very little wife-beating in Japan, neither is there any zenana system, any veiling of the face. Rather is it that women are all their lives treated more or less like babies, neither trusted with the independence which our modern manners allow, nor commanding the romantic homage which was woman's dower in mediæval Europe; for Japanese feudalism despite its general similarity to the feudalism of the West knew nothing of gallantry. A Japanese knight performed his valiant deeds for no such fanciful reward as a lady's smile.[1] He performed them out of loyalty to his lord or filial piety towards the memory of his papa, taking up, maybe, the clan vendetta and perpetuating it. Our own sympathies, as will be sufficiently evident from the whole tenour of our remarks, are with those who wish to raise Japanese women to the position occupied by their sisters in Western lands. But many resident foreigners—male foreigners, of course—think differently, and the question forms a favourite subject of debate. The only point on which both parties agree is in their praise of Japanese woman. Says one side, "She is so charming that she deserves better treatment,"—to which the other side retorts that it is just because she is "kept in her place" that she is charming. The following quotation is from a letter to the present writer by a well-known author, who, like others, has fallen under the spell. "How sweet," says he, "Japanese woman is! All the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be concentrated in her. It shakes one's faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression, then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamond-hard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the object. In the eternal order of things, which is the higher being, the childish, confiding, sweet Japanese girl, or the superb, calculating, penetrating, Occidental Circe of our more artificial society, with her enormous power for evil and her limited capacity for good?"—That
