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

title="[324]"> more and more boldly from the fading background,—both, the figures of faithful servants. One, Yasaku, the kurumaya, a very Hercules, who could keep close to a pair of coach horses through miles of city streets, and who never suffered mortal jinrikisha man to pass him. My champion in all times of danger and alarm, but a very autocrat in all minor matters,—his cheery face, his broad shoulders with their blue draperies, his jolly, boyish voice, and his dainty, delicate hands come before me as I write, and I wonder to what fortunate person he is now giving the intelligent service that he once gave so whole-heartedly to me. The other, O Kaio, my maid, her plain little face, with its upturned eyes, growing, as the days went by, absolutely beautiful in the light of pure goodness that beamed from it. A Japanese Christian, with all the Christian virtues well developed, she became to me not only a good servant, doing her work with conscientious fidelity, but a sympathetic friend, to whom I turned for help in time of need; and whom I left, when I returned to America, with a sincere sorrow in my heart at parting with one who had grown to fill so large a place in my thoughts. Her little, half-shy, half-motherly ways toward her big foreign mistress had a charm all their own. Her pride and delight over my progress in the language; her patient efforts to make me understand new words, or to understand my uncouth foreign idioms; her joy, when at last I reached the point where a story told by her lips could be comprehended and enjoyed,—gave a continual encouragement in a task too often completely disheartening.

During the last summer of my stay in Japan, cutting loose from all foreigners and foreign associations, I traveled alone with her through the heart of the country, stopping only at Japanese hotels, and carrying with me no supplies to eke out the simple Japanese fare. Through floods and typhoons we journeyed. Long days of scorching heat or driving rain in no way abated her cheerfulness, or lessened her desire to do all that she could for my aid and comfort. Not one sad look nor impatient word showed a flaw in her perfect temper; and if she privately made up her mind that I was crazy, she never by word or look gave a hint of her thought. Jinrikisha men grumbled and gave out; hotel-keepers resented the presence of my dog, or presented extortionate bills; but O Kaio's good temper and tact never failed her. Difficulties were smoothed away; bills were compromised and reduced; the dog slept securely by my side on a red blanket in the best rooms of the best hotels; and O Kaio smiled, told her quaint stories, amused me and ministered to me, as if I were her one object in life, though husband and children were far away in distant Tōkyō, and her mother's heart yearned for her little ones.

CHAPTER XII.

WITHIN THE HOME.

Into the life of a Japanese home enter many customs and observances that have not been dwelt upon in the preceding pages, but without some understanding of which our knowledge of the life of Japanese women is by no means complete. In Japan the woman's place is so entirely in the home that all the ceremonies and superstitions that gather about the conduct of every-day affairs are more to her than they are to the freer and broader-minded man. The household worship, the yearly round of festivals, each with its special food to be prepared, the observances connected with birth and marriage and death; what is to be done in time of illness, of earthquake, of fire, or of the frequent flittings that render life in Japan one succession of packings and unpackings,—all these are matters of high importance to the wife and mother, and their proper observance is left largely in her hands.

Every well-ordered Japanese home of the old-fashioned kind has its little shrine, which is the centre of the religious life of the house. If the household is of the Shintō faith, this shrine is called the kami-dana, or god shelf, and contains the symbols of the gods, gohei in vases, receptacles for food and drink, and a primitive lamp,—only a saucer of oil in which a bit of pith serves for a wick. Daily offerings must be made before this shrine, and reverence paid by the clapping of hands; while on feast days special offerings and invocations are required. In Buddhist families, the Butsudan, or Buddha shelf, takes the place of the kami-dana, and the worship is slightly more complicated. Greater variety of food is offered, and the simple clapping of the hands and bowing of the head that is the form of prayer in the Shintō religion is replaced by the burning of incense and by actual verbal invocation of Buddha. These religious ceremonies must be attended to by the mother or wife. She it is who sets the rice and wine before the ancestral tablets, who lights the little lamp each night, and who sees that at each feast day and anniversary season the proper food is prepared and set out for the household gods.

Upon the wife, and her attention to minute and apparently trifling details, depends much of the well-being of the family. Each child, as it grows toward maturity, gathers from various sources a collection of amulets, which, while worn always when the child is in full dress, are frequently too precious for ordinary play times and the risks and perils of every-day life. These must be kept carefully by the mother as a safeguard against the many evils that beset child-life. I have spoken of the amulets given at the times of the miya mairi,—both the first, when the name is given to the baby, and the subsequent visits made to the temple by the children as they pass certain stated points in their progress toward maturity. These amulets are simply written papers or slips of wood with the seal of the temple from which they are issued stamped upon them. Visits to noted temples by relatives and friends often result in additions to the child's collection. One kind of charm is good to keep the eyes strong; another will help its possessor to that much-prized accomplishment, a good handwriting; another acts as an assurance against accident and saves the child from harm in case of a fall. All these are put together by the careful mother and preserved as jealously as Queen Althea kept the charred stick that governed the destiny of her son. As the children arrive at years of discretion, these treasures pass out of the mother's faithful keeping into the hands of their actual owners, and they are usually kept stored away in some little-used drawer or cabinet until death removes the necessity for any further safeguards over life. Perhaps of all the curious things that go to make up these intimate personal belongings of a Japanese man or woman, there is none more curious than the small white parcel containing a portion of the umbilical cord,—saved at birth and preserved until death that it may be buried with its possessor and furnish him the means of a new birth. These little paper packages, each marked with the name of the child to whom it belongs, are kept by the mother.

Upon the mother of the family rests very largely the determining of lucky and unlucky days for the beginning or transaction of different kinds of business. A fortune-teller is consulted for important things, such as removals or marriages, but in every-day life one cannot be running to a fortune-teller about everything; and yet there is bad luck lurking in the background that may baffle all our plans if we do not observe the proper times and seasons for our undertakings. Just as the Japanese calendar divides time into cycles of twelve years, each year named for a different animal, so also the days and hours are divided into twelves and bear the names of the same twelve animals,—the Chinese signs of the zodiac. These animals are as follows: the rat, the bull, the tiger, the hare, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the cock, the dog, and the boar. Each animal brings its own kind of good or bad luck into the hour, day, or year over which it presides, and only a skillful balancer of pros and cons can read aright the combinations, and understand what the luck of any particular hour in any particular day of any particular year will be. For instance, the rat, which is the companion of Daikoku, the money god, is a lucky animal so far as money is concerned. A person born in the year of the rat will never need money, and will be economical, possibly miserly; and in one born on the day of the rat in the year of the rat these chances and qualities will be doubled. But the luck of the rat may be very seriously interfered with by the bad luck of the monkey or of the proverbially unlucky dog, when their days and hours occur in the rat year. On the other hand, their bad luck may be counteracted by the good luck of the tiger or hare, for as a rule three animals of different portent are presiding over human prospects every hour. This makes prophecy a ticklish business, requiring a wise head, but it also leaves much room for the subsequent explanation of failures by the superior and unusual influence of one or another of the animals, as the case may require. Momentous questions of this kind have frequently to be settled by the Japanese wife and mother, and she gains dignity and value in her home and neighborhood according to her skill in interpreting the portents of the day and hour.

For the greater events of family life the home prophecies are felt to be too uncertain, and the services of the fortune-teller must be called in. No well-managed family would think of building a new house without finding in what direction to face the front door. In an American city this necessity would cause considerable inconvenience, as the position of the front door is usually determined by the relation of the building-lot to the street; but in a Japanese city, where, in all but the business quarters, every house is concealed by a high board fence, and where the gate that admits one within the fence is the only sign by which any one in the street can judge of the worldly condition of the dwellers within, the houses are faced about any and every way, and the position of each is determined by the good luck that it will bring its owner. After this matter has been settled and the house is fairly begun, there are occasional crises in its construction upon which much depends. Of these the most important is the day when the roof is raised. The roof timbers, which are unsquared logs, often rather crooked, after being carefully fitted and framed in some convenient vacant lot, are brought on carts to the site of the new building, and when all is ready, the head carpenter sends word to the house-owner that he is about to set the roof in place. The house-owner then decides whether the day set by the builder is a lucky one for himself and his family. If it is not, a delay in the building is always preferable to any danger of incurring the displeasure of the luck gods. This crisis safely passed, and the last of the roof beams secured in its place, the men take a holiday, and are feasted on