The Japanese have a little more regard for women than most Orientals,
yet by them, too, love is regarded as a low passion--as, in fact,
identical with lust. It is not considered respectable for young folks
to arrange their own marriages on a basis of love.
"Among the lower classes, indeed," says Küchler,[44] "such direct
unions are not infrequent; but they are held in contempt, and are
known as yago (meeting on a moor), a term of disrespect, showing the
low opinion entertained of it." Professor Chamberlain writes, in his
_Things Japanese_ (285):
"One love marriage we have heard of, one in eighteen years!
But then both the young people had been brought up in
America. Accordingly they took the reins in their own hands,
to the great scandal of all their friends and relations."
On another page (308) he says:
"According to the Confucian ethical code, which the Japanese
adopted, a man's parents, his teacher, and his lord claim
his life-long service, his wife standing on an immeasurably
lower plane."[45]
Ball, in his _Things Chinese_ comments on the efforts made by Chinamen
to suppress love-matches as being immoral; and the French author, L.A.
Martin, says, in his book on Chinese morals (171):
"Chinese philosophers know nothing of Platonic love;
they speak of the relations between men and women with
the greatest reserve, and we must attribute this to the
low esteem in which they generally hold the fair sex;
in their illustrations of the disorders of love, it is
almost always the woman on whom the blame of seduction
is laid."