Japanese Girls and Women — Peasant Women, Part 2

Journeying through rural Japan, one is impressed by the important part played by women in the various bread-winning industries.

In the village homes, under the heavily thatched roofs, the constant struggle against poverty and famine will not permit the women to hold back, but they enter bravely into all the work of the men.

In the rice-field the woman works side by side with the man, standing all day up to her knees in mud, her dress tucked up and her lower limbs encased in tight-fitting, blue cotton trousers, planting, transplanting, weeding, and turning over the evil-smelling mire, only to be distinguished from her husband by her broader belt tied in a bow behind.

In mountain regions we meet the women climbing the steep mountain roads, pruning-hook in hand, after wood for winter fires; or descending, towards night, carrying a load that a donkey need not be ashamed of, packed on a frame attached to the shoulders, or poised lightly upon a straw mat upon the head.

There is one village near Ky[=o]to, Yasé by name, at the base of Hiyéi Zan, the historic Buddhist stronghold, where the women attain a stature and muscular development quite unique among the pigmy population of the island empire.

Strong, jolly, red-cheeked women they are, showing no evidence of the shrinking away with the advance of old age that is characteristic of most of their countrywomen.

With their tucked-up _kimonos_ and blue cotton trousers, they stride up and down the mountain, carrying the heaviest and most unwieldy of burdens as lightly and easily as the ordinary woman carries her baby.

My first acquaintance with them was during a camping expedition upon the sacred mountain.

I

myself was carried up the ascent by two small, nearly naked, finely tattooed and moxa-scarred men; but my baggage, consisting of two closely packed hampers as large as ordinary steamer trunks, was lifted lightly to the heads of these feminine porters, and, poised on little straw pads, carried easily up the narrow trail, made doubly difficult by low-hanging branches, to the camp, a distance of three or four miles.

From among these women of Yasé, on account of their remarkable physical development, have been chosen frequently the nurses for the imperial infants; an honor which the Yasé villagers duly appreciate, and which makes them bear themselves proudly among their less favored neighbors.

In other parts of the country, in the neighborhood of Nikk[=o], for instance, the care of the horses, mild little pack-mares that do much of the burden-bearing in those mountains, is mainly in the hands of the women.

At Nikk[=o], when we would hire ponies for a two days' expedition to Yumoto, a little, elderly woman was the person with whom our bargains were made; and a close bargainer she proved to be, taking every advantage that lay in her power.

When the caravan was ready to start, we found that, though each saddle-horse had a male groom in attendance, the pack-ponies on which our baggage was carried were led by pretty little country girls of twelve or fourteen, their bright black eyes and red cheeks contrasting pleasantly with the blue handkerchiefs that adorned their heads; their slender limbs encased in blue cotton, and only their red sashes giving any hint of the fact that they belonged to the weaker sex.

As we journeyed up the rough mountain roads, the little girls kept along easily with the rest of the party; leading their meek, shock-headed beasts up the slippery log steps, and passing an occasional greeting with some returning pack-train, in which the soft black eyes and bits of red about the costume of the little grooms showed that they, too, were mountain maidens, returning fresh and happy after a two days' tramp through the rocky passes.

In the districts where the silkworm is raised, and the silk spun and woven, the women play a most important part in this productive industry.

The care of the worms and of the cocoons falls entirely upon the women, as well as the spinning of the silk and the weaving of the cloth.

It is almost safe to say that this largest and most productive industry of Japan is in the hands of the women; and it is to their care and skill that the silk product of the islands is due.

In the silk districts one finds the woman on terms of equality with the man, for she is an important factor in the wealth-producing power of the family, and is thus able to make herself felt as she cannot when her work is inferior to that of the men.

As a farmer, as a groom, or as a porter, a woman is and must remain an inferior, but in the care of the silkworms, and all the tasks that belong to silk culture, she is the equal of the stronger sex.

Then, again, in the tea districts, the tea plantations are filled with young girls and old women, their long sleeves held back by a band over the shoulder, and a blue towel gracefully fastened over their heads to keep off the sun and the dust.

They pick busily away at the green, tender leaves, which will soon be heated and rolled by strong men over the charcoal fire.

The occupation is an easy one, only requiring care in the selection of leaves to be picked, and can be performed by young girls and old women, who gather the glossy leaves in their big baskets, while chatting to each other over the gossip and news of the day.

In the hotels, both in the country and the city, women play an important part.

The attendants are usually sweet-faced, prettily dressed girls, and frequently the proprietor of the hotel is a woman.

My first experience of a Japanese hotel was at Nara, anciently the capital of Japan, and now a place of resort because of its fine old temples, its Dai Butsu, and its beautiful deer park.

The day's ride in _jinrikisha_ from [=O]saka had brought our party in very tired, only to find that the hotel to which we had telegraphed for rooms was already filled to overflowing by a daimi[=o] and his suite.

Not a room could be obtained, and we were at last obliged to walk some distance, for we had dismissed our tired _jinrikisha_ men, to a hotel in the village, of which we knew nothing.

What with fatigue and disappointment, we were not prepared to view the unknown hotel in a very rosy light; and when our guide pointed to a small gate leading into a minute, damp courtyard, we were quite convinced that the hardships of travel in Japan were now about to begin;

but disappointment gave way to hope, when we were met at the door by a buxom landlady, whose smile was in itself a refreshment.

Although we had little in the way of language in common, she made us feel at home at once, took us to her best room, sent her blooming and prettily dressed daughters to bring us tea and whatever other refreshments the mysterious appetite of a foreigner might require, and altogether behaved toward us in such motherly fashion that fatigue and gloom departed forthwith, leaving us refreshed and cheerful.

Soon we began to feel rested, and our kind friend, seeing this, took us upon a tour around the house, in which room after room, spotless, empty, with shining woodwork and softest of mats, showed the good housekeeping of our hostess.

A little garden in the centre of the house, with dwarf trees, moss-covered stones, and running water, gave it an air of coolness on the hot July day that was almost deceptive; and the spotless wash-room, with its great stone sink, its polished brass basins, its stone well-curb, half in and half out of the house, was cool and clean and refreshing merely to look at.

A two days' stay in this hotel showed that the landlady was the master of the house.

Her husband was about the house constantly, as were one or two other men, but they all worked under the direction of the energetic head of affairs.

She it was who managed everything, from the cooking of the meals in the kitchen to the filling and heating of the great bath-tub into which the guests were invited to enter every afternoon, one after the other, in the order of their rank.

On the second night of my stay, at a late hour, when I supposed that the whole house had retired to rest, I crept softly out of my room to try to soothe the plaintive wails of my dog, who was complaining bitterly that he was made to sleep in the wood-cellar instead of in his mistress's room, as his habit had always been.

As I stole quietly along, fearing lest I should arouse the sleeping house, I heard the inquiring voice of my landlady sound from the bath-room, the door of which stood wide open.

Afraid that she would think me in mischief if I did not show myself, I went to the door, to find her, after her family was safely stowed away for the night, taking her ease in the great tub of hot water, and so preparing herself for a sound, if short, night's sleep.

She accepted my murmured _Inu_ (dog) as an excuse, and graciously dismissed me with a smile, and I returned to my room feeling safe under the vigilant care that seemed to guard the house by night as well as by day.

I have seen many Japanese hotels and many careful landladies since, but no one among them all has made such an impression as my pleasant hostess at Nara.

Not only hotels, but little tea-houses all through Japan, form openings for the business abilities of women, both in country and city.

Wherever you go, no matter how remote the district or how rough the road, at every halting point you find a tea-house.

Sometimes it is quite an extensive restaurant, with several rooms for the entertainment of guests, and a regular kitchen where fairly elaborate cooking can be done; sometimes it is only a rough shelter, at one end of which water is kept boiling over a charcoal brazier, while at the other end a couple of seats, covered with mats or a scarlet blanket or two, serve as resting-places for the patrons of the establishment.

But whatever the place is, there will be one woman or more in attendance; and if you sit down upon the mats, you will be served at once with tea, and later, should you require more, with whatever the establishment can afford,--it may be only a slice of watermelon, or a hard pear; it may be eels on rice, vermicelli, egg soup, or a regular dinner, should the tea-house be one of the larger and more elaborately appointed ones.

When the feast is over, the refreshments you have especially ordered are paid for in the regular way; but for the tea and sweetmeats offered, for which no especial charge is made, you are expected to leave a small sum as a present.

In the less aristocratic resting-places, a few cents for each person is sufficient to leave on the waiter with the empty cups of tea, for which loud and grateful thanks will be shouted out to the retiring party.

In the regular inn, the _chadai_[41] amounts to several dollars, for a party remaining any time, and it is supposed to pay for all the extra services and attention bestowed on guests by the polite host and hostess and the servants in attendance.

The _chadai_, done up neatly in paper, with the words _On chadai_ written on it, is given with as much formality as any present in Japan.

The guest claps his hands to summon the maid.

When it is heard, for the thin paper walls of a Japanese house let through every noise, voices from all sides will shout out _H[=e]´-h[=e]´_, or _Hai_, which means that you have been heard, and understood.

Presently a maid will softly open your door, and with head low down will ask what you wish.

You tell her to summon the landlord.

In a few moments he appears, and you push the _chadai_ to him, making some conventional self-depreciating speech, as, "You have done a great deal for our comfort, and we wish to give you this _chadai_, though it is only a trifle."

The landlord, with every expression of surprise, will bow down to the ground with thanks, raising the small package to his head in token of acceptance and gratitude, and will murmur in low tones how little he has done for the comfort of his guests; and then, the self-depreciation and formal words of thanks on his side being ended, he will finally go down stairs to see how much he has gotten.

But, whether more or less than he had expected, nothing but extreme gratitude and politeness appears on his face as he presents a fan, confectionery, or some trifle, as a return for the _chadai_, and speeds the parting guests with his lowest bow and kindliest smile, after having seen to every want that could be attended to.

[41] _Chadai_ is, literally, "money for tea," and is equivalent to our tips to the waiters and porters at hotels.

The _chadai_ varies with the wealth and rank of the guests, the duration of the stay, and the attention which has been bestowed.

_On_ is the honorific placed before the word in writing.

Once, at Nikk[=o], I started with a friend for a morning walk to a place described in the guide-book.

The day was hot and the guide-book hazy, and we lost the road to the place for which we had set out, but found ourselves at last in a beautiful garden, with a pretty lake in its centre, a little red-lacquered shrine reflected in the lake, and a tea-house hospitably open at one side.

The teakettle was boiling over the little charcoal fire; melons, eggs, and various unknown comestibles were on the little counter; but no voice bade us welcome as we approached, and when we sat down on the edge of the piazza, we could see no one within the house.

We waited, however, for the day was hot, and time is not worth much in rural Japan.

Pretty soon a small, wizened figure made its appearance in the distance, hurrying and talking excitedly as it came near enough to see two foreign ladies seated upon the piazza.

Many bows and profuse apologies were made by the little old woman, who seemed to be the solitary occupant of the pretty garden, and who had for the moment deserted her post to do the day's marketing in the neighboring village.

The apologies having been smilingly received, the old lady set herself to the task of making her guests comfortable.

First she brought two tumblers of water, cold as ice, from the spring that gushed out of a great rock in the middle of the little lake.

Then she retired behind a screen and changed her dress, returning speedily to bring us tea.

Then she retreated to her diminutive kitchen, and presently came back smiling, bearing eight large raw potatoes on a tray.

These she presented to us with a deep bow, apparently satisfied that she had at last brought us something we would be sure to like.

We left the potatoes behind us when we went away, and undoubtedly the old lady is wondering still over the mysterious ways of the foreigners, as we are over those of the Japanese tea-house keepers.

One summer, when I was spending a week at a Japanese hotel at quite a fashionable seaside resort, I became interested in a little old woman who visited the hotel daily, carrying, suspended by a yoke from her shoulders, two baskets of fruit, which she sold to the guests of the hotel.

As I was on the ground floor, and my room was, in the daytime, absolutely without walls on two sides, she was my frequent visitor, and, for the sake of her pleasant ways and cheerful smiles, I bought enough hard pears of her to have given the colic to an elephant.

One day, after her visit to me, as I was sitting upon the matted and roofed square that served me for a room, my eye wandered idly toward the bathing beach, and, under the slight shelter where the bathers were in the habit of depositing their sandals and towels, I spied the well-known yoke and fruit baskets, as well as a small heap of blue cotton garments that I knew to be the clothing of the little fruit-vender.

She had evidently taken a moment when trade was slack to enjoy a dip in the soft, blue, summer sea.

Hardly had I made up my mind as to the meaning of the fruit baskets and the clothing, when our little friend herself emerged from the sea and, sitting down on a bench, proceeded to rub herself off with the small but artistically decorated blue towel that every peasant in Japan has always with him, however lacking he may be in all other appurtenances of the toilet.

As she sat there, placidly rubbing away, a friend of the opposite sex made his appearance on the scene.

I watched to see what she would do, for the Japanese code of etiquette is quite different from ours in such a predicament.

She continued her employment until he was quite close, showing no unseemly haste, but continuing her polishing off in the same leisurely manner in which she had begun it; then at the proper moment she rose from her seat, bowed profoundly, and smilingly exchanged the greetings proper for the occasion, both parties apparently unconscious of any lack in the toilet of the lady.

The male friend then passed on about his business;

the little woman completed her toilet without further interruptions, shouldered her yoke, and jogged cheerfully on to her home in the little village, a couple of miles away.

As one travels through rural Japan in summer and sees the half-naked men, women, and children that pour out from every village on one's route and surround the _kuruma_ at every stopping place, one sometimes wonders whether there is in the country any real civilization, whether these half-naked people are not more savage than civilized; but when one finds everywhere good hotels, scrupulous cleanliness in all the appointments of toilet and table, polite and careful service, honest and willing performance of labor bargained for, together with the gentlest and pleasantest of manners, even on the part of the gaping crowd that shut out light and air from the traveling foreigner who rests for a moment at the village inn, one is forced to reconsider a judgment formed only upon one peculiarity of the national life, and to conclude that there is certainly a high type of civilization in Japan, though differing in many important particulars from our own.

A careful study of the Japanese ideas of decency, and frequent conversation with refined and intelligent Japanese ladies upon this subject, has led me to the following conclusion.

According to the Japanese standard, any exposure of the person that is merely incidental to health, cleanliness, or convenience in doing necessary work, is perfectly modest and allowable; but an exposure, no matter how slight, that is simply for show, is in the highest degree indelicate.

In illustration of the first part of this conclusion, I would refer to the open bath-houses, the naked laborers, the exposure of the lower limbs in wet weather by the turning up of the _kimono_, the entirely nude condition of the country children in summer, and the very slight clothing that even adults regard as necessary about the house or in the country during the hot season.

In illustration of the last part, I would mention the horror with which many Japanese ladies regard that style of foreign dress which, while covering the figure completely, reveals every detail of the form above the waist, and, as we say, shows off to advantage a pretty figure.

To the Japanese mind it is immodest to want to show off a pretty figure.

As for the ball-room costumes, where neck and arms are freely exposed to the gaze of multitudes, the Japanese woman, who would with entire composure take her bath in the presence of others, would be in an agony of shame at the thought of appearing in public in a costume so indecent as that worn by many respectable American and European women.

Our judgment would indeed be a hasty one, should we conclude that the sense of decency is wanting in the Japanese as a race, or that the women are at all lacking in the womanly instinct of modesty.

When the point of view from which they regard these matters is once obtained, the apparent inconsistencies and incongruities are fully explained, and we can do justice to our Japanese sister in a matter in regard to which she is too often cruelly misjudged.

There seems no doubt at all that among the peasantry of Japan one finds the women who have the most freedom and independence.

Among this class, all through the country, the women, though hard-worked and possessing few comforts, lead lives of intelligent, independent labor, and have in the family positions as respected and honored as those held by women in America.

Their lives are fuller and happier than those of the women of the higher classes, for they are themselves bread-winners, contributing an important part of the family revenue, and they are obeyed and respected accordingly.

The Japanese lady, at her marriage, lays aside her independent existence to become the subordinate and servant of her husband and parents-in-law, and her face, as the years go by, shows how much she has given up, how completely she has sacrificed herself to those about her.

The Japanese peasant woman, when she marries, works side by side with her husband, finds life full of interest outside of the simple household work, and, as the years go by, her face shows more individuality, more pleasure in life, less suffering and disappointment, than that of her wealthier and less hard-working sister.

CHAPTER X.