“There is one supreme maxim upon which the conduct of a well-bred woman
is made to turn, and this is ‘obedience.’ Life, the Japanese girl is
taught, divides itself into three stages of obedience. In youth she is
to obey her father; in marriage her husband; in widowhood her eldest
son. Hence her preparation for life is always preparation for service.
The marriage of the Japanese girl usually takes place when she is about
seventeen. It is contrary to all custom that she should have any voice
in it. Once married, she passes from her father’s household into the
household of her husband, and her period of self-abnegation begins. Her
own family is to be as nothing to her. Her duty is to charm the
existence of her husband, and to please his relations. Custom demands
that she shall always smile upon him, and that she shall carefully hide
from him any signs of bad humour, jealousy, or physical pain.”—Tinseau
(quoted in _Review of Reviews_, Vol. IV., p. 282.)
Note well the last two words of the above quotation; they have a bearing
on much that will have to be said presently. Meanwhile, we read from
another writer: “The expression, _res angusta domi_, might have been
invented for Japan, so narrow of necessity is the wife’s home life. The
husband mixes with the world, the wife does not; the husband has been
somewhat inspired, and his thoughts widened by his intercourse with
foreigners, the wife has not met them. The husband has more or less
acquaintance with western learning; the wife has none. Affection between
the two, within the limits which unequal intellectuality ruthlessly
prescribes, there well may be, but the love which comes of a perfect
intimacy, of mutual knowledge and common aspiration, there can rarely
be. The very vocabulary of romantic love does not exist in Japanese; _a
fortiori_, there is little of the fact.” Yet, under the influence of
western civilisation, these things are changing rapidly, and Mr. Norman,
the commissioner of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, further relates that “The
generation that is now growing up will be very different. Not only will
the men of it be more western, but the women also. As girls they will
have been to schools like our schools at home, and they will have
learned English, and history, and geography, and science, and foreign
music; perhaps, even, something of politics and political economy. They
will know something of ‘society,’ as we now use the term, and will both
seek it and make it. The old home life will become unbearable to the
woman, and she will demand the right of choosing her husband just as
much as he chooses her. Then the rest will be easy.”
The harsh and restrained position, both of Japanese and Chinese women,
is frequently attributed to Confucianism; yet the matter does not seem
to be of any one creed, but rather of every religious creed. Thus Mrs.
Reichardt tells us, concerning Mahommedan women and Mahommedan married
life, that—
“A Mahommedan girl is brought up with the idea that she has nothing to
do with love. It is _ayib_ (shame) for her to love her husband. She dare
not do it if she would. What he asks and expects of her is to tremble
before him, and yield him unquestioning obedience. I have _seen_ a
husband look pleased and complacent when his wife looked afraid to lift
up her eyes, even when visitors were present.”—(_Nineteenth Century_,
June, 1891.)
Nor is Confucius alone, or the simple contagion of his teaching, rightly
to be blamed for the following condition of things in our own dependency
of