Japanese Girls and Women, Alice Mabel Bacon [ebook reader library TXT] 📗

mother's influence is always direct and personal. No thick walls and long passageways separate the nursery from the grown people's apartments, but the thin paper partitions make it possible for the mother to know always what her children are doing, and whether they are good and gentle with their nurses, or irritable and passionate. The children never leave the house, nor return to it, without going to their mother's room, and there making the little bows and repeating the customary phrases used upon such occasions. In the same way, when the mother goes out, all the servants and the children escort her to the door; and when her attendant shouts "O kaeri," which is the signal of her return, children and servants hasten to the gate to greet her, and do what they can to help her from her conveyance and make her home-coming pleasant and restful.

The father has little to do with the training of his children, which is left almost entirely to the mother, and, except for the interference of the mother-in-law, she has her own way in their training, until they are long past childhood. The children are taught to look to the father as the head, and to respect and obey him as the one to whom all must defer; but the mother comes next, almost as high in their estimation, and, if not so much feared and respected, certainly enjoys a larger share of their love.

The Japanese mother's life is one of perfect devotion to her children; she is their willing slave. Her days are spent in caring for them, her evenings in watching over them; and she spares neither time nor trouble in doing anything for their comfort and pleasure. In sickness,[19] in health, day and night, the little ones are her one thought; and from the home of the noble to the humble cot of the peasant, this tender mother-love may be seen in all its different phases. The Japanese woman has so few on whom to lavish her affection, so little to live for beside her children, and no hopes in the future except through them, that it is no wonder that she devotes her life to their care and service, deeming the drudgery that custom requires of her for them the easiest of all her duties. Even with plenty of servants, the mother performs for her children nearly all the duties often delegated to nurses in this country. Mother and babe are rarely separated, night or day, during the first few years of the baby's life, and the mother denies herself any entertainment or journey from home when the baby cannot accompany her. To give the husband any share in the baby-work would be an unheard-of thing, and a disgrace to the wife; for in public and in private the baby is the mother's sole charge, and the husband is never asked to sit up all night with a sick baby, or to mind it in any way at all. Nothing in all one's study of Japanese life seems more beautiful and admirable than the influence of the mother over her children,—an influence that is gentle and all-pervading, bringing out all that is sweetest and noblest in the feminine character, and affording the one almost unlimited opportunity of a Japanese woman's life. The lot of a childless wife in Japan is a sad one. Not only is she denied the hopes and the pleasures of a mother in her children, but she is an object of pity to her friends, and well does she know that Confucius has laid down the law that a man is justified in divorcing a childless wife. All feel that through her, innocent though she is, the line has ceased; that her duty is unfulfilled; and that, though the name be given to adopted sons, there is no heir of the blood. A man rarely sends away his wife solely with this excuse, but children are the strongest of the ties which bind together husband and wife, and the childless wife is far less sure of pleasing her husband. In many cases she tries to make good her deficiencies by her care of adopted children; in them she often finds the love which fills the void in her heart and home, and she receives from them in after-life the respect and care which is the crown of old age.

We have hitherto spoken of married life when the wife is received into her husband's home. Another interesting side of Japanese marriage is when a man enters the wife's family, taking her name and becoming entirely one of her family, as usually the wife becomes of the husband's. When there are daughters but no sons in a family to inherit the name, one of three things may happen: a son may be adopted early in life and grow up as heir; or he may be adopted with the idea of marrying one of the daughters; or, again, no one may have been formally adopted, but on the eldest daughter's coming to a marriageable age, her family and friends seek for her a yōshi, that is to say, some man (usually a younger son) who is willing and able to give up his family name, and, by marrying the daughter, become a member of her family and heir to the name. He cuts off all ties from his own family, and becomes a member of hers, and the young couple are expected to live with her parents. In this case the tables are turned, and it is he who has to dread the mother-in-law; it is his turn to have to please his new relatives and to do all he can to be agreeable. He, too, may be sent away and divorced by the all-powerful parents, if he does not please; and such divorces are not uncommon. Of course, in such marriages, the woman has the greater power, and the man has to remember what he owes her; and though the woman yields to him obediently in all respects, it is an obedience not demanded by the husband, as under other circumstances. In such marriages the children belong to the family whose name they bear, so that in case of divorce they remain in the wife's family, unless some special arrangement is made about them.

It may be wondered why young men ever care to enter a family as yōshi. There is only one answer,—it is the attraction of wealth and rank, very rarely that of the daughter herself. In the houses of rich daimiōs without sons, yōshi are very common, and there are many younger sons of the nobility, themselves of high birth, but without prospects, who are glad enough to become great lords. In feudal times, the number of samurai families was limited. Several sons of one family could not establish different samurai families, but all but the eldest son, if they formed separate houses, must enroll themselves among the ranks of the common people. Hence the younger sons were often adopted into other samurai families as yōshi, where it was desired to secure a succession to a name that must otherwise die out. Since the Restoration, and the breaking down of the old class distinctions, young men care more for independence than for their rank as samurai; and it is now quite difficult to find yōshi to enter samurai families, unless it be because of the attractiveness and beauty of the young lady herself. Many a young girl who could easily make a good marriage with some suitable husband, could she enter his family, is now obliged to take some inferior man as yōshi, because few men in these days are willing to change their names, give up their independence, and take upon themselves the support of aged parents-in-law; for this also is expected of the yōshi, unless the family that he enters is a wealthy one.

From this custom of yōshi, and its effect upon the wife's position, we see that, in certain cases, Japanese women are treated as equal with men. It is not because of their sex that they are looked down upon and held in subjection, but it is because of their almost universal dependence of position. The men have the right of inheritance, the education, habits of self-reliance, and are the bread-winners. Wherever the tables are turned, and the men are dependents of the women, and even where the women are independent of the men,—there we find the relations of men to women vastly changed. The women of Japan must know how to do some definite work in the world beyond the work of the home, so that their position will not be one of entire dependence upon father, husband, or son. If fathers divided their estates between sons and daughters alike, and women were given, before the law, right to hold property in their own names, much would be accomplished towards securing them in their positions as wives and mothers; and divorce, the great evil of Japanese home life to-day, would become simply a last resort to preserve the purity of the home, as it is in most civilized countries now.

The difference between the women of the lower and those of the higher classes, in the matter of equality with their husbands, is quite noticeable. The wife of the peasant or merchant is much nearer to her husband's level than is the wife of the Emperor. Apparently, each step in the social scale is a little higher for the man than it is for the woman, and lifts him a little farther above his wife. The peasant and his wife work side by side in the field, put their shoulders to the same wheel, eat together in the same room, at the same time, and whichever of them happens to be the stronger in character governs the house, without regard to sex. There is no great gulf fixed between them, and there is frequently a consideration for the wife shown by husbands of the lower class, that is not unlike what we see in our own country. I remember the case of a jinrikisha man employed by a friend of mine in Tōkyō, who was much laughed at by his friends because he actually used to spend some of his leisure moments in drawing the water required for his household from a well some distance away, and carrying the heavy buckets to the house, in order to save the strength of his little, delicate wife. That cases of such devotion are rare is no doubt true, but that they occur shows that there is here and there a recognition of the claims that feminine weakness has upon masculine strength.

A frequent sight in the morning, in Tōkyō, is a cart heavily laden with wood, charcoal, or some other country produce, creaking slowly along the streets, propelled by a farmer and his family. Sometimes one will see an old man, his son, and his son's wife with a baby on her back, all pushing or pulling with might and main; the woman with tucked-up skirts and tight-fitting blue trousers, a blue towel enveloping her head,—only to be distinguished from the men by her smaller size and the baby tied to her back. But when evening comes, and the load of produce has been disposed of, the woman and baby are seen seated upon the cart, while the two men pull it back to their home in some neighboring village. Here, again, is the recognition of the law that governs the position of woman in this country,—the theory, not of inferior position, but of inferior strength; and the sight of the women riding back in the empty carts at night, drawn by their husbands, is the thing that strikes a