_The Lyric Impulse--A Man-Made Product--The Remoteness of Woman
Suffrage--Efforts Toward Progress--Divorce--Marriage and the
Go-Between--The Rising Generation--Japanese-American
Duality--Leprosy_
Lafcadio Hearn tells us that training in the Tea Ceremony "is held to be
a training in politeness, in self-control, in delicacy--a discipline in
deportment"; but Jakichi Inouye, a searching and sincere Japanese
writer, goes even further, declaring that "the calm, sedate gracefulness
of the Japanese lady of culture is the result of the study of the Tea
Ceremony...."
My one quarrel with Mr. Inouye is over that statement. To say that the
study of the Tea Ceremony assists young ladies to attain poise is safe
enough; but to say that the fine bearing of the Japanese lady is _the
result_ of studying the Tea Ceremony seems to me to be going altogether
too far.
The bearing of the Japanese lady is a thing too exquisite to have been
produced by the practice of any artificial social ritual. Such a bearing
is not, in my opinion, to be classed as a mere accomplishment, though it
may have been so a thousand years ago. Rather it is the reflection of an
incomparably lovely spirit, the flower of countless generations of such
spirits, reaching back through ages of tradition, centuries of
self-abnegation. It is the crowning product and proof, not of any Tea
Ceremony, but of the disciplined civilization of Old Japan.
Whenever I find my thoughts reverting to the Japanese woman, I feel
stirring within me a tendency to lyricism. Let Lafcadio Hearn, whose
wife was a Japanese lady, speak for me. "Before this ethical creation,"
he writes, "criticism should hold its breath; for there is here no
single fault save the fault of a moral charm unsuited to any world of
selfishness and struggle.... Perhaps no such type of woman will appear
again in this world for a hundred thousand years: the conditions of
industrial civilization will not admit of her existence."
The fact that the Japanese woman is in no small degree a man-made
product does not fill me with admiration for Japanese men, as would some
insentient product of their art. For whereas the artist has a right to
carve what he will in wood or ivory or lacquer, to mould what he will in
wax or clay or bronze, I doubt his moral right to use the human soul as
a medium for his craftsmanship in making an ornament for his own home,
however exquisite that ornament may be.
I am well aware that in this case the end may be said to justify the
means, but I am enough of an individualist to believe in our American
system, even though I must admit that it has not produced so sweet and
delicate an average of womanhood as has the Japanese system. Women as we
produce them exhibit a much wider range of types than may be found in
Japan, and though a vulgar American woman, be she rich or poor, attains
a degree of vulgarity such as is not even faintly approximated in Japan,
we also know that we produce types of women as fine as the world can
show. And while I cannot speak with absolute certainty of the
intellectual attainments of Japanese women, I am inclined to think that
our more liberal attitude toward the sex, the greater freedom of
companionship between American women and men, and the growth of the
American woman's interest and share in public matters may tend to make
her, at her best, a more completely satisfying comrade--not because her
brains are necessarily better brains than those of the women of Japan,
or of other countries, but because she has been encouraged to exercise
them in a larger way.
From my point of view, however, the basic question here is not the
question of which system produces the highest specimens of womanhood,
but that of the inherent right of the individual to develop, let the
results be what they may.
The Japanese woman is not allowed this freedom, since it is obviously to
the interest of the Japanese man to keep her as she is. Lately there has
been some agitation in Japan for what is called "universal suffrage,"
but it must not be supposed that by that term woman suffrage is meant.
The proposal involves only the extension of the ballot to all males, as
against the present system which requires that a man shall pay taxes
above a certain amount in order to have a vote. Woman suffrage is not
even in sight. When I was in Japan a few progressive women were asking,
not for the vote, but for the abrogation of the rule which denied their
sex the right to attend political meetings. They were successful. The
rule was recently abrogated. A movement had also been started by some
advanced women led by Mrs. Raicho Hiratsuka, for laws compelling men who
wish to marry to obtain medical certificates declaring them mentally
sound and free from diseases of a kind likely to be communicated to a
wife. I heard that seventy out of three hundred girls employed by the
railway administration in Kyoto had organized an association to aid in
the advancement of the measures proposed, vowing never to marry unless
their would-be husbands complied with the requirements for which Mrs.
Raicho Hiratsuka and her associates were endeavouring to obtain legal
recognition.
Another matter that wants mending is the legal status of married women.
So far as I know there has been made no serious effort to improve the
present situation. Under Japanese law a woman, upon contracting
marriage, is debarred from civil rights, having practically the standing
of a minor. A wife cannot transfer her own real estate, bring an action
at law, or even accept or reject a legacy or a gift, without the consent
of her husband. Laws not dissimilar to these exist, I believe, in some
of the more backward states of our own Union. According to the law of
Japan a widow cannot succeed her husband as head of the family if she
has a child who can take the succession. In matters of inheritance an
elder sister gives place to a younger son, even to an illegitimate son
recognized by the father.
A husband may divorce a wife for adultery, but a wife cannot divorce a
husband for this cause--or rather, she can do so only when he has
offended with a married woman whose husband has therefore brought action
for divorce. Thus it will be seen that a husband may even take a
concubine to live in his home, along with his wife and children, without
giving ground for divorce. Concubinage, I am told, is still to some
extent practised in Japan, though popular opinion is against it. In one
respect, however, the Japanese divorce laws are more enlightened than
our own. A husband and a wife who agree in desiring a divorce may easily
obtain it by stating the fact to the court.
Somehow or other I came to the subject of divorce before that of
marriage. The Orient and the Occident are nowhere farther apart than in
their views and customs as to the mating of men and women. In Japan
marriages for love rarely occur, though it is said that the tendency of
young people to marry to suit themselves is growing. Young Japanese
girls, I am told, often look with envy upon women of other nations,
where marriage for love is the general rule. Probably they suppose that
such matches are invariably happy; that the love is always real love,
and that it endures for ever. No doubt our system, viewed from afar,
looks as rosy to a Japanese girl as their system looks appalling to an
American girl. Yet each has certain merits. The Japanese system does not
suggest romance, it is true; but is romance, after all, the most
essential stone in the foundation for a happy married life? Romantic
notions figure too largely in some of our matches, and too little in
some of theirs. And while the mature judgment of older people is with
them the determining factor in the making of a match, it is too often
with us no factor at all.
Marriages in Japan are generally brought about by older married couples
who act as go-betweens. There is a popular saying that everyone should
act as a go-between at least three times. The go-between, knowing a
young man and a young woman whom he regards as suitable to each other,
proposes the match confidentially to the parents of both. If preliminary
reports are mutually satisfactory to the two families, a meeting of the
young couple and their parents and relatives is arranged on neutral
ground. Any intimation of the real purpose of this meeting is tactfully
avoided at the time, though the purpose of it is, of course, fully
understood by all concerned. Under this arrangement either family may,
without giving offence, drop the matter after the first meeting, but if
the results of the preliminary inspection are satisfactory to both
sides, the parents meet again and definitely arrange the match, which is
made binding by an exchange of presents.
[Illustration: You cannot understand Japan without understanding
the Japanese woman, who is the nation's crowning glory]
Chamberlain says that while, in theory, the betrothal may not be
concluded if either young person objects, in practice the two are in the
hands of their parents, and that "the girl, in particular, is nobody in
the matter."
This generalization was doubtless accurate a few years ago, and may be
accurate to-day in remote parts of Japan where Western ideas have not
crept in, but among the educated classes in large cities a distinct
change has come over the rising generation. There is as great a gap
between the older and the younger generations in Japan as in the United
States, and as with us, the older people over there complain that youth
is getting altogether out of hand, while youth complains that its
aspirations are not understood by parents and grandparents. This does
not mean that Japanese young men and young women run practically wild,
as so many of our young people now are doing, but merely that the slight
personal freedom they are demanding represents in Japan as great a
novelty as is exhibited in the United States by the change from moderate
parental control to no control at all.
Yet the cults and traditions of Old Japan are vastly powerful, and
though they may yield a little here and there, they will not soon be
broken down. This fact is made apparent in the quick reversion to type
of Japanese men and women who have lived for years in the United States,
and who, when in the United States, seem to have become quite like
Americans. Meet them in Japan and you see that their Occidentalism was
only skin-deep. While among us they gracefully adapted themselves to our
ways, and doubtless enjoyed them, but always in the back of their minds
was the knowledge that they were Japanese and that they would ultimately
return to Japan, there to become a part of the finely adjusted mechanism
of Japanese homogeneity. I know many such men and women and find them
very interesting. They have passed through an extraordinary mental and
spiritual experience, generally without being confused by it. Instead of
mixing their Japanese and American selves, they acquire a perfect
duality. They can sit on either side of the fence, as it were, and look
over calmly and interpretatively at the other side.
I discussed this subject with one young matron who spent the first
twenty years of her life in the United States, and who, when she moved
to Japan, spoke her native tongue with an American accent.
"My brothers and sisters and I went to American boarding schools," she
said. "We dressed like Americans, had American boy and girl friends,
went to house-parties, and grew up outwardly, just as they were growing
up. But always we were taught by our parents to understand that this was
not to go on for ever.
"When I came to Japan and married I saw that the best thing to do was to
show people that I was as Japanese as any of them. If I had kept up my
foreign ways it would have been resented. So I became completely
Japanese, and for a number of years did not even meet Americans who came
here. Then when I had made clear my attitude and felt I was established,
I began to see Americans again and entertain them."
In another case a young Japanese in an American university used to tell
his college friends that when he went back to Japan he would show his
emancipation from old Japanese tradition by marrying as he pleased. Soon
after reaching home, however, he was married by his parents to a bride
he hardly knew. He speaks fluent English, I am told, and has an American
side which he can show at will, but the inner man is essentially as
Japanese as though he had never been away. And rightly so, of course.
The Japanese who throws himself as an impediment against the movement of
the great machine of national conventions is not likely to break so much
as a single tooth in the smallest of its wheels, but will surely break
himself.
But to return to the subject of marriages:
Having arranged the match, the go-between naturally takes pride in its
success. He befriends the young couple; if they are unhappy he mediates
between them, endeavouring to settle their difficulties; and if their
unhappiness continues, and divorce is spoken of, it becomes his duty to
exhaust every resource to prevent their acting rashly.
Before arranging the match, however, the go-between takes precautions to
provide against such dangers as may be foreseen. He must, for example,
make discreet investigations as to the health of both families for
several generations back, to insure against hereditary taints, among
which the most dreaded is leprosy.
The Japan Year Book, in most cases a useful reference work, is curiously
silent on the subject of leprosy, though several pages are devoted to
tuberculosis and other diseases. It was reported recently that a million
Japanese have tuberculosis, but leprosy, though less contagious and
consequently much less frequent, is more feared. An authority has told
me that there are probably two million lepers in the world and that the
only countries free from the disease are England and Scotland, from
which it has been eradicated by segregation. It is estimated that New
York City has one hundred lepers, and that there are cases of it in
most, if not all states in the Union. Yet according to the government
report only three states--California, Louisiana, and Massachusetts--make
provision for the segregation and care of sufferers from this most
terrible of diseases. Some people give the number of lepers in Japan as
under twenty thousand. The Home Office sets the figure at sixty-four
thousand. Specialists, however, say that even the latter figure is far
too low, and that the actual number is nearer one hundred thousand.
The first leprosarium in Japan was started twenty-eight years ago by
Roman Catholic missionaries. A few years later a second leper hospital
was founded by Miss H. Riddell, an Englishwoman who has been probably
the greatest single influence in bettering conditions for the Japanese
lepers. Miss Riddell's leprosarium at Kumamoto, south Japan, was, I
believe, used by the Japanese Government as a model for the State
leprosariums of which there are now five. Other such institutions are
operated by missionaries and private individuals, but the work must be
greatly extended if it is hoped to check the spread of the disease, to
say nothing of stamping it out.
A Japanese friend of mine who has frequently acted as go-between in
arranging matches for employees of a large company of which he is an
official, tells me that girls in families tainted with leprosy are often
exceptionally beautiful, and that they frequently have very white skins.
In certain parts of Japan where leprosy is common there are, he tells
me, rich families having beautiful daughters for whom it is impossible
to find husbands in the neighbourhood because of rumours that the dread
disease is in their blood. Such families occasionally move to the great
cities where they seek to find husbands for their daughters through
matrimonial agents or by personal advertisements in newspapers. The
custom of advertising for a husband or a wife has of late years grown
considerably, and as has happened in this country, rascalities are
sometimes discovered behind such advertisements, wherefore the police
keep an eye on matrimonial agencies.
One reason why accurate statistics on leprosy are hard to get, not only
in Japan, but in all countries, is that families in which a case occurs
will often go to great lengths to conceal it. In Japan this is
particularly true because there a leper cannot marry, and leprosy is
cause for divorce not only in the case of the individual actually
afflicted, but in that of the victim's blood relations including those
as far removed as second cousins.
No wonder the go-between feels a sense of responsibility!