WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
riage is a simple transaction. The ceremony is a civil one performed in the presence of witnesses before a registrar. Young couples must first obtain the consent of their parents. Love in Japan does not always precede marriage, but it usually follows after union. "Love," in the purely romantic Western meaning, is not known among the Japanese. Mrs. Fraser was told by Miss Tsuda, a Japanese head-mistress, and a convert to Christianity, that the word "'love' has been hitherto a word unknown among our girls, in the foreign sense."
Miss Tsuda continues: "Duty, submission, kindness—these were the sentiments which a girl was expected to bring to the husband who had been chosen for her—and many happy, harmonious marriages are the result. Now your dear sentimental foreign women say to our girls: 'It is wicked to marry without love; the obedience to parents in such a case is an outrage against nature and Christianity. If you love a man you must sacrifice everything to him.'"[1]
Undoubtedly, male jealousy is strong in Japan, as in China. The almost extinct practice of married women shaving off their eyebrows and discolouring their teeth arose from the jealous instincts of husbands, who feared for the constancy of a too-attractive wife.
- ↑ Article in "World's Work and Play," Dec. 1906.
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