Woman. He will see that in this part of the world it is a case, not of place aux dames, but place aux messieurs.[1]
The men, having everything their own way, naturally marry young. Speaking broadly, there are no bachelors in Japan. For an exactly contrary reason, there are no old maids. The girls are married off without being consulted, and they accept their fate as a matter of course, because their mothers and grandmothers, ever since the beginning of the world, accepted a like fate before them. One love marriage we have heard of,—one in thirty years. But then both the young people had been brought up in America. Accordingly they took the reins into their own hands, to the great scandal of all their friends and relations.
It would be interesting, were it possible, to ascertain statistically the effect on morality of early marriage as practised in this part of the world. Our impression is that the good results anticipated from such a system by certain European reformers do not show themselves here in fact. Not that wider intercourse with the people bears out the casual observer's harsh judgment on the standard of Japanese female morality. Japanese ladies are every whit as chaste as their Western sisters. But so far as we have been able to observe, the only effect of early marriage on the men is to change the date of their wild-oats sowing, making it come after wedlock instead of before. Divorce is common. During the earlier part of the period covered by statistics, the proportion of divorces to marriages was nearly as 1 to 3; but since 1901
- ↑ May the writer be permitted here to record a little experience of his own? In his Introduction to the Kojiki, he had drawn attention to the inferior place held by women in ancient as in modern Japan. Some years afterwards, six of the chief literati of the old school did him the honour to translate this Introduction into Japanese, with a running commentary. They patted him on the back for many things; but when they reached the observation anent the subjection of women, their wrath exploded. "The subordination of women to men," so runs this commentary, "is an extremely correct custom. To think the contrary is to harbour European prejudice … For the man to take precedence over the woman, is the grand law of heaven and earth. To ignore this, and to talk of the contrary as barbarous, is absurd."—It does not fall to every one's lot to be anathematised by half-a-dozen Japanese literary popes—and that, too, merely for taking the part of the ladies!
