other contracts, be terminated by the joint request and consent of the contracting parties.
The way things are managed is this. When their child—whether boy or girl—has reached a marriageable age, the duty of the parents is to secure a suitable partner. Custom, however, rules that the conduct of the affair must be entrusted to a middleman (nakōdō)—some discreet married friend, who not only negotiates the marriage, but remains through life a sort of godfather to the young couple, a referee to whom disputes and even arrangements for divorce may be submitted for arbitration. Having fixed on an eligible parti, the middleman arranges for what is termed the mi-ai, literally, the "mutual seeing," a meeting at which the lovers (if persons unknown to each other may be so styled) are allowed to see, sometimes even to speak to each other, and thus estimate each other's merits. In strict etiquette, the interview should take place either at the middleman's own residence, or at some other private house designated by the parents on both sides. But among the middle and lower classes, a picnic, a party to the theatre, or a visit to a temple often serves the purpose. If the man objects to the girl or the girl to the man after the "mutual seeing," there is an end of the matter, in theory at least. But in practice the young people are in their parents hands, to do as their parents may ordain. The girl, in particular, is a nobody in the matter. It is not for girls to have opinions.
If both parties are satisfied with what they have seen of each other, gifts consisting of clothes, or of money to purchase clothes, and of certain kinds of fish and edible seaweed, are exchanged between them. This exchange of presents is called yuinō. It corresponds to betrothal, and is binding—if not in actual law, at any rate in custom. The presents once exchanged, neither party can draw back. A lucky day is then chosen for the wedding. When it comes, the bride, dressed all in white, the colour of mourning to signify that she dies to her own family, and that she will never leave her husband's house but as a corpse—is borne away at nightfall to her new home, escorted by
