Japanese Girls and Women — Within the Home, Part 2

With the coming in of the last month of the year begin the preparations for the great New Year's festival, and the housekeeper finds herself occupied through every moment of the brief days.

A woman who is at the head of a large household has upon her hands in the month of December spring house-cleaning and preparations for Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, and Easter, all at once.

The work of getting the family wardrobe ready for the festival must begin very early in the month, for every man, woman, and child in the household must be provided with new clothes, and the thrifty housewife sends no sewing out.

In the old days, it was ordained that the eighth day of the twelfth month should be a needle festival,--a day on which all women rest from their sewing and amuse themselves by indulging their own fancies instead of their husbands', as is their duty on other days.

This day was supposed to mark the dividing line between the old year's and the new year's sewing, but, as a matter of fact, the forehanded woman will finish up the old and begin the new even earlier in the month, so as to have this part of her work well out of the way before the house-cleaning, which should be begun not later than the fifteenth.

This house-cleaning, even with the small amount of furniture found in a Japanese house, is an elaborate affair.

Every box and closet and rubbish-hole in the house is turned out and put in order, the _tatami_ are taken up and brushed and beaten, the woodwork from ceiling to floor is carefully washed, the plaster and paper walls flicked with the paper flapper that takes the place in Japan of our feather duster.

All the quilts and clothing must be sunned and aired, the kakémonos and curios belonging to the family unpacked, carefully dusted, and put back into their wrappings and boxes, and the house and garden put into perfect repair.

This work, if thoroughly done, takes about a week.

When all is finished, even to the final purification by beating everything in the house with a fresh bamboo, games and festivities and _soba_ are in order.

In the old daimi[=o] houses, where great numbers of men and women were employed, and where the women's quarters were in a distinct part of the house, it was considered a great joke to catch a man on the women's side any time between the close of the cleaning and the beginning of the new year.

The intruder was promptly seized and shouldered by the women, who carried him about the house in triumph, finally returning him to his own quarters.

If, by any chance, they could catch the chief steward, they sang as they carried him about:-- "This is the great pillar of the house!

May he be happy till the stone foundations rot!"

The week following the house-cleaning is devoted to the preparation of food for the festival.

Of this, the most characteristic is _mochi_, a sort of dumpling made of rice steamed and pounded, the preparation of which is so difficult and protracted a process that it is not lightly undertaken.

It is so distinctively the festival food of Japan that if you find _mochi_ in a friend's house at any time except the new year, you immediately ask what has happened, and are pretty sure to be told that it is a present received in celebration of a birth or a marriage, or some other domestic festival.

It is, to Japanese children, what turkey and cranberry sauce are to American children, not only a delight to the palate, but a dish the very smell of which brings back the most cheerful occasions in the year.

When the _mochi_ is made and set away to await the festal day, the matter of decoration must be attended to.

At every gate is erected some token of the season, if it be only a bit of pine stuck into the ground, or a wisp of straw rope decorated with white paper _gohei_.

The great black gates that indicate the homes of the wealthier classes are almost concealed by structures of pine and bamboo, on which oranges, lobsters, straw rope, straw fringe, white paper, and images of the good luck gods are used as decorations.

All these things are either efficacious in keeping off evil spirits, or are symbols of good luck.

Within the house, in the _tokonoma_, or place of honor, in the best room, great cakes of _mochi_, two, three, five, or seven in number, are set one upon another in a dish covered with fern leaves, and the structure surrounded by seaweed.

Before the new year comes in the capable housewife will have sent out presents to every one who has during the year been of service to her husband, her children, or herself in any way.

Her own servants will be remembered with gifts of clothing, something will be sent to the servants of friends at whose houses any of the family have visited often, and every dependent, poor relation, employee, and employee's child must be given a present, large or small, according to the amount of obligation felt by the giver.

To persons of greater wealth and importance, to whom the family are grateful for past favors or from whom they are hoping for something in the future, gifts, often quite out of proportion to the resources of the givers, are sent,--a method of investing capital that is a little risky, though it sometimes yields prompt and bountiful returns.

On the other hand, all the merchants and marketmen who supply the house send presents to the mistress and frequently to the head servants as well, and _furushiki_ (bundle handkerchiefs), cooking utensils, packages of sugar, boxes of eggs, dried fish, etc. , flow in at the kitchen; while crêpe, silk, cotton cloth, money, toys, curios, and other valuables flow out of the parlor.

All this present-giving is a severe tax upon the strength and resources of the housekeeper, and adds heavily to the burden that the last month of the year imposes upon her.

By the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth of the month the trades-people begin to send in their bills, for every man expects to square up all his accounts by the last night of the old year, and early payments are expected and made, so that all may begin the new year out of debt.

So universal is this custom that the man who finds at the eleventh hour that he cannot clear off all his debts is likely to offer his property at a heavy sacrifice in order to secure the necessary cash.

For any one with ready money extraordinary bargains are to be met with in Japanese shops during the last week of the year.

In case this resource fails, suicide is still a short and honorable way out of a world that has become too difficult to live in.

The Japanese housewife must feel, when December has been successfully passed, like the Yankee who had noticed that if he lived through the month of March he generally lived through the rest of the year.

The observances of January, for which December has been one long preparation, begin with the rising of the New Year's sun, and continue in one form or another for about two weeks.

Almost every day has its special food and its special festival duty.

For the first three days the very best clothes in the wardrobe are worn by everybody, then till the seventh the second best, and from the seventh to the end of the month new clothes, though not the very best, must be worn.

Within the first seven days every man in Japan is expected to call on all his friends and acquaintances, but the women, probably out of consideration for the many duties that the festival season puts upon them, are given until March to finish up their New Year's calls.

The streets of the cities, and even of the small villages, are full of life and interest for a week or two.

_Kurumayas_ in their new winter liveries trundle around fathers and mothers and happy children.

All manner of mummers, musicians, and dancers go from house to house in search of custom.

The _manzai_, who, with dances and songs and strange grimaces, undertake to drive out from your house for the new year all the devils who may have been residing there hitherto, are a special feature of this season.

In every garden and in the public streets little girls, their faces freshly covered with white paint, their shining black hair newly dressed, their wing-sleeved kimonos gorgeous with many colors, play battledore and shuttlecock, toss small bags half filled with rice, or pat balls wound with shining silk to the accompaniment of a weird little chant.

For the boys there are kites of many shapes and colors, or tops that they spin under every one's feet, well knowing that no one in Japan is too busy to turn aside for a child's pleasure.

The very horses--small, shock-headed, evil-tempered beasts, who drag tremendous loads with many snorts and snaps at their masters--are decked out with gay streamers that reach nearly to the ground, at the ends of which are tinkling bells.

The festival season closes on the fifteenth and sixteenth with a visit to the temple of Yemma, the god of hell, and with a holiday for all the apprentices.

Next to the New Year's holiday, perhaps the most important festival of the Japanese year is _O Bon_, the Feast of the Dead.

This is, in its present form, a Buddhist institution, but in spirit it fitted so exactly into the ancient Japanese ideas of the tastes and habits of departed spirits that it merely supplanted the old Shint[=o] feasts of the dead, and it is a little difficult to-day to determine whether its observance is more Buddhist or Shint[=o] in its character.

To find the O Bon ceremonies in their most perfect form, it is necessary now to go into the more remote country villages, for though, even in T[=o]ky[=o], this feast is still one of the most important in the whole year, it seems to be more distinctly itself in a small village, where all the old forms are still kept up.

In T[=o]ky[=o], the three days' festival is kept by the new calendar, and occurs on the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth of July.

At O Bon, as at New Year's time, it is customary to square off all obligations by a general giving of presents.

This, while not quite as important a matter as at the beginning of the year, is still a severe tax upon the time, purse, and memory of the wife and mother in any large family.

At this time, too, as at New Year's, _mochi_ or some other festival dish must be provided, but at this point the resemblance between the two occasions ceases.

In accordance with its character as a feast of departed spirits, the observance of O Bon is distinctively religious.

On the twelfth, the family go to the graveyard and clean and put in order the graves and tombstones, so that the returning spirits may find all properly cared for.

Fresh water and flowers are placed before each stone, and sometimes rice and fresh vegetables.

At home, the ancestral tablets in the _Butsudan_ form the centre of the ceremonies.

Before the shrine are placed, on the thirteenth, offerings of food of any kind that can be made without fish or meat.

Great balls of _mochi_, _saké_, flowers, and choice new varieties of vegetables are appropriate offerings.

All are tastefully arranged, the lamps are carefully lighted every night, and special services are held before the shrine.

For the three days of the feast, the souls of the dead are believed to be visiting their old haunts, and to need light and food and all the conveniences that their descendants can spare them.

Each house is decorated with lanterns, that the spirits may be able to find their way.

It is from this custom that the feast is often called by foreigners the Feast of Lanterns.

As I have already said, in T[=o]ky[=o] and other modernized places, this feast is not seen at its best.

Only the soft glow of the lanterns swinging from every house, and the decorations in the graveyards and at the household shrines, indicate to the traveler that anything unusual is going on.

But in the country regions it is quite another matter, and the welcoming, entertainment, and proper dismissal of the visiting spirits form the entire business of the community for three days.

Usually the middle of August is the time for the country celebration.

On the twelfth, bands of children carrying red lanterns march singing through the village on their way to the graveyard, where the annual cleaning is taking place.

That night bonfires in the cemetery and before the houses light the pathway of the wanderers.

Then for three nights all the young people of the village gather in the temple court in grotesque disguises and with towels over their faces, and dance all night long in the moonlight, to primitive music produced by a drum and the monotonous chant of the dancers themselves.

These three dance-nights are the great occasion of the year to the young peasants, for this is the only time when persons of both sexes meet together in a social way, and it is long looked forward to and enjoyed intensely.

Of late years, the government, fearing the abuses that grow out of this exceptional social event, has endeavored to suppress the dancing, but it continues in full vigor throughout most of rural Japan, though conducted with more decorum than formerly on account of the standing dread of police interference.

The object of the dance is to amuse the spirits of the ancestors, who must be imagined as hovering in the background, viewing with approval the antics of their descendants.

Other amusements are going on in the village on the O Bon evenings.

At a summer resort every hotel-keeper will have a professional story-teller, a company of musicians, or some other entertainment to which the guests of the hotel are invited, and at which as many of the villagers as can crowd to the open house fronts stare until the dance drum in the temple court draws their feet in that direction.

And then, on the last night of the feast, bonfires are once more kindled at every house, so that the spirits may find their way safely back to the land whence they came, and not stay to haunt their descendants at improper seasons.

No account of life in a Japanese home would be complete without a little space devoted to the special delights of the small boy.

Although this book deals mainly with feminine concerns, the small boy in Japan, as in America, is the life and fun of the home, and one cannot fail to notice his times of surpassing enjoyment.

He rules the house and his mother and his grandmother and his sisters, at all times, and his activity and enterprise secure for him a good share in any fun that is going on; but there are certain seasons that appeal to the boyish heart with a special message and of which he is the central figure.

As the Feast of Dolls is to the girls, so is the Feast of Flags to the boys,--their own special day, set apart for them out of the whole year.

It comes on the fifth day of the fifth month (now May fifth), and for long before its arrival the shops are gay with all manner of tempting toys, while in every yard rises a great bamboo pole, from which, when the time comes, will float an enormous carp, its body inflated by the strong spring wind, its great mouth wide open, and its eyes glaring hideously, as it fights its way against the air currents.

Sometimes there will be half a dozen such poles in one yard,--signs either that the household is blessed with many boys, or that the way to its heart is through gifts of toys to its son and heir.

When the great day at last arrives, the feast within the home is conducted in much the same way as the Feast of Dolls.

There are the same red-covered shelves, the same offerings of food and drink; but instead of the placid images of the Emperor and Empress and the five court musicians, the household furnishings and toilet articles, there are effigies of the heroes of history and folklore: Jingo, the warrior Empress; Takenouchi, her white-haired prime minister, holding in his arms her son, the infant war-god; Benkei, the giant retainer of Yoshitsune; Yoshitsune himself, the marvelous fencer and general; Kintaro, the fat, hairy, red boy, who was born and grew up in the mountains, and even in his babyhood fought with bears; Shoki Sama, the strong man who could conquer _oni_;--these are some of the characters to be found on the shelves at the boys' feast.

Behind each figure stands a flag with the crest of the hero that it represents, and before them are set all manner of weapons in miniature.

The food offered is _mochi_ wrapped in oak leaves, because the oak is among trees what the carp is among fishes, the emblem of strength and endurance.

The flower of this day is the iris or flag, because of its sword-shaped leaves,--hence the name, _Shobu Matsuri_, feast of iris or flag.

Another feast, which, while not founded for the boys, seems to have been adopted by them as a great occasion, is what is known as Buddha's birthday, celebrated on April eighth.

On this day in every Buddhist temple a temporary platform is erected, the roof of which is covered with flowers.

Upon this platform, in a great tub filled with licorice tea, is set a small image of the infant Buddha.

Hither flock the small boys with bamboo dippers, and spend the day ladling up the tea and pouring it over the image, and then ladling it out into small bamboo buckets.

This licorice tea, through contact with the image, acquires miraculous healing properties, and the devout, after making offerings of money twisted up in white paper, carry away the little buckets.

The tea is good for the eyes and the throat, and if some of it be used in mixing ink, and then, with the ink thus mixed, a charm be written and placed about the house, it will keep away all vermin.

It is not easy to see exactly what the fascination of this feast is to the boys, but I am told that many of them like it even better than their own specially appointed day.

But of all the delights that come into the year, there is nothing to compare for joyous excitement with the great _matsuri_ of the parish temple.

For at least a week beforehand there are enough interesting things going on in every house and shop along the street to keep every small boy in the parish agog from morning till night.

Here are lanterns being made with the _mon_ of the gods on one side and the rising sun of the Japanese flag on the other.

There a dancing platform is being erected, and at every stage of its development it is swarming with active youngsters, who shin up its poles, turn somersaults on the platform, and sit in rows on its edge, with bare legs swinging high over the heads of the passers-by; and when it is done, and the drums installed, they take turns all day and far into the night in keeping them going.

Then, too, there are the _dashi_, or floats, on one of which each street in the parish spends its money and its ingenuity.

How the boys haunt the shops in which they are being made!

How they watch the wondrous changes of paper into flowers, and of bamboo and cotton cloth into sea waves, or castle walls, or monsters of earth or sea or air!

How they chatter and wriggle and push and squirm for front places, when at last the great cars are built up in the open street, the marvelous edifices erected upon them, and at the top of all the heroic figures of well-known mythological or historical characters rise majestic in flowing robes!

Then, when the black bullocks, resplendent in collars and halters of red rope, are yoked to the triumphal car, and the structure moves slowly down the shouting street, how the boys crawl into every joint and cranny of the _dashi_, how they hang from every beam, how they yell from before and behind in sheer abandon of joy!

And at last, when the procession forms, and with fantastically garbed men marching in front and wild-eyed singers yelling just behind them, with dancing-girls on moving platforms and jugglers and tumblers on the _dashi_ themselves, the twenty or more festal cars move, with frequent stops, down to the temple, to escort the sacred symbols on their annual pilgrimage through the parish, who so noisy or so ubiquitous as these same bullet-headed, blue-gowned boys?

They bob up at every turn, ooze out at every pore of the procession, and enjoy, as only boys can enjoy, the noise and confusion, the barbaric splendor, the dancing and tumbling, the mumming and drumming, the excruciating howls of the singers, the jingling of the marshals' iron-ringed staves, the clapping of the great wooden clappers that time the movement and the stops of the pageant.

Better than all, perhaps, is the evening, when the streets, lighted by many lanterns, are filled with throngs of holiday-makers,--now stopping to stare in at some shop where the devout worshiper has established a beautiful shrine, has set out _mochi_ and other offerings before some image, or has arranged a landscape garden in a box, or constructed a _matsuri_ procession just entering the court of a miniature temple; now haggling with the ever-present booth-keepers for lanterns or cakes or hairpins to take back to the friends left at home.

Suddenly there is a joyous, rhythmic shout of many excited boyish voices, there is a gleaming of square red lanterns, a whirl and a rush through the crowd.

Now is the time to get out of the way, for the boys move quickly and are too excited to turn aside for anything.

On they come at a sharp trot, each little round head bound about with a fillet of blue and white toweling, each lithe, active body more or less covered by a blue and white gown, all shouting in unison and bearing on their shoulders a miniature _dashi_, made most often of a _saké_ tub mounted on a frame, and decorated with lanterns and white paper.

They charge through the crowd, which makes way quickly at their approach, until the pace, the weight of their burden, and the frantic shouting exhaust their breath.

Then they plunge down a side street, rest for a few moments, gather themselves together, and charge once more into the crowd.

There must be some pretty tired little boys in the parish when the fun is all over, for these performances are kept up far into the night; but for absolute and perfect enjoyment there is nothing I have yet seen that seems to me to compare with the enjoyment that a Japanese boy gets out of a _matsuri_.

It is worth being tired for!

There is no space in this work for a more detailed picture of life in a Japanese home.

Enough has been said in this chapter to show that it is made up of many little things,--of cares and sorrows and pleasures,--just as is life in any American home, and it is the little things we care about that make the oneness of the family, and the nation, and the oneness, too, of humanity, if we can only understand one another.

CHAPTER XIII. TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS.

The woman question in Japan is at the present moment a matter of much consideration.

There seems to be an uneasy feeling in the minds of even the more conservative men that some change in the status of woman is inevitable, if the nation wishes to keep the pace it has set for itself.

The Japanese women of the past and of the present are exactly suited to the position accorded them in society, and any attempt to alter them without changing their status only results in making square pegs for round holes.

If the pegs hereafter are to be cut square, the holes must be enlarged and squared to fit them.

The Japanese woman stands in no need of alteration unless her place in life is somehow enlarged, nor, on the other hand, can she fill a larger place without additional training.

The men of New Japan, to whom the opinions and customs of the Western world are becoming daily more familiar, while they shrink aghast, in many cases, at the thought that their women may ever become like the forward, self-assertive, half-masculine women of the West, show a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with the smallness and narrowness of the lives of their wives and daughters,--a growing belief that better educated women would make better homes, and that the ideal home of Europe and America is the product of a more advanced civilization than that of Japan.

Reluctantly in many cases, but still almost universally, it is admitted that in the interest of the homes and for the sake of future generations, something must be done to carry the women forward into a position more in harmony with what the nation is reaching for in other directions.

This desire shows itself in individual efforts to improve by more advanced education daughters of exceptional promise, and in general efforts for the improvement of the condition of women.

Well-to-do fathers are willing to spend more money on the education of their daughters, to send them abroad, if possible, to complete their studies, or to postpone the time of marriage so that plans for higher education may be carried through.

Where, ten years ago, the number of women who had been abroad for study might be counted on the fingers of one hand, there are now three or four times that number in T[=o]ky[=o] alone.

Another sign of the times is the fact that husbands going abroad on business or for pleasure are more inclined to take their wives with them, even if it be only for a few months.

There are now to be found, in all the larger cities, women who have spent a longer or shorter time in some foreign country, whose minds have been opened and whose horizons have been enlarged by contact with new ideas.

All this cannot fail to have its effect, sooner or later, upon the country at large.

The efforts for the improvement of women in general may be grouped into four classes: by legislation, by education, through the press, and by means of societies for mutual improvement.

Of the recent legislation concerning marriage and divorce and its effect on the family, I have spoken in a preceding chapter.

The latest statistics show that, while before the new laws were enacted divorces were one to every three marriages, they have now been reduced to one in five.

It must be said, however, that the law is still somewhat in advance of public opinion.

While the chance of permanence in marriage is better now than it was before the new code came into force, custom is still stronger than the law, and marriage is too often a temporary arrangement.

In many cases the wife knows little or nothing of her new rights, and even when she does know, she has seldom the self-assertion to make a stand for them, but meekly submits to the dictates of those whom she is bound by custom, if not by law, to respect and obey without question.

But the fact that the laws have actually been improved means, in a country like Japan, in which the government is the moulder of public opinion, that the custom will some day conform to the law.

In the matter of property owning, women, under the new code, are fairly independent.

As I have already stated, every woman in Japan is expected to become a wife, and as a matter of fact, the number of unmarried women is so small that it is hardly necessary to mention them.

Wives, under Japanese law, are divided into two classes: the wife who enters her husband's family, and the wife whose husband becomes a member of her family.

In the latter case the wife is the head of the family, is responsible for the debts of the family, and has the right to use and profit by the husband's property.

In the former case (and as I have already stated, the great majority of wives enter their husband's families), the husband is responsible, and has, consequently, the right to use and profit by his wife's property.

In all cases, unless the husband is physically or mentally unfit, he has the management of his wife's wealth.

In case of the husband's disability the woman takes care of her own.

A wife may, by application to a court, cause the husband to furnish security for the property that she has intrusted to him; and she may, with her husband's consent, engage in independent business.

The property that she thus acquires is her own and not the husband's. Any property in the family, the ownership of which is not perfectly established, belongs to the head of the family, whether male or female.

We thus see that the law of Japan fully recognizes the right of married women to hold property, although only in exceptional cases are they allowed the management of their own holdings.

The law also regards the wife, in household matters, as her husband's agent.

In actual practice, it is not uncommon for the wife to manage the entire income of the family, receiving it from her husband and acting as his treasurer.

The wife's own earnings are seldom given to the husband, and her position is one of entire independence in the disposal of whatever she adds to the family revenue.

But should the wife bring into the family at marriage property which passes into the husband's management, the chances are that, unless a divorce should occur, she will never lay any claim to the principal, or think of it again as her own.

While her husband cannot actually dispose of it without her consent, she is pretty certain to give her consent should he ask it, and he may do very nearly anything that he chooses with it.

We thus see that the tendency is to give the management of the income, as a part of the management of the household, to the woman, and leave the disposal of the principal, as a part of the outside business, to the care of the man.

This system of domestic finance seems not unlike the common practice in thrifty and well-managed homes in America, and shows that a spirit of mutual confidence between husband and wife belongs to Japan as to Western nations.

As the result of my own observation in a number of homes, I should say that the judgment of the wife in money matters is quite as much trusted in Japan as in America, and that, in this one respect at least, her place in the home is as responsible a one as that of the Western housekeeper.

One instance may be cited of a woman whose business ability is so well known as to have a national reputation.

By birth a member of a family which is remarkable for its success in all financial undertakings, she has inherited a large share of the family characteristic, and is credited with the personal management of a large bank, as well as other successful business undertakings.

Her husband's name and not her own appears on the prospectuses and in the newspapers, but unless report is very far astray, she is the business man of the family, and her sound sense and good judgment have built up the fortune which is their common possession.

In the educational system of Japan, schools for girls are provided by the government, but no provision for studies more advanced than those of the middle schools for boys is included in the scheme, with the single exception of the Higher Normal School in T[=o]ky[=o], in which a limited number of young women are trained to take positions as teachers in the ordinary normal schools for girls.

To quote from the Annual Report of the Minister of Education for the year 1898, the latest to which I have access, "Higher female schools are institutions designed to give instruction in such higher subjects of general education as are necessary for females."

This shows with considerable completeness the idea that dominates all government and much private effort for the education of women in Japan.

The schools are to teach simply such subjects as are necessary for females; anything more would be superfluous, possibly dangerous.

The thought of women as individuals, with minds and souls to be trained and developed to their highest possibilities, is still somewhat foreign to the mind of the average Japanese man.

In its stead is the idea that females must be instructed in such subjects as are necessary for a proper understanding of their duties as wives and mothers.

But if Japan to-day is where England and America were in the first half of the nineteenth century, the country is certainly moving forward, as the statistics in regard to education for the three successive years 1896, 1897, and 1898 show.

Great efforts are being made to increase the attendance of girls at the common schools, and with gratifying results.

[43] [43] The following in the report for 1898 may be of interest:-- Percentage of pupils of school age receiving instruction:-- Year.

Girls.

Boys.

1896 47. 54 79. 00 1897 50. 86 80. 67 1898 53. 73 82. 42 The total number of girls of school age not receiving instruction is 1,552,601; of boys, 662,985; while the total number of girls of school age is 3,642,263, and of boys, 4,067,161. As we advance into the higher schools, the discrepancy in numbers between the two sexes grows greater.

In the kindergartens the attendance of girls is nearly equal to that of boys; in the elementary schools there are three boys to two girls; in the higher elementary schools, seven boys to two girls.

The boys' middle schools, which are equivalent in grade to the girls' high schools, have fourteen boys taking their courses to every two girls in the high schools.

In the apprentice and technical schools, there are fifteen men to every two women.

Even the normal schools, which in our own country are almost given over to women, in Japan have six male students to every female.

The "special schools," mainly professional, have, to 11,069 men, 73 women, all enrolled in private schools, and presumably taking medical courses.

Beyond this point women have no opportunities offered to them.

In the higher schools, equivalent to the college and graduate courses given by universities in America, 7,224 young men are given opportunities that women must go abroad to obtain.

These figures are, as I have said, for the year 1898. The year 1901 sees two hopeful movements well begun.

One of these is the opening of an institution bearing the title of "Female University," endowed and supported by Japanese, through the strenuous efforts of Mr. Jinzo Naruse, a prominent Christian who has spent some time in America.

At its opening, five hundred girls were glad to enter, but of these very few are ready for college work.

Mr. Naruse, however, believes that in time he will be able to enlarge his college department and diminish the preparatory, which is now almost the whole of the school.

He has the support and encouragement of many wealthy and influential Japanese, among them Count Okuma, the well-known progressive statesman.

On the day of the opening of the school, Count Okuma, in a speech from the platform, said that the nation would be twice as strong if its women were well educated.

This he called "setting up a double standard."

He pointed out that Turkey, Egypt, Persia, and China were countries which had tried to get along with a "single standard," and which had fallen conspicuously behind.

He called attention to the fact that Japan's primitive religion had for its central figure the Goddess of Light, but that, unfortunately for the well-being of the state, woman had been gradually dethroned and thrust down into a low place.

After speaking of the debt that Japan owed to China for the civilization and the ethical system that had stood her so long in good stead, the veteran statesman went on to say that society in Japan was disfigured by abuses which were beyond any simple remedy.

The only effective medicine was to be found in a radical reform of the ideals of family life, and this could only be effected by an improvement in the status of woman,--an improvement which such institutions as the one that day opened would greatly aid in bringing about.

These words from one of the most honored leaders of Japanese thought voice the feeling that is prevalent throughout Japan in this thirty-fourth year of Méiji.

That it is actually moving both government and people is shown by the words of Mr. Kikuchi, Minister of Education, to the Council of Provincial Governors held in T[=o]ky[=o] in June, 1901. In speaking of the progress of education throughout the country, he stated his intention to push forward the work of secondary education for girls, saying that a prefecture which refused to make provision for such education by 1903 might be compelled to do so by the government.

The other hopeful educational effort to which I have alluded is a school started on a small scale, but with a high standard, by a Japanese woman whose name is almost as well known in America as in Japan, as an educator of great ability and earnestness of purpose.

After many years of work as a teacher in the Peeresses' School, a place of great honor from the Japanese standpoint, she has resigned her position to carry out a long-cherished plan.

With the pecuniary aid of friends in America, she has founded a school for the preparation of young women who have finished the courses heretofore open to them, and who wish to become teachers of English in the Government schools.

The examinations for such positions have always been open to women, but, because of the difficulty in securing proper preparation, there are few who pass them.

Since its opening in September, 1900, the school has been crowded with promising pupils, and the small accommodations with which it began, although already once enlarged, are stretched to the uttermost.

The girls come from the government high schools and from the mission schools, and the course offered to them of three years of study in English literature, composition, translation, and methods of teaching has proved a strong attraction.

In recognition, perhaps, of this effort on behalf of her countrywomen, certainly, of her position at the head of her profession, this same woman has this year been appointed on the examining committee for the government English examinations, an honor never before given to one of her sex,--in itself a sign of the change in thought that the last few years have wrought.

There can be no doubt that the education of women is moving forward, pushed by the leading men of the country and aided by the earnest work of the women themselves.

It is still far behind the education offered to men, and the ideal of most of its promoters is limited to the purely utilitarian; but as long as it moves forward and not backward, and as long as the years of work show an increased number of women fitted to meet the changing conditions of the time, we do well to approve rather than criticise, remembering that the problem is an exceedingly intricate one, and one of which even the best-instructed foreigner can see only a small part of the difficulty.

The year 1901 sees the printing-press almost as much of a power in Japan as in the Western world, and it is interesting to notice that among the innumerable newspapers and magazines now published in the country there are some twenty or more devoted exclusively to the interests of women.

To be sure, these women's magazines do not undertake to furnish the loftiest intellectual pabulum, the best of them covering, perhaps, the same range of subjects that is included in "Woman's Journals" in the United States.

They devote themselves largely to lectures on morals and manners, and instruction as to how best to perform the duties of the home.

These magazines are for the most part written and edited by men, many of them very young men, and serve to show rather what men desire that women should think and do, than to give any insight into the minds of the women themselves.

With a combined circulation of perhaps 40,000, they enter many homes, and do something, at least, toward the general enlightening and quickening of the feminine mind that is so noticeable in the Japan of to-day.

In regard to the general reading of Japanese women who have had the new education, my own observation leads me to believe that they keep themselves well informed of what is going on in their own country, and of the outside world so far as it affects their own country; but that their interest in the world at large is less than that of American women, and only in exceptional cases do they care much for the sayings or doings of foreigners.

In this respect they differ widely from the men, whose minds are reaching continually for new things to graft upon the old civilization.

In the whole list of publications on the woman question, nothing has ever come out in Japan that compares for outspokenness and radical sentiments with a book published within a year or two by Mr. Fukuzawa, the most influential teacher that Japan has seen in this era of enlightenment.

It is in two parts, the first an attack, conducted with much skill and humor, upon Kaibara's "Great Learning of Woman," a book which for nearly four hundred years has been supposed to contain all that a woman should know.

The last part of Mr. Fukuzawa's work is a constructive essay upon the "New Great Learning of Woman."

So revolutionary are the sentiments expressed in the book that many Japanese men hesitate about allowing their wives and daughters to read it, and in at least one modern Christian school it has been ruled out from the school library as too advanced for the reading of the girls.

A

brief survey of the sentiments and ideas thus boldly set forth will show how far is the attitude of the Japanese from that of the American public on the woman question.

We find in Mr. Fukuzawa's book the lofty ideal that belongs to the most advanced modern thought, but its promulgation as a practical working ideal in Japan was of the nature of a thunderclap.

Among less tolerant races, men have been lynched, or burned at the stake, for slighter departures from the average code of thought and morals.

Mr. Fukuzawa starts out with the proposition that women are quite equal to men, and should hold equal position and influence.

Although he allows that woman's work in the world is quite distinct from that of man, he holds that it is as important, and that she should have the same property-holding privileges and rights.

The greatest stress is laid on the point that the same moral obligation for purity of life rests on the husband as on the wife.

He goes into the details of the unhappiness resulting from concubinage, putting the duty of the husband in this respect as equal to that of the wife to preserve her chastity, and as this is, next to obedience, the virtue of virtues for a Japanese wife, his argument is as strong as it could well be made.

He insists that women should demand as a right from their husbands and families the same privileges and opportunities that men have in society.

Such sentiments are a matter of course in America, and they have been held by a few advanced thinkers in Japan, but no one hitherto has dared in so vigorous and positive a way, and with arguments that come so near home, to try to break the chain of custom that holds women down as inferior beings.

Kaibara says that if a woman finds her husband doing wrong, she should gently plead with him, choosing a time when he is most inclined to listen.

If he refuses, she should not insist on his hearing her, but wait until he is willing to listen, and though she may try two or three times, she should never anger or irritate him.

Fukuzawa says that if this applies to the woman, it should also to the man,--that is to say, if a man finds his wife unfaithful, he is to wait for an opportunity when she is in good humor before he remonstrates with her.

Fukuzawa also throws new light on the duty of husbands and fathers to their wives and children in another respect.

He says that no man should let the sole responsibility for the happiness of the home fall upon his wife; that a man is responsible for the peace of the home as well as the woman.

This view of the matter is entirely new in Japan, as the responsibility for an unhappy home is laid as a matter of course upon the wife.

The duty of a wife to her parents-in-law is also treated after the same revolutionary manner.

Is it to be wondered at that many men fear the influence of such a book upon their gentle, submissive wives?

In this connection it is interesting, however, to note that at a recent Shint[=o] wedding, after the religious ceremony, which in itself marks a great step forward in the Japanese ideal of marriage, the priest who united the couple presented to the bride a copy each of the Kaibara and Fukuzawa books, perhaps with a view to letting her take her choice between the old style and the new, perhaps that she might instruct her husband out of the Fukuzawa book while she put in practice herself the time-honored precepts of Kaibara.

* * * * * One feature of the times in T[=o]ky[=o], that is perhaps worthy of passing notice, is the tendency of women to form themselves into societies and clubs for the attainment of some common object.

Of these women's clubs, the greater proportion are perhaps educational, the members meeting once a month or once a fortnight to listen to a lecture upon some subject that helps to keep them up with the times.

There is also a patriotic society, that concerns itself with raising money for sending supplies to soldiers in the field, or for widows and orphans of soldiers, or to help along some other patriotic enterprise.

There are societies, too, for general benevolence, or to help in carrying on the work of some one institution.

A glance at the membership lists of these associations shows that the motive power is, in almost all cases, the same group of earnest, educated women, who are, in this way and in countless others, doing their utmost to broaden the horizons of their countrywomen, and lead them out into a larger life.

This is probably true in the other cities in which a movement of women into clubs and societies is noticeable.

It is when the active women of the new way of thinking, whose lives and thoughts are devoted to work and endeavor rather than to the passive submission and self-abnegation of the old days, find themselves suddenly placed among the surroundings of thirty years ago, that the change of conditions becomes most evident.

I cannot think of a better way to illustrate this than to tell the story of one of my Japanese friends and her visit to her husband's relatives in a distant provincial city.

The lady who told me the story is a stirring, capable young matron, educated after the modern ways, who has spent most of her happy married life of some fifteen or sixteen years entirely in T[=o]ky[=o], except for a visit of a year to America.

She bears a closer resemblance to many kind-hearted, strong, energetic young American women than to the old-time Japanese lady portrayed in these pages.

She rises every morning at five, attends to every detail of her housekeeping, watches carefully and with educated common sense over her family of young children, believes in good food, fresh air, and exercise, for boys and girls alike, and is a helpful friend and good neighbor, filling to the full the position of work and influence in which she is placed.

Her husband is a successful business man, whom frequent journeys across the Pacific have made thoroughly cosmopolitan, and their children are accustomed to a freedom from conventional restraints and a healthful diet and regimen such as old Japan never knew.

Last year the plan of spending the summer with the husband's relatives, which had been long projected, was actually carried out, and the whole family migrated to the provincial city from which the husband had sprung.

The aged mother, a gentlewoman of the old type, was delighted to meet and entertain her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and did her best, with all old-fashioned courtesy, to make the visit a pleasant one.

The house was clean and spacious, the mats soft and white, the bows of the lowest, the voices and speech the politest that Japan could furnish, but the healthy, restless children found the conventional restraints irksome, and the old-fashioned diet of rice and pickles, with hardly a variation from morning till night and from week to week, was quite different from the bountiful table to which they had been accustomed.

The younger woman could not criticise her mother-in-law's arrangements, neither could she bear to see her children growing thin and pale before her eyes.

She consulted her husband, who, in accordance with the antique ideas of propriety, was served his meals at a different time and in a different room from his wife and family.

To his food his mother had always added various delicacies which her old-time Spartan spirit would not allow her to set before her daughter-in-law and grandchildren.

It would have been quite contrary to her ideas of rank and etiquette for her to make any modification of her ordinary fare for them.

As the son was already supplying the funds for carrying on his mother's establishment, it occurred to him that he might increase her allowance on the plea that her summer expenses must be heavy with so large an addition to her household.

But the old lady was sure that nothing more was necessary, and would not think of burdening her son with any larger expenses, and could not be induced to accept the offered increase.

Another effort was made to get along upon the meagre fare, but the youngest boy fell ill and had to be taken to a hospital, and the mother decided that something must be done if all the family did not wish to follow him.

The happy thought occurred to her of buying something that would be an addition to their scanty menu, and giving it as a present to her mother-in-law.

Now a present in Japan can never be refused, so it seemed to the younger woman that she must have found a way of escape from her difficulties.

Of course, the present was accepted with many thanks and expressions of unworthiness, and when the meal-hour arrived, each member of the family found an infinitesimal quantity of the delicacy in a small plate at his side.

But as soon as the meal was over, the dear old lady, who had by strict economy managed to leave the greater part of the gift untouched, sent out to all the neighbors presents from what had been intended to feed the hungry children at home.

The experiment was tried again and again, but always with the same result.

No present could be kept for family use alone.

Of everything but the barest necessaries, the greater part must be sent out in gifts to others.

At last the husband and wife put their heads together to decide on some course of action that, without hurting the feelings of the older lady, would secure sufficient nourishment for the children, and forthwith began a series of all-day picnics to the noted places in the vicinity,--picnics that included always a good meal at some well-kept restaurant before the return to the old-fashioned fare of the grandmother's house.

In this way the summer was passed without further illness, though the poor mother on her return to T[=o]ky[=o] spent several weeks in bed,--what with starvation and worry and the effort to bear heroically, and with a smiling face, the hard life and scanty fare that were the life and fare of most of Japan only a few years ago.

In the changes that the past few years have wrought, perhaps nothing is more striking than the new openings for work that Japan now offers to women.

The growth of the public school system has made a demand for women as teachers that is steadily increasing.

Although in the normal schools the proportion of women to men is still only one to six, and while teaching, even in the primary schools, is not yet mainly in feminine hands as it is with us, there is still a good showing of women employed as teachers.

From the figures of the school report of 1898, we find over 10,000 women as teachers and assistants in the public and private schools.

The profession of nursing, too, which ten years ago was just opening, has already drawn many women into its ranks.

In the Red Cross hospitals alone there are this year nearly a thousand nurses taking the course, and a thousand graduates scattered throughout the country hold themselves ready to answer the call of the society in the time of need, in the mean time practicing their profession wherever they may chance to be.

The quality of the Red Cross graduates has been tested now in two wars, and they show the soldierly virtues of their nation, as well as the more womanly qualities of tenderness and gentleness; and a self-respect that has kept them pure and free from stain in the midst of severe temptation.

It is impossible for me to gather statistics of the work done by other institutions for the training of nurses, but the figures given above may, I think, be doubled with absolute safety in making an estimate of the total number of nurses trained and in training throughout the empire.

The growth of commerce and industry has greatly increased the demand for feminine labor outside the home.

In the old days the two most important industries of the country, tea and silk, were mainly carried on by women in their homes, but the use of modern machinery is rapidly taking the weaving industries out of the homes and making factory hands of the women and children.

[44] [44] In the Japan _Mail_ of July 8, 1901, the following statistics of women employees in factories in Japan were given:-- Manufacture.

No. of Women.

No. to 100 Men.

Raw Silk 107,348 93 Cotton Spinning 53,053 79 Matches 11,385 69 Cotton Fabrics 10,656 86 Tobacco 7,874 72 Matting 1,641 59 One of the most noticeable effects of this new demand for female labor is the extreme scarcity of servants.

Although wages are nearly double what they were ten years ago, it is extremely difficult for Japanese housekeepers now to find servants to replace the old ones as they drop out of the ranks, and the women who apply for positions are apt to be far inferior to those who came to the same families to do the same work ten years ago.

In other ways, too, women are learning to fill new places in the world.

The telephone, which now connects towns and cities and villages in Japan, employs girls in large numbers.

In the printing-offices we find women at work, not as compositors, but as compositors' assistants, darting from case to case about the room and selecting for the compositor the ideographs that he needs in his work.

Inasmuch as a small printing-office cannot get along with less than four thousand characters, and as larger ones may have several times that number, the need of quick-witted and quick-footed assistants to each compositor may be easily recognized.

As the schools turn out each year more girls fitted by education to do this kind of work, and as the number of newspapers and other printed matter is continually on the increase, the demand for and supply of this special variety of labor are likely to increase proportionately for some time to come.

A few women are now making their way as reporters on the daily papers, a few more are engaged in literary work.

One of the best of modern Japanese novelists was a woman, but she died several years ago at so early an age that her work was a promise rather than a fulfillment.

Artists, too, there are, who are making names for themselves, as well as a living, in a country where art is so common that success in that line means hard work and special talent.

A few young women support themselves by stenography, a few more as clerks and secretaries in business offices.

Until a writing-machine has been invented that will write four thousand characters, there will not be much demand for typewriter girls in Japan outside of the treaty ports, where a few are now employed.

The Japanese government has found, as Uncle Sam discovered some time ago, that for the counting of paper money women's fingers are more deft than those of men, and it consequently gives employment to a few women in that work.

One railroad has recently begun to employ women as ticket-sellers, and three medical schools have already graduated some women physicians, though it is still doubtful whether there is any great opening for them in the country.

These are some of the ways in which women now find themselves able to gain a little more independence of life.

The whole matter is so new that no statistics are available that will show the exact extent of the demand for labor in these directions, but from my own observation I am inclined to think that there is little change in the employments of women except in the neighborhood of the larger cities, and that the new occupations as yet have a very slight effect upon the conditions in this country at large.

It is not possible to understand the actual progress made in Japan in improving the condition of women, without some consideration of the effect that Christian thought and Christian lives have had on the thought and lives of the modern Japanese.

If Japanese women are ever to be raised to the measure of opportunity accorded to women in Christian countries, it can only be through the growth of Christianity in their own country, and for that reason a study of that growth is pertinent to a study of their condition.

The past ten years in Japan have been discouraging to the missionaries in many ways, and it is not unusual to hear from the less hopeful of them the statement that their work has been at a standstill, or even going backward, during that time.

The statistics of missionary effort show a steady, though slight, increase in the number of professing Christians, but if the sum total of the results of missionary effort were the number of converts made, it might, perhaps, be doubtful whether the money spent on missions in Japan might not be better turned to other purposes.

There are now in Japan, of Christians of all sects, Protestant, and Roman and Greek Catholic, 121,000, or about one half of one per cent.

of the total population of the country; but the influence of these Christians as leaders of thought is out of all proportion to their number.

Christian men are found in the Diet, in the army and navy, in the universities and colleges, and in the newspaper offices, in a proportion far beyond their ratio to the total population, exerting their influence in many ways for the uplifting of the nation to loftier moral ideals.

The proportion of Christian men and women in the government schools with which I have been connected is rather surprising.

In the Higher Normal School, training young women to go out into the whole country as teachers, the proportion of professing Christians upon the teaching staff is striking; and in the Peeresses' School, which is as conservative and anti-foreign as any educational institution in Japan, there are five professing Christians among the thirty-five teachers.

While, on the one hand, the Japanese Christians are not all models of all the virtues, while there is with many of them a tendency to modify their Christianity so as to accommodate a considerable amount of worldly wisdom, it is true, on the other hand, that the most active workers in the cause of philanthropy are men who have accepted the Christian faith, and who are striving in all earnestness to model their lives after the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christian Church in Japan to-day has its heroes and its back-sliders, and has between these two extremes a rank and file of every-day, commonplace men and women, who amidst frequent failures and in the midst of many temptations are making the name of Christian stand for a certain kind of life and a certain standard of virtue quite above and beyond the lives and standards of their countrymen.

It is largely because of them that a Christian public opinion is growing up among non-Christian Japanese.

Men to-day who have no special leanings toward Christianity shake their heads over vices and sins which a few years ago were not even thought of as wrong.