. In 1889, partly through ill-advised conduct on the part of supporters of the cause, one of the most serious reverses that has come in the progress of Western education for women began to show itself. The reaction was helped along by a paper read before some of the most influential men of Japan, and subsequently reported and discussed in the newspapers, by a German professor in the medical department of the imperial University in T[=o]ky[=o]. The paper was a serious warning to the men of the country that no women could be good wives, mothers, and housekeepers and at the same time have undergone a thorough literary education. The arguments were reinforced by statistics showing that American college women either did not marry, or that if they married they had very few children. All Japan took fright at this alarming showing, and for several years the education of girls in anything more than the primary studies was not encouraged by the government. The lowest depth of this reaction was reached during or soon after the Japan-China war, when the growth of national vanity resulted in a temporary disdain for all foreign ideas. The tide has turned again now, girls' schools that have been closed for years are being reopened, young men who are thinking of marrying are looking for educated wives, and among the women themselves there is a strong desire for self-improvement. Under this impulse a new generation of educated women will be added to those already exerting an influence in the country, and it is to be hoped that the forward movement will be more difficult to set back when the next reactionary wave strikes the Japanese coast.

_Page 60._

The _obi_ is supposed to express by its length the hope that the marriage may be an enduring one. Among the more modernized Japanese a ring is now often given in place of, or, in the wealthier classes, in addition to the _obi_.

_Page 61, line 6._

It is interesting, however, as a sign of the times, to notice that for the wedding of the Crown Prince, in May, 1900, the Shinto high priest, who is master of ceremonies at the Imperial Court, instituted a solemn religious ceremony within the sanctuary of the palace. Following the example set in so high a quarter, a number of couples, during the winter of 1900-1901, have repaired to Shinto temples in various parts of the empire, to secure the sanction of the ancient national faith upon their union. But still, for the great majority of the Japanese, the wedding ceremony is what it has always been.

_Page 61, line 15._

Although new methods of transportation have come into use now in most of the Japanese cities, and wheeled carts drawn by men or horses are used for carrying all other kinds of luggage, the wedding outfit, wrapped in great cloths on which the crest of the bride's family is conspicuous, is borne on men's shoulders to the bridegroom's home, the length of the baggage train and the number and size of the burdens showing the wealth and importance of the bride's family. The bride who goes to her husband's house well provided by her own family, will carry, not only a full wardrobe and the house-furnishings already mentioned, but will be supplied, so far as foresight can manage it, with all the little things that she can need for months in advance. Paper, pens, ink, postage stamps, needles, thread, and sewing materials of all kinds, a store of dress materials and other things to be given as presents to any and all who may do her favors, and pocket money with which she may make good any deficiencies, or meet any unforeseen emergency. When she goes from her father's house, she should be so thoroughly fitted out that she will not have to ask her husband for the smallest thing for a number of months. The parents of the bride, in giving up their daughter, as they do when she marries, show the estimation in which they have held her by the beauty and completeness of the trousseau with which they provide her. The expense of this wedding outfit is often very great, persons even in the most moderate circumstances spending as much as one thousand yen upon the necessary purchases, and among the wealthy, four thousand to five thousand yen is not extravagant. As material wealth increases in Japan, there is a marked tendency to increase the style and cost of the trousseau, and the marriage of a daughter has come to be, in many cases, a severe strain on the family finances. But this outfit is of the nature of a dowry, for it is her very own; and in the event of a divorce, she brings back with her to her father's house the clothing and household goods that she carried away as a bride.

_Page 64._

For this visit the bride wears for the first time a dress made for her by her husband's family and bearing its crest, as a sign that she is now a member of that family and only a guest in her father's house.

_Page 76._

Since the adoption of the new code, the conditions of marriage and of divorce have been altered for the better. At present no divorce is possible except through the courts or through mutual consent; the simple change of registration by one party or the other does not constitute a legal divorce. Even a divorce by mutual consent cannot be arranged without the consent of the parents or head of the family of a married person who is under twenty-five years of age. The grounds upon which judicial divorce may be granted seem very trivial measured by European standards, but, on the other hand, they are a distinct gain over the former practice. The wife is no longer dependent for her position simply upon the whim of her husband, but, unless he can secure her consent to the separation, he must formulate charges of immorality or conviction of crime, or of cruel treatment or grave insult on the part of the wife or of her relatives, or of desertion, or of disappearance for a period of three years or more. Only when some such charge has been made and proved before a court can a husband send away his wife. In the case of a separation by mutual consent, though the law still gives the care of the children to the father in case no previous agreement has been made, if a woman sees her way clear to supporting them, she may stipulate for the custody of one or more of them as a condition of her consent to the divorce. In a judicial divorce, the judge may, in the interests of the children, take them away from their father and assign them to the care of some other person.

In these changes we can see a distinct advance toward permanence of the family tie; and we can see, too, that the wife has gained a new power to hold her own against injustice and wrong. That when the people have become used to these changes, other and more binding laws will be enacted, we can feel pretty sure, for the drift of enlightened public opinion seems to be in favor of securing better and more firmly established homes just as fast as "the hardness of their hearts" will permit.

_Page 84._

It is difficult for us in America, who live under customs and laws in which the individual is the social unit and the family a union of individuals, to understand a system of society in which the individual is little or nothing and the family the social unit recognized both by law and custom. In Japan, a man is simply a member of some family, and his daily affairs, his marrying and giving in marriage, are more or less under the control of the head of his family, or of the family council. Only in case he is the head of the family is he able to marry without securing some one's consent, and then his responsibilities in regard to the headship may in themselves hamper him. If this is the case with the more independent man, it may be imagined how completely the woman is submerged under family influence. She may, under exceptional circumstances, become the head of a family, but this is usually only a temporary expedient, and even then she must subordinate herself more completely to the family and its interests than when she occupies a lowlier place.

The headship of an unmarried woman lasts only until a husband has been selected for her, and the headship of a widow lasts during her guardianship of the rightful heir to the position. By Japanese law a widow is always the guardian of her minor children.

The only way in which individuality before the law can be obtained by man or woman in Japan is through cutting the tie that binds to the family, and starting out in life afresh as the head of a new family. This new family must always be _héimin_, or plebeian, no matter how high in rank may have been the family from which the founder has gone out, but there is a continually increasing number of young men and women who prefer the freedom that comes from the headship of a small and new family, even if of low rank, to the state of tutelage or of hampering responsibility which must accompany connection with a larger and older social group. It seems likely that through this means an evolution from the family to the individual system will be effected, as the nation grows more and more modernized in its way of looking at things.

For the Japanese woman, as I have already said, marriage is in most cases the entrance into a new family. She is cut off from the old ways and interests, in which she has until now had her part, and she has begun life anew as the latest addition to and therefore the lowest and most ignorant member of another social group. It is her duty simply to learn the ways and obey the will of those above her, and it is the duty of those above her, and especially of her husband's mother, to fit her by training and discipline for her new surroundings. The physical strength of the young wife, her sweetness of temper, her manners, her morals, her way of looking at life, are all put to the test by this sharp-eyed guardian of the family interests, and woe to the younger woman if she fail to come up to the standard set. She may be a good woman and a faithful wife, but if, under the training given her, she does not adapt herself readily to the traditions and customs of the family she enters, it is more than likely, even under the new laws, that she may be sent back to her father's house as _persona non grata_, and even her husband's love cannot save her. It is because of this predominance of the family over the individual that the young wife, when she enters her husband's home, is not, as in our own country, entering upon a new life as mistress of a house, with absolute control over all of her little domain.

_Page 115._

At the time of the celebration of his silver wedding, in 1895, the Emperor came into the Audience Room with the Empress on his arm, an example which was followed by the Imperial Princes.

With the engagement and marriage of the Crown Prince, in May, 1900, an entirely new precedent was established in the relations of the Imperial couple. The Western idea of marriage between equals has never existed in the Japanese mind in its thought of the union between their Emperor and Empress. The Empress, though of noble family, was chosen from among the subjects of the Emperor, and the marriage was of the nature of an appointment by the Emperor to the position of Imperial Consort, just as any other appointment might have been made of a subject to fill an important position in the government. In the marriage of the Crown Prince a very different course was pursued. While no departure was made from the old precedents in the selection of a Princess from one of the five families that trace their descent from Jimmu Tenno, the whole manner of obtaining the bride was different from anything that Japan had before known. The Prince asked the father of the young lady to give her to him just as a common man might have done, and everything in the preliminary arrangements was carried out with the idea that by the marriage she was to be raised to his rank and position. Reference has already been made to the religious ceremony that was devised for the occasion, an act that in itself altered the meaning of marriage for the whole nation.

Since the wedding, rumors have floated to the world outside of the palace gates, of the kindness and consideration with which the young wife is treated by her husband. To the scandal of some of the more old-fashioned of the Prince's attendants, the heir to the throne insists on observing toward his wife, in private as well as in public, all the minutiæ of Western etiquette. She enters the carriage ahead of him when they drive together, they habitually take their meals together, and he finds in her a cheerful companion and friend, and not simply a devoted and humble servant. In this way, by the highest example that can be set to them, the Japanese people are learning a new lesson.

All these things have a deep significance in showing that the sacredness of the marriage tie is gradually being recognized.

_Page 137._

Something, indeed, may be said on the other side in regard to this system, which I seem to have painted as ideal. If in America we find the burden of expensive grown-up sons and daughters sometimes too heavy upon parents whose powers are on the wane, we must remember that in Japan a young man is often seriously handicapped at the beginning of his active life by the early retirement of his father from self-supporting labor, and that the young wife entering the home of her parents-in-law often finds a happy married life rendered impossible by the fact that she must please an elderly couple thoroughly fixed in their ways,--the rulers of the household and with little to do but rule. With this custom, as with all human customs, everything in the long run depends upon how it is used, and without deep affection between parents and children there seems to be as much danger from the serious handicapping of the rising generation by selfish and inconsiderate parents in Japan, as there is in America of the wearing out of the older people's lives and strength in the service of ungrateful and lazy children.

_Page 152._

The bed on which the Empress sleeps is made of heavy _futons_, or quilts, of white _habutai_ wadded with silk wadding. The bedclothing consists of as many similar _futons_ as the state of the weather may require. Every month new _futons_ are provided for Her Majesty, and the discarded ones are given to one of her attendants. The happy recipient is thus provided with wadding enough for all her winter dresses for the rest of her life, as well as with a good supply of dress material.

_Page 157._

Only those who have seen the inner life of the court can realize the difficulties which have attended every step of the Empress Haru's way, for the court has been the scene of great struggles between the conservative and radical elements. Mean and petty jealousies have moved those surrounding the throne. The slightest word or token from the Empress would be used as a weapon for private ends. To move among these varied and discordant factions, and to move for progress, without causing undue friction, has been a task more difficult than the conquest of armies, and to do so successfully has required almost infinite patience, sympathy, and love.

_Page 168._

And now, after thirty-three years of the enlightened rule of the present Emperor, and of the beneficent life and example of the Empress Haru, is there any assurance that the progress made during their occupation of the throne will be continued in the lives of Japan's future rulers?

Prince Haru, or Yoshihito, is now a man twenty-two years of age, with character sufficiently developed to be used as the basis for a guess at what his qualities as a sovereign may prove to be. "As far as the East is from the West" have his life and education been from the life and education of his illustrious father. Instead of the curtained seclusion, the quiet and calm of the old palace in the old capital, the present Crown Prince has known from babyhood the sights and sounds of the stirring city of T[=o]ky[=o]. He has driven in an open carriage or walked through its streets; he has been to school with boys of his own age, taking the school work and the drill and the games with the other boys, learning to know men and things and himself too, in a way in which none of his ancestors, since the days when they were simply savage chiefs, have had opportunity of knowing. As he grew toward manhood, his delicate health required that he leave the school and pursue his studies as his strength permitted, under masters; but he has retained his love for all athletic exercises, for dogs and horses and guns and bicycles, and he is as expert in outdoor sports as any youth of Western training. His mind is quick and eager, interested especially in foreign ways and thoughts, and seeking most of all to understand how other people think and feel and live. Though he has been emancipated to a wonderful degree from the state and ceremony that surrounded his ancestors, he is nevertheless impatient of what remains, and would gladly dispense with many forms that his conservative guardians regard as necessary; and these same guardians at times find their young eaglet difficult to manage. He has views and ideas of his own, and acts occasionally upon his own initiative in a way that fairly scandalizes his advisers. He wishes to visit his future subjects upon something like equal terms. The rôle of Son of Heaven seems to him less interesting at times than some smaller and more human part. When he walks, he wants to lead his own dog, not have him led by some one else; to stop in the street and watch the common people at their work; to drop in on his friends in a neighborly way and see how they live when they are not expecting a visit from royalty. Provided he does not go too fast or too far, when his turn comes to ascend the throne, he cannot but make a better emperor for the intimate personal knowledge that he is seeking and gaining of the lives and feelings of his people.

The Crown Princess Sada, who has now been for one year in the line of succession to the present beloved Empress, shows in her training and character the influence of the new impulse that is driving Japan forward. The circumstances that led to her selection as the bride of the Prince are in themselves curious enough to be worth recording. The Kujo family is one of the five families from which alone can the wife of the Crown Prince be chosen, and the present Prince Kujo is blessed with many daughters. Of these, the oldest is about the age of Prince Haru, and at one time it was hoped that she might be selected as his consort, but at last that hope was given up, and she was married to another prince. The second daughter was as bright and charming as the first, but she was just enough younger than the Prince to make her marriage with him so dangerous a matter according to all the rules that govern good and bad luck in Japan, that no hope was entertained for her, and she was married, when her time came, with no reference to the greatest match that any Japanese princess can make. The third daughter was six years younger than the Prince, so much younger that it was thought that he would be married long before she grew up, so no special care or attention was given to her. In her babyhood, like most Japanese babies of high rank, she was sent out into the country to be nursed. Her foster parents were plain farmer folk, who loved her and cared for her as their own child. She played bareheaded and barefooted in the sun and wind, tumbled about, jolly and happy, with the village children, and lived and grew like a kitten or a puppy rather than like a future empress until she was old enough for the kindergarten. Then she came back to T[=o]ky[=o], to her father's house, and from there she attended the Peeresses' School, going backward and forward every day with her bundle of books, and taking her share of the work and play with the other children. In her school-days she was noticeable for her great physical activity and her hearty enjoyment of the outdoor sports which form so important a part of the training in Japanese schools for girls at present; and for her strength of will and character among a class of students upon whom self-repression amounting almost to self-abnegation has been inculcated from earliest childhood.

When this little princess reached the age of fifteen, the Crown Prince's marriage, which had been somewhat deferred on account of his ill-health, was pressed forward, and to the extreme surprise of her own family, and of many others as well, the Princess Sada was chosen, largely on account of her great physical vigor. Then began a great change in her life. From being one of the lowest and least considered in her family, she was suddenly raised high above all the rest, even her father addressing her as a superior. The merry, romping school-girl was transformed in a few days into the great lady, too grand to associate on equal terms with any but the imperial family. Small cause was there for wonder if she shrank from the change and begged that the honor might be bestowed on some one else. The old free life was gone forever, and she dreaded the heavy responsibility that was to fall upon her slender shoulders.

The choice was made in August, 1899, and from the moment that the engagement was entered into, the Princess Sada became an honored guest in her father's house. She could no longer play with her brothers and sisters, or take a meal with any member of her own family. A new and handsome suite of rooms was built for her, her old wardrobe was discarded and an entirely new one provided for her, all her table service was new and distinct from that of the rest of the family, and she was addressed by all as if she were already Empress. Her studies were not given up, but masters were chosen for her who came to her and instructed her, with due deference to her high station, in the subjects that she had been studying at school. So passed the nine months of her engagement, and on May 8, 1900, she became one of the principals in a state wedding such as Japan had never before seen. Through all the show and ceremony she acquitted herself decorously and bravely, and since her marriage no word save of approval of the young wife has come out from the palace gates. Her little sisters-in-law, the four small daughters of the Emperor, enjoy nothing so much as to go and spend the day with her, for she is so amusing, and her life has been such a busy and happy one, that she comes like a breath of fresh air into the seclusion of the Court. Her young husband, too, finds in her congenial society, and his frail health seems to be daily strengthening with the brightness that has come into his home.

Great was the joy in the empire when, on April 29, 1901, this happy union was rendered still happier by the birth of a strong little prince to carry on the ancient line. By an auspicious coincidence, his birth came just at the time of the annual boys' feast, or Feast of Flags, and his naming day was appointed for May 5, the great day of the feast, when all Japan is decorated with giant carp swinging from tall poles outside of every house, and swimming vigorously at the ends of their tethers in the strong spring wind. The carp is to the Japanese mind the emblem of courage and perseverance, for he swims up the strongest current, leaping the waterfalls that oppose his progress. The baby was named by his grandfather, and will have the personal name of Hirohito, and the title Prince Michi. With this new little prince there are no polite fictions to maintain, nor conventional relationships to be established. He is the son of his father's lawful wife, as well as of his father. There is to be no breaking off of natural ties, and his own mother will nurse and care for him, a fortune that never falls to the lot of the imperial son of a _mékaké_. If he lives, he will be a standing argument in favor of monogamy, even in noble families, and his birth bodes well for family life throughout the country.

_Page 182._

A pretty, but most shocking sight, if seen through the eyes of some of these old-fashioned attendants, is the semi-annual _undo kai_, or exercise day of the Peeresses' School. The large playground is, for this occasion, surrounded by seats divided off to accommodate invited guests of various ranks, who spend the day watching the entertainment. In the most honorable place, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, sits the Empress herself, for the education of the daughters of the nobles is a matter of the liveliest interest to her; and the parents and friends and teachers of the girls fill up all available seats after the school itself has been accommodated.

The programme is usually a long one, occupying the greater part of the morning and afternoon, with an interval for lunch. Most of the ordinary English field games--tennis, basket-ball, etc.--are played with skill and vigor, and in addition to these there are races of various kinds, devised to show, not simply fleetness of foot, but quickness of hand and wit as well. These races vary from year to year, as the ingenuity of the directors of the sports may be able to devise new forms of exercise. One extremely pretty contest is as follows: On the playground between the starting-point and the goal are set at equal distances four upright sticks for each runner. Four branches of cherry blossoms and four bright-colored ribbons for each contestant are laid on the ground at the starting-point. At the signal, each girl picks up a cherry branch and a ribbon, and runs to one of the upright sticks, tying the flowers firmly thereto; then she runs back for a second branch, and so on until all four have been fastened in place. The race is won by the child who first reaches the goal leaving behind her four blooming trees where before there were bare poles. This seems to be the æsthetic Japanese equivalent for our prosaic potato race. Another contest is after this manner: Along the course of each runner are laid at certain intervals bright-colored balls,--a different color for each contestant. The object of the race is, within a certain time, to pick up all the balls and throw them into the nearly closed mouth of a great net at the far end of the grounds. The contest is not decided until the balls have been counted, when the girl who has succeeded in getting the greatest number of balls of her color into the net is declared the winner. Another and extremely pretty race, calling for great steadiness of hand and body, is the running from one end of the ground to the other with a ball balanced on a battledore. The Japanese battledore is made of light but hard wood, and is long and narrow in shape. If one had not seen it done, it would be well-nigh impossible to believe that any child could carry a ball upon it for more than a few slow steps: but these children run at a smart trot, keeping the ball immovable upon its small and smooth surface.

Beside the games and races, there are calisthenic exhibitions, in which great precision of motion and flexibility of body are manifested. One of the most graceful and attractive of these is the fan drill shown on this occasion, when some twenty or thirty girls, with their bright-colored dresses, long, waving sleeves, and red _hakama_, posture in perfect rhythm, with fans opened or closed, waving above the head, held before the face, changed from position to position, with the performers' changes of attitude, each new figure seemingly more graceful than the last.

In these and many other ways the nobility of new Japan are being fitted for the new part that they have to play in the world. No wonder that the education now given, awakening the mind, toughening the body, arousing ambition and individuality, is regarded by many of the ultra-conservatives as a dangerous innovation, and one likely to bring the nobility down to the level of the common people. Whether this new education is better or worse than the old, we can hardly tell as yet, but there are no signs of the immediate breakdown of the old spirit of the nobility, and the better health and stronger characters of the young women who have received the modern training promise much for the next generation.

_Page 192._

While this was entirely true in 1890, it is interesting to observe that after ten years of commercial and industrial progress there are signs that the embroidered kimono is coming back into fashion. With the growth of large fortunes and of luxury that has marked the past decade, has come the custom of providing wedding garments as magnificently embroidered as were the robes of the daimi[=o]s' ladies, and even the _montsuki_ or ceremonial dress, which was severely plain in 1890, now has little delicate embroidery about the bottom. It will not be surprising if some day, when the present growing commercial and industrial enterprise has reaped a more abundant harvest, Japan blooms forth again in the beautiful garments that went out of fashion when the great political upheaval cut off the revenues of the old nobility.

_Page 209._

At each encroachment of the enemy those of the population who could not find refuge at once within the inner defenses were driven to choose between surrender and self-inflicted death. The unconquerable samurai spirit flamed out in the choice of hundreds of women and children as well as men, and whole families were wiped out of existence at once, the little ones, who were too young to understand the proper method of _hara-kiri_, kneeling calmly with bowed heads for the death-stroke from father or brother which should free them from the disgrace of defeat.

_Page 223._

That the spirit of the samurai women is still a living force in Japan, no one can doubt who listens to the stories of what the women did and bore in the Japan-China war of 1895. The old self-sacrifice and devotion showed itself throughout the country in deeds of real, if sometimes mistaken, heroism. Husbands, sons, and brothers were sent out to danger and death with smiles and cheerful words, by women dependent upon them for everything in a way that can hardly be understood by Americans. Even tears of grief for the dear ones offered in the country's cause were suppressed as disloyal, and women learned with unmoved countenances of the death of those they loved best, and found the courage to express, in the first shock of bereavement, their sense of the honor conferred on the family by the death of one of its members in the cause of his country.

A few incidents quoted from an article by Miss Umé Tsuda that appeared in the New York "Independent" in 1895 will give my readers an idea of the forms that this devotion assumed:--

"One instance comes into my mind of an old lady who sent out cheerfully and with a smiling face her young and only son, the sole stay of her old age. Left a widow while young, she had lived a life of much sorrow and trouble, and had with almost superhuman efforts managed to give her son an education that would start him in life. It was only a few years ago that the son had begun to help in the family support, and to be able to repay to the mother her tender care of him. Her pride in her son and his young wife was a pleasure to see, and the little home they had together seemed a safe haven for the coming years of old age. Now, in a moment all this was changed,--the son must start off for the wars. Yet not for one instant was a cloud seen on the mother's face, as, smilingly and cheerfully, she assisted in the preparations for his departure. Not in public or in secret did one sigh or regret escape her; not even to the son did a word of anxiety pass her lips. Her face, beaming with joy, looked with pride on the manly strength of the young soldier as he started to fight for his country and win honor for himself,--honor which would surely come to him whether he lived or died.

"Another woman who is well on in years, and whose eldest son is a naval officer, furnishes an interesting example of mother love. Though never showing her anxiety on his account, or grief at his danger, she has taken upon herself, in spite of her old age and by no means vigorous health, to go on foot every morning to one of the temples and worship there before daylight, in order to propitiate the gods, that they may protect her son. She arises at four o'clock in the morning on the coldest of cold days, washes and purifies herself with ice-cold water, and then starts out before daylight for her three-mile walk to the temple. Thus through wind and storm and cold have the faith and love of this old woman upheld her, and one is happy to add that so far her prayers have been heard and no harm has come to the one she has called on her gods to protect.

"A touching story is told of the aged mother of Sakamoto, commander of the warship Akagi, who was killed in the thickest of the fight during the great naval battle of the Yellow Sea. Commander Sakamoto left an aged mother, a wife, and three children. As soon as his death was officially ascertained, a messenger was dispatched from the naval department to convey the sad tidings to his family. The communication was made duly to his wife, and before the messenger had left the house it reached the ears of the old mother, who, tottering into the room where the officer was, saluted and greeted him duly, and then, with dry eyes and a clear voice, said, 'So it seems by your tidings that my son has been of some service this time.'

"One reads pathetic stories in the newspapers daily in connection with the war. Not long ago a sad account was given of a young woman, just past her twentieth year, and only recently married to an army officer. She had belonged by birth to a military family, and, as befitted the wife and daughter of a soldier, she resolved, on hearing of the death of her husband, that she would not survive him, but would follow him to the great unknown. Sending away her servant on some excuse, she remained alone in her home, which she put into perfect order. Then she arranged all her papers, wrote a number of letters, and made her last preparations for death. She dressed herself in full ceremonial dress as she had been dressed for her bridal, and seated herself before a large portrait of her husband. Then, with a short dirk, such as is owned by every samurai woman, she stabbed herself. In her last letters she gives as the reason for her death that, having no ties in the world, she would not survive her husband, but wished to remain faithful to him in death as she had been in life.

"Many such stories might be cited, but enough has been given to show the spirit that exists in Japan. With such women and such teachings in their homes, can it be wondered at that Japan is a brave nation, and that her soldiers are winning battles? Certainly some of the honor and credit must be given to these wives and mothers scattered throughout Japan, who are surely, in some cases, the inspirers of that courage and spirit which is just now surprising the world."

_Page 239._

Much surprise is evinced by foreigners visiting Japan at the lack of taste shown by the Japanese in the imitation of foreign styles. And yet, for these same foreigners, who condemn so patronizingly the Japanese lack of taste in foreign things, the Japanese manufacture pottery, fans, scrolls, screens, etc., that are most excruciating to their sense of beauty, and export them to markets in which they find a ready sale, their manufacturers wondering, the while, why foreigners want such ugly things. The fact is that neither civilization has as yet come into any understanding of the other's æsthetic side, and the sense of beauty of the one is a sealed book to the other. The Japanese nation, in its efforts to adopt foreign ways, has been, up to the present time, blindly imitating, with little or no comprehension of underlying principles. As a result there is an absolute crudeness in foreign things as attempted in Japan that grates on the nerves of travelers fresh from the best to be found in Europe or America.

There are signs, however, that the stage of imitation is past and that adaptation has begun. Here and there in T[=o]ky[=o] may be seen buildings in which the solidity of foreign architecture has been grafted upon the Japanese type. Ten years ago, Japanese men who adopted foreign dress went about in misfitting garments, soiled linen, untidy shoes, and hats that had been discarded by the civilization for which they were made many seasons before they reached Japan. They wore Turkish towels about their necks and red blankets over their shoulders at the desire of unscrupulous importers, who persuaded them that towels for neck-cloths and blankets for overcoats were the latest styles of London and Paris. To-day one sees no such eccentricities of costume in the purely Japanese city of T[=o]ky[=o]. Men who wear foreign dress wear it made correctly in every particular by Japanese tailors, shoemakers, and hatters. The standard has been attained, for men at least, and in foreign dress as well as in Japanese, the natural good taste of the people has begun to assert itself. So it will be in time with other new things adopted. As no single element of the Chinese civilization secured a permanent footing in Japan except such as could be adapted, not only to the national life, but to the national taste as well, so it will be with European things. All things that are adopted will be adapted, and whatever is adapted is likely in time to be improved and made more beautiful by the national instinct for beauty. During the transition, enormities are omitted and monstrosities are constructed, but when the standard is at last attained, we may expect that the genius of the race will triumph over the difficulties that it is now encountering. Individual Japanese who have lived long in Europe or America show the same nice discrimination in regard to foreign things that they do in their Japanese surroundings, and are rarely at fault in their taste. What is true of the individual now will be true of the nation when European standards have become common property.

_Page 242._

In the remote mountain regions, where the majesty and uncertainty of the great natural forces impress themselves constantly upon the minds of the peasantry, one finds a simple nature worship, and a desire to propitiate all the unseen powers, that is not so evident in the daily life of the dwellers in more populous and progressive parts of the country. As the mountains close in about the road that runs up from the plains below, a great stone, on which is deeply carved "To the God of the Mountains," calls the attention of the traveler to the fact that the supernatural is a recognized power among the mountaineers. In such regions one finds the stated offerings at the shrines which stand near the wayside kept constantly renewed. Nearly every house is protected by some slip of paper pasted above the door, a charm obtained by toilsome pilgrimage to some noted temple. Behind or near the village temple one may see rude wigwams of straw, each sheltering a _gohei_,[45]--witnesses to the vows of devotees who hope, sooner or later, to erect small wooden shrines and so win favor from the unknown rulers of human destinies. In places where pack-horses form a large part of the wealth of the people, stones to the horses' spirits are erected, and the halters of all the horses that die are left upon these stones. Prayers, too, are offered to the guardian spirits of the living horses, before stones on which are carved sometimes the image of a horse bearing a _gohei_ on his back, sometimes a rough figure of the horse-headed Kwannon. To such stones or shrines are brought horses suffering from sickness of any kind, and the hand is rubbed first on the stone and then on the part of the animal supposed to be affected. In one district, when a horse epidemic broke out, its rapid spread was attributed by the authorities to this custom, and all persons were warned of the danger, with what effect in breaking up the ancient habit the newspaper reports failed to say. It is in such regions as this that the _oni_ and the _tengu_[46] still live in the every-day thought of the people; it is here, too, that the old custom of offering flowers and fruit to the spirits of the dead at the midsummer festival is most conscientiously kept up. All possible spirits are included in these offerings, so that even by the roadside one finds bunches of flowers set up in the clefts of the rock, to the spirits of travelers who have died on the way.

[45] _Gohei_, a piece of white paper, cut and folded in a peculiar manner, one of the sacred symbols of the Shint[=o] faith.

[46] _Tengu_, a winged, long-nosed or beak-mouthed monster, supposed to inhabit the mountain regions of Japan. It was from a _tengu_ that Yoshitsune, one of the greatest of Japanese heroes, learned to fence, and so became a swordsman of almost miraculous expertness. _Oni_, a demon or goblin.

In one little mountain resort, far from the railroad but in touch with the outside world through the hundreds of visitors that seek its hot baths during the summer, it was my good fortune to spend a few weeks recently. Our walks were rather limited in variety, as the village lay in an almost inaccessible mountain valley through which a carefully engineered road ran along the edge of the river gorge. About half a mile out of the village, close to the road and overhanging the waters of the river at a spot where the rocks were so worn and carved by the rushing torrent as to have gained the appropriate title of the "Screen Rocks," was a little shop and a tea-house. It was a pleasant resting-place after a warm and dusty walk, and almost daily we would halt there for a cup of tea and a slice of _yokan_, or bean marmalade, before returning to our rooms in the hotel. The managers of the place were an old man and his wife, who divided their labor between the shop and the tea-house. The old man was an artist in roots. His life was devoted to searching out grotesquely shaped roots on the forest-covered hills, and whittling, turning, and trimming them into the semblance of animal or human forms. _Tengu_ and goblins, long-legged birds and short-legged beasts, all manner of weird products of his imagination and his handiwork, peopled the interior of the little shop, and he was always ready to welcome us and show us his latest work, with the pride of an artist in his masterpiece.

His wife, a cheery old woman, attended to the tea-house, and as soon as we had seated ourselves, bustled about to bring us cool water from the spring that bubbled out of the rocks across the road, and to set before us the tiny cups of straw-colored tea and the delicious slices of _yokan_ which we soon learned was the specialty of the place. She was glad to have a little gossip as we sipped and nibbled, telling us many interesting bits of folklore about the immediate locality. It was from her that we learned that the pinnacle of rock that dominated the village was built by _tengu_ long ago, though now they were all gone from the woods, for she had looked for them often at night when she went out to shut the house, but she had never seen one,--and even the monkeys were becoming scarce. She it was, too, who sent us to look for the mysterious draught of cold air that crossed the road near the base of the great rock, colder on hot days than on cool ones, and at all times astonishing,--the "Tengu's Wind Hole." We learned through her about the snakes to be found in the woods, and of the wonderful tonic virtues of the _mamushi_ (the one poisonous snake of Japan), if caught and bottled with a sufficient quantity of _saké_. The _saké_ may be renewed again and again, and the longer the snake has been bottled the more medicinal does it become, so that one _mamushi_ may, if used perseveringly, medicate several casks of _saké_. We had opportunity later to verify her statements, for we found at a small grocery store, where we stopped to add a few delicacies to our somewhat scanty bill of fare, two snakes, neatly coiled in quart bottles and pickled in _saké_, one of which could be obtained for the sum of seventy-five sen, though the other, who in his rage at being bottled had buried his fangs in his own body, commanded a higher price because of his courage. We did not feel in need of a tonic that day, so left the _mamushi_ on the grocery shelves, but it is probable that their disintegrating remains are being industriously quaffed to-day by some elderly Japanese whose failing strength demands an unfailing remedy.

When our little friend had learned of our interest in snakes, she was on the lookout for snake stories of all kinds. One day she stopped us as we came by rather later than usual, hurrying home before a threatening shower, to tell us that we ought to have come a little sooner, for the great black snake who was the messenger of the god that lived on the mountain had just been by, and we might have been interested to see him. She had seen him before, herself, so he was no novelty to her, but she was sure that the matter would interest us. Poor little old lady, with her kindly face and pleasant ways, and her friendly cracked voice. Her firm belief in all the uncanny and supernatural things that wiser people have outgrown brought us face to face with the childhood of our race, and drew us into sympathy with a phase of culture in which all nature is wrapped in inscrutable mystery.

_Page 264._

Each year that passes sees a few more stores adopting the habit of fixed prices, not to be altered by haggling.

_Page 282._

On another occasion the good offices of the fortune-teller were sought concerning a marriage, and the powerful arranger of human destinies discovered that though everything else was favorable, the bride contracted for was to come from a quarter quite opposed to the luck of the bridegroom. This was no laughing matter, as the bride was of a noble family and the breaking of the engagement would be attended with much talk and trouble on both sides; but, on the other hand, the family of the bridegroom dared not face the danger so mysteriously prophesied by the fortune-teller. In this predicament, there was nothing to do but to pull the wool over the eyes of the gods as best they might. For this purpose the bride with all her belongings was sent the day before the wedding from her father's house to that of an uncle living in another part of the city, and on the morning of the wedding-day she came to her husband from a quarter quite favorable to his fortunes. It seems quite probable that the gods were taken in by this somewhat transparent subterfuge, for no serious evil has befallen the young couple in three years of married life.

_Page 317._

To the American mind this method of terminating relations is always irritating and frequently embarrassing, but in Japan any discomfort is to be endured rather than the slightest suspicion of bad manners. If the foreign visitor is trying to learn to be a good Japanese, she must submit patiently when the servant solemnly engaged fails to appear at the appointed hour, sending a letter instead to say that she is ill; or when the woman upon whom she is depending to travel with her the next day to the country receives a telegram calling her to the bedside of a mythical son, and departs, bag and baggage, at a moment's notice, leaving her quondam mistress to shift for herself as best she may.

_Page 318._

Among the many changes that have come over Japan in the transition from feudalism to the conditions of modern life, there is none that Japanese ladies regard with greater regret than the change in the servant question. As the years go by and new employments open to women, it becomes increasingly difficult to engage and keep servants of the old-time, faithful, intelligent sort. Notwithstanding increased pay, and the still existing conditions of considerate treatment, comfortable homes, and light work, it is hard to fill places vacated, even in noble households: and there is almost as much shaking of heads and despondent talk over the servant question in Japan to-day as there is in America.

_Page 322._

It is interesting to note that it is to the quickness and courage of a jinrikisha man who interposed between him and his would-be assassin that the present Czar of Russia owes his escape from death at Otsu, near Ky[=o]t[=o], in 1891.

EPILOGUE.

My task is ended. One half of Japan, with its virtues and its frailties, its privileges and its wrongs, has been brought, so far as my pen can bring it, within the knowledge of the American public. If, through this work, one person setting forth for the Land of the Rising Sun goes better prepared to comprehend the thoughts, the needs, and the virtues of the noble, gentle, self-sacrificing women who make up one half the population of the Island Empire, my labor will not have been in vain.

INDEX.

Adoption, 103, 112, 187.

Agility of Japanese, 13.

Ai, love, 415.

Amado, sliding wooden shutters used to inclose a Japanese house at night, 23.

Amulets, 329.

Andon, a standing lamp inclosed in a paper case, 89.

Ané San, or Né San, elder sister (_San_ the honorific), a title used by the younger children in a family in speaking to their eldest sister, 20.

Aoyama, 131.

Apprentices, 309, 310.

Art in common things, 237-239, 462, 463.

Artisans, 235-239, 270.

Babies, 1-17; bathing, 10; conditions of life, 6, 7; dress, 6, 15; food, 10, 11; imperial babies, 8, 9; learning to talk, 16; learning to walk, 13, 14; of lower classes, 7; of middle classes, 8; of nobility, 8; skin troubles, 11; teething, 12; tied to the back, 7, 8, 12.

Baby carriages, 424.

Baths, public, 10.

Beauty, Japanese standard of, 58; early loss of, 122.

Bé bé, a child's word for dress, 16.

Bed, the Empress's, 446.

Betrothal, 60.

Bett[=o], a groom or footman who cares for the horse in the stable and runs ahead of it on the road, 62, 71, 311, 316, 319.

Bible, circulation of, in Japan, 412-414.

Birth, 1.

Boys, amusements of, 362-370.

Breakfast, 89.

Brothels. _See_ J[=o]roya.

Buddha's birthday, 365.

Buddhism, 168, 240; affected by Christianity, 417-421; introduction of, 143-145.

Buddhist funerals, 131, 132, 347.

Buddhist nuns, 155.

Buddhist priest, story of a, 418-421.

Building, 333-335.

Butsudan, the household shrine used by Buddhists, 323.

Castles, 151, 157, 169, 171, 173, 174, 185, 186, 192.

Chadai, literally "tea money," the fee given at an inn, 251-253.

Cherry blossoms, 28, 146, 166, 176, 177, 191, 295, 296.

Childhood. _See_ Girlhood.

Children, intellectual characteristics of Japanese, 41; Japanese compared with American, 19.

Chinese characters, 40.

Chinese civilization introduced, 142.

Chinese code of morals, 103, 111.

Christian ideas, progress of, 402-421.

Christianity, 77, 81, 168, 206, 207.

Christians, Japanese, 404.

Chrysanthemum, 166, 296-298.

Civilization, new, 77.

Clubs, women's, 391.

Concubinage, 85, 111.

Confectionery, 146.

Confucius, 103, 168.

Constitution, promulgation of the, 114, 276.

Corea, conquest of, 139-143.

Country and city, 278, 279.

Court, after conquest of Corea, 143-146; amusements of, 145; costumes, 146; in early times, 138, 139; ladies, 145, 148, 152-154; life, 138-168; of daimi[=o], 171; of Sh[=o]gun, 170, 171; removal to T[=o]ky[=o], 156.

Courtship, 58.

Crown Prince's wedding, the, 434, 442-445, 449-453.

Crucifixion, 199, 234.

Daikoku, the money god, 332.

Dai jobu, "Safe," "All right," 320.

Daimi[=o], a member of the landed nobility under the feudal system, 169-195; his castles, 169; his courts, 17; his daughters, 175, 177, 180, 182-184, 191, 192-195; his journeys to Yedo, 171-173; his retainers, 169, 171, 173, 175, 177-179, 181, 183, 185, 186; his wife, 175, 177, 182, 192-195; seclusion of, 172-174.

Dancing, 38, 287, 288.

Dancing girls. _See_ Géisha.

Dango Zaka, 296.

Dashi, a float used in festival processions, 275-278, 366-369.

Days, lucky and unlucky, 331.

Decency, Japanese standard of, 255-260.

Deformity, caused by position in sitting, 9.

Diet, changes in, 424.

Divorce, among lower classes, 66, 69, 73; among higher classes, 66, 68; effect of recent legislation on, 374, 439; new laws, 438, 439; right to children in case of, 67, 105, 439.

Dolls, Feast of, 28-31, 428-430; origin of, 428; present meaning of, 430.

Dress, baby, 6, 15; court, 145, 146; in daimi[=o]s' houses, 187, 192; military, of samurai women, 188; of lower classes, 126-128; of pilgrims, 243; present tendencies, 457; showing age of wearer, 119.

Education, higher, a doubtful help, 79; effect on home life, 77; producing repugnance to marriage, 80.

Education of daimi[=o]'s daughter, 177-180.

Education of girls, 37-56; action and reaction in, 433, 434; difficulties in new system, 52-56; fault in Japanese system, 39; in old times, 37.

Embroidered robes, 95, 146, 188, 192, 456.

Emperor, 111, 114, 134, 151-153, 155-157, 161, 164-166, 292.

Emperors, after introduction of Chinese civilization, 143-145; children of, 164; daughters of, 155; early retirement of, 134; in early times, 138; seclusion of, 143-145, 155, 156, 161, 169.

Empress, 88, 115, 140, 150-168.

Empress, Dowager, 152.

Engawa, the piazza that runs around a Japanese house, 23.

Etiquette, court, 153; in daimi[=o]s' houses, 177-179; in the home, 19, 20; instruction in, 46, 47; of leaving service, 316, 317; towards servants, 304, 305.

Factory workers, women, 399 _note_.

Fairy tales, 32.

Family, organization of, 139, 439-442.

Fancy work, 95.

Father's relation to children, 100.

Feast of Flags, 363, 364; of Lanterns, 358-362; of the Dead, 358-362; of Dolls, 28-31, 428-430.

Festivals, of flowers, 27, 99, 295-297; of the New Year, 25, 349-358; temple, 270-278, 364-370.

Feudal system, 169.

Feudal times, pictures of, 190-192; stories of, 184-187.

Firemen, 335, 338, 339.

Flirtation, unknown to Japanese girls, 34.

Flower arrangement, 42.

Flower painting, 47, 432.

Flower shows, 270-272.

Fortune-telling, 281-285, 331-333, 470.

Fuji, 58, 242.

Fukuzawa, his book on the woman question, 387-391; his will, 345.

Funeral customs, 131, 132, 339-349.

Furushiki, a square of cloth used for wrapping up a bundle, 354.

Games, battledore and shuttlecock, 31, 32; at court, 145; go, 136; hyaku nin isshu, 26, 27; shogi, 136.

Géisha, a professional dancing and singing girl, 286-289.

Géisha ya, an establishment where géishas may be hired, 286.

Géta, a wooden clog, 13, 14.

Ginza, 265.

Girlhood, 17-34.

Gohei, a piece of white paper folded and cut in a peculiar manner, one of the sacred symbols of the Shint[=o] faith, 464.

Hakama, the kilt-pleated trousers that formed a part of the dress of every Japanese gentleman, also the skirt worn by school-girls over the kimono, 433, 456.

Haori, a coat of cotton, silk, or crêpe, worn over the kimono, 8.

Hara-kiri, suicide by stabbing in the abdomen, 201, 202.

Haru, Prince, 113, 152, 442-444, 446-452.

Haru, Empress, 155-168.

Héimin, the class of farmers, artisans, and merchants, 203, 228, 229; class characteristics of, 229-240, 464-468.

Hibachi, a brazier for burning charcoal, 30, 72, 136, 307.

Hidéyoshi. _See_ Toyotomi.

Hinin, a class of paupers, 228.

Hiyéi Zan, 243.

Holidays, 269.

Hotel-keepers, 280, 281.

Hotels, 247-250.

Household duties, training for, 21.

Household worship, 328.

Hyaku nin isshu, "Poems of a Hundred Poets," the name of a game, 26.

Inkyo, a place of retirement, the home of a person who has retired from active life, 136.

Instruction, in etiquette, 46; in flower arranging, 42; in music, 41, 431; in painting, 47, 432; in reading and writing, 38; in tea ceremony, 44.

Inu, a dog, 250.

Isé, 231.

Iwafuji, 210-213.

Iwakura, Prince, 157.

Iya, a child's word, denoting dislike or negation, 16.

Iyémits[)u], 171, 172.

Iyéyas[)u], 169.

Japan-China war, 458-462.

Japanese language, 16, 40, 179.

Japanese literature, 147-150.

Jimmu Tenno, 138.

Jin, benevolence, 415.

Jingo K[=o]g[=o], 139-143, 147.

Jinrikisha, a light carriage drawn by one or more men, and which will hold one or two persons, 26, 70, 92, 268, 272, 320, 321.

Jinrikisha man, 26, 62, 69, 92, 108, 270, 279, 299, 316, 319-324, 473.

Jishi, mercy, 415.

J[=o]r[=o], a prostitute, 289-292, 406-411.

J[=o]roya, a house of prostitution, 290-292, 406-411.

Kaibara's "Great Learning of Women," 387, 389, 391.

Kakémono, a hanging scroll, 44, 147, 238.

Kaméido, 296.

Kami-dana, "god-shelf," the household shrine used by Shint[=o] worshippers, 328.

Kana, Japanese phonetic characters, 40 _note_, 430.

Katsuobushi, a kind of dried fish, 5.

Kimono, a long gown with wide sleeves and open in front, worn by Japanese of all classes, 7, 94, 188, 192, 287.

Kisses, 36.

Knees, flexibility of, 9.

Kotatsu, a charcoal fire in a brazier or small fireplace in the floor, over which a wooden frame is set, and the whole covered by a quilt, 33.

Koto, a musical instrument, 42.

Kugé, the court nobility, 155, 170.

Kura, a fire-proof storehouse, 147, 171, 173.

Kuruma, a wheeled vehicle of any kind, used as synonymous with jinrikisha.

Kurumaya, one who pulls a kuruma. _See_ Jinrikisha man.

Kurushima, 203.

Ky[=o]t[=o], 156, 171, 240, 241.

Ladies, court, 145, 148, 152-154; of daimi[=o]s' families, 175-180, 182-184.

Loyalty, 33, 75, 197, 206-208, 217, 302-304.

Mam ma, a baby's word for rice or food, 16.

Mamushi, a poisonous snake, 467, 468.

Manners of children, 18.

Manzai, exorcists who drive devils out of the houses at New Year's time, 357.

Marriage, 57-83; ceremony, 61, 63, 435, 436; feast, 63; festivities after, 63, 64, 437; guests, 63; presents, 62, 435; registration, 65; to y[=o]shi, 104; trousseau, 61, 436.

Marumagé, a style of arranging the hair of married ladies, 119.

Matsuri, a festival, usually in honor of some god, 274-278, 366-370.

Matsuri, Shobu, feast of flags, 363, 364.

Méiji (Enlightened Rule), the name of the era that began with the accession of the present Emperor in 1868, 149.

Mékaké, a concubine, 111-114.

Men, old, dependence of, 133; amusements of, 136.

Merchants, 262-269, 469.

Military service of women, 188-190, 208, 223.

Missionary schools, 56.

Miya mairi, the presentation of the child at the temple when it is a month old. The term is also used to describe the visits to the temple at the ages of three, five, and seven, 3-6, 425-427.

Mochi, a kind of rice dumpling, 4, 24, 25, 65, 352, 353.

Momotaro, 33.

Mon, a family crest, 366.

Montsuki, a kimono bearing the crest of the wearer, 457.

Morality, standards of, 76.

Mother, her relation to her children, 99-102.

Mother-in-law, 84, 87; O Kiku's, 74.

Moving, 335-337.

Muk[=o]jima, 191, 295.

Music, 41, 42, 430-432.

Names, 3, 423.

Nara, 247.

Né San. _See_ Ané San.

New Year, preparation for, 349-356; festival of, 25-27, 356-358.

Nikk[=o], 231, 245.

No, a pantomimic dance, 292, 293.

Norimono, a palanquin, 30.

Noshi, a bit of dried fish, usually folded in colored paper, given with a present for good luck, 2.

Nurses, trained, 398.

Nursing the sick, 101.

O, an honorific used before many nouns, and before most names of women, 20.

O B[=a] San, grandmother, 124.

O B[)a] San, aunt, 124.

Obi, a girdle or sash, 60, 435.

O Bon, the feast of the dead, 358-362.

Occupations, of the blind, 42; of the court, 143-150; of the daimi[=o]s' ladies, 175-180; of the Empress, 156-160; of old people, 120-122, 124-128, 136; of samurai women, 223, 224; of servants, 299, 304, 306, 308-315, 318; of women, 85-103, 108-110, 242-256, 279-292, 306, 307, 310-318, 397-402; of young girls, 21-34, 38-47.

O Haru, 211-213.

Oishi, 198, 214.

Oji, 296.

O J[=o] Sama, young lady, 20.

O kaeri, "Honorable return," a greeting shouted by the attendant upon the master's or mistress's return to the house, 100, 315.

O Kaio, 324-326.

O Kiku's marriage and divorce, 73, 74.

Okuma, Count, 203; his speech on education, 382.

Old age, privileges of, 120, 122, 123; provision for, 134.

Old men, 133, 136.

O miyagé, a present given on returning from a journey or pleasure excursion, 274.

Oni, a devil or goblin, 33, 466.

Onoyé, 210, 213.

Palace, new, 151-153.

Parents, duties to, 134; respect for, 133; disadvantages in Japanese system, 445.

Parents-in-law, 84, 87.

Peasant women, 108, 240-261.

Peasantry, 228-240.

Philanthropic efforts, 415-417, 418-421.

Physical culture in schools, 433, 453-456.

Physicians' fees, 204.

Pilgrims, 241, 242.

Pillow, 89.

Pleasure excursions, 99.

"Poems of a hundred poets," 26.

Poetry, 26, 148-150.

Presents, 96; after a wedding, 65; at betrothal, 60, 435; at miya mairi, 4; at New Year's, 353-355; at O Bon, 358; at weddings, 62; how wrapped, 2; in honor of a birth, 1; of eggs, 2, 5; of money, 204, 205; on returning from a journey, 274; to servants, 311, 315.

Prisoners' Home in T[=o]ky[=o], 413.

Prostitutes. _See_ J[=o]r[=o].

Prostitution, houses of. _See_ J[=o]roya.

Purity of Japanese women, 216-219.

Reading of women, 385-387.

Red Cross Society, 398, 416.

Religion of peasantry, 464-466.

Retirement from business, 133.

Retirement of Emperors, 134.

Revenge, 198, 210-214.

Revolution of 1868, 76, 221.

Rice, red bean, 3, 5, 65.

Rin, one tenth of a sen, or about one half mill, 240.

R[=o]nin, a samurai who had lost his master and owed no allegiance to any daimi[=o], 198, 213.

Sada, Princess, 449-453.

Sakaki, the Cleyera Japonica, 98.

Saké, wine made from rice, 22, 63, 136, 296; white, 29.

Salvation Army's attack on j[=o]roya, 408-411.

Sama, or San, an honorific placed after names, equivalent to Mr., Mrs., or Miss, 20, 73, 124, 136, 232, 283, 284, 304.

Samisen, a musical instrument, 42, 127, 277, 286.

Samurai, the military class, 42, 75, 76, 105, 169, 174, 175, 180, 196-227, 232, 263, 302, 303, 307, 319; character of, 197-207.

Samurai girls in school, 226.

Samurai women, character of, 207-223, 458-460; present work, 223-327.

Satsuma rebellion, 222.

School system, 50, 378-381; object of, 379; statistics of, 380.

School, Girls', for Higher English, 383-385; Mr. Naruse's Female University, 381-383.

Schools, missionary, 56.

Self-possession of Japanese girls, 47.

Self-sacrifice, 214-219.

Sen, one hundredth part of a yen, value about five mills, 240, 273, 298.

Servants, characteristics of, 209-302; duties of, 302-315; in employ of foreigners, 299-302; number employed, 310, 311; position of, 302-310; wages, 311.

Sewing, 23, 94.

Shir[=o]zaké, a sweet white saké used at the feast of dolls, 427.

Shogi, Japanese chess, 136.

Sh[=o]gun, or Tycoon, the Viceroy or so-called temporal ruler of Japan under the feudal system, 155, 169, 171, 173, 176, 185, 186, 191, 194, 197, 208, 224, 231-234, 292; daughter of, 176, 194.

Sh[=o]gunate, 155, 190, 192, 221, 222.

Shoji, sliding windows covered with white paper, 23, 71.

Shopping, 264-268.

Sho-séi, a student, 308.

Silk mosaic, 95, 192.

Silkworms, 95, 246.

Soba, a kind of macaroni made of buckwheat, 336.

Soroban, an abacus, 266-268.

Sumida River, 173, 295.

Tabi, a mitten-like sock, 13.

Ta ta, a baby's word for sock or tabi, 16.

Taiko Sama. _See_ Toyotomi.

Tea, 91, 92; ceremonial, 44, 136, 176, 432.

Tea-gardens, 247.

Tea-houses, 250-255.

Teachers, pay of, 204; women as, 398.

Teaching. _See_ Instruction.

Teeth, blackened after marriage, 63.

Temple, 4, 120, 129, 240.

Tengu, a monster in Japanese folklore, 466, 468.

Theatre, 33, 99, 292-294.

Titles used in families, 20.

Toes, prehensile, 15.

Toilet apparatus, 30.

T[=o]kaid[=o], 241.

Tokonoma, the raised alcove in a Japanese room, 44.

Tokugawa, 29, 151, 155, 231.

T[=o]ky[=o], 49, 69-71, 108, 115.

T[=o]ky[=o] Mail, 231.

Tombs, 98.

Toyotomi Hidéyoshi, 232.

Training-schools for nurses, 158, 398.

Trousseau, 61, 436.

Tsuda, Miss Umé, viii, 458.

Utsunomiya, 70, 71.

Uyéno Park, 296.

Virtue, Japanese and Western ideas of, 215-219.

Visits, after marriage, 63; in honor of a birth, 1, 2; New Year's, 25; to a house of mourning, 340; to parents, 98; to tombs, 98, 359.

Voice in singing, 430-432.

Wakamatsu, 208, 222, 457.

Wedding. _See_ Marriage.

Widows, childless, 123.

Wife, childless, 102; duties of, 85-99; in great houses, 92; relation to husband, 84; relation to parents-in-law, 84; social relations, 91.

Woman question, new feeling about, 371-373.

Women, general reading of, 386; in the city, 279-298; new openings for, 397-402; occupations of, 85-103, 108-110, 242-256, 279-292, 306, 307, 310-318, 397-402; position of, 17-22, 35, 36, 57, 65-68, 76-88, 90, 91, 93, 99-118, 120-124, 132, 133, 139, 143, 145, 146, 148, 168, 189, 190, 208, 216-219, 223-227, 242-247, 260, 261, 279, 292, 298, 306, 318, 371-378, 438-440; property rights of, 374-378; publications for, 385-391; purity of, 216-219; the new woman in old surroundings, 392-397.

Women, old, appearance of, 119; examples of, 124, 126-129, 467-469; in Japanese pictures, 132.

Written language, proposed reforms in, 430.

Yamato Daké, 215.

Yasaku, 324; marriage and divorce of, 69-73.

Yasé, 243, 244.

Yashiki, a daimi[=o]'s mansion and grounds, 169, 171, 173, 311, 313.

Yedo. _See_ T[=o]ky[=o].

Y[=o]shi, an adopted son, 104.

Yoshiwara, a district in T[=o]ky[=o] given over to disreputable houses, 409.

Zodiac, Chinese signs of the, 331.

Zori, a straw sandal, 13.

[Transcriber's Note:

Except where index entries and the body of the text did not match, irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. kwankoba and kwan-ko-ba), italics, and spellings (e.g. vendors and venders) have not been changed. Except where noted below, inconsistent accents (e.g. j[=o]roya vs. j[=o]r[=o]ya) have been retained.

The following corrections and changes were made:

p. 120: marumage to marumagé (The _marumagé_, the style of headdress of married ladies)

p. 175: daimios' to daimi[=o]s' (and daimi[=o]s' houses)

p. 351: kakemonos to kakémonos (the kakémonos and curios)

p. 383: Meiji to Méiji (thirty-fourth year of Méiji)

p. 427: miyage to miyagé (the _o miyagé_ to be purchased)

p. 429: accents added to Sh[=o]guns, Sh[=o]gun's, and Sh[=o]gunate

p. 428: shirozaké to shir[=o]zaké (The _shir[=o]zaké_ (white _saké_))

p. 437: oufit to outfit (But this outfit)

p. 440: heimin to héimin (_héimin_, or plebeian)

p. 473: Bé-bé to Bé bé (Index entry)

p. 475: Index entry for "Girlhood, 17-34." added (Index entry "Childhood. _See_ Girlhood." originally pointed to non-existent entry)

p. 475: Iyemits[)u] to Iyémits[)u] (Index entry)

p. 475: Iyeyas[)u] to Iyéyas[)u] (Index entry)

p. 476: fireproof to fire-proof (Index: Kura, a fire-proof storehouse)

p. 476: Jo to J[=o] (Index: O J[=o] Sama, young lady)

p. 477: Onouyé to Onoyé (Index entry)

p. 478: folk-lore to folklore (Index: Tengu, a monster in Japanese folklore)]

End of Project Gutenberg's Japanese Girls and Women, by Alice Mabel Bacon