JAPANESE HOUSEWIVES

Evening Star, Issue 22804, 12 November 1937, Page 10

JAPANESE HOUSEWIVES

FACING DOMESTIC CRISIS DEARTH OF GOOD MAIDS The Tokio housewife to-day is facing a genuine domestic crisis. In the past there has been no serious servant problem in Japan. Maids were cheap and abundant, if not always well trained. Now, however, circumstances _ have greatly changed. Women are going into many more branches of work and the factory, with its regular hours of work and higher money wages, is attracting many girls away from domestic service.

This is especially tree at the present time when several hundred thousand new industrial workers are being taken on every year because _of the exceptional activity in munitions production and related industries.

Labour exchanges report that domestic service is one of tho few occupations where offerings of places outnumber applicants for employment. And this is born© out by the experiences of a number of Japanese friends of the professional and middle classes. They all report that maids aro hard to get and harder to hold, that they leave at the first intimation of sickness in the family, _ or any other development that requires extra work. One cause of the domestic crisis is the disappearance of some old patriarchal customs without the substitution of other relations. In former times household service was in the nature of an apprenticeship for marriage. It was considered rather a favour to a girl if a mistress would take her into service for a year of two, teaching her Japanese housekeeping and simple etiquette. The girl in snclx a case leceived a very small money wage, but was rather considered as an adopted member of the family, sharing its simple festivals and outings, receiving clothing as well as board, and ultimately some; handsome presents for the wedding which was the normal end of her apprenticeship. Somehow this practice has gone out of fashion, and with it the family loyalty of the old-fashioned Japanese maid. The incomes of tho overwhelming majority of Japanese are so low that it is impossible, _ in most cases, to replace the attraction of the oldfashioned tutelage with the inducement of high wages. As a result the ary goes up in many Japanese middle-class households that the present-day maid is capricious and unstable; and not a few Japanese middle-class homes are permanently or temporarily without servants. The foreign housewife in Japan has troubles of her own in the domestic sphere. Operating, as a rule, on a budget less restricted than that of her Japanese friends, she can and almost invariably does pay wages well above the prevailing scale. But there aro psychological obstacles to foreign housekeeping in Tokio that are beyond the power of gold to remove.' The foreign employer must make her choice between two types of servants in Tokio: those who have and those who have not worked in foreign houses. The latter, strong and simple country, girls, if trained, often make the most devoted _ servants. But the process of training is a protracted and nerve-racking one for mistress and maid alike.

For_ to the Japanese peasant girl a foreign-style house is a sfyange place, full of pitfalls and complications. She is profoundly ignorant of foreign housekeeping and habits; everything, from the practice of serving women before men to the care of furniture (which is almost non-existent in the Japanese house), and_ the us© of knives, forks, and spoons is new and unaccustomed. On the other _ hand, girls who have worked in foreign houses feel themselves part of a small class of “ specialists,” a sort of labour aristocracy, and are apt to bo very conscious of their unusual accomplishments and to depart on slight provocation. Moreover, the tenure of maids of both these classes is usually likely to bo abruptly interrupted by the incidence of matrimony. A trait of the Japanese maid that is also baffling to the foreign employer is that she seldom, if ever, gives the true reason of her decision to Quit. The official cause is usually a dying grandmother or an ailing father who demands all her filial attention. When one further notes the deep, rooted Oriental tradition of “squeeze” as part of the perquisites of the cook it may be realised that housekeeping in Tokio, as elsewhere, has its special problems and tribulations. The “ squeeze ” consists of more or less discreet padding of the food accounts. If these irregular expenditures are checked too closely the cook resorts to subtle forms of sabotage; the roast beef mysteriously becomes tough, the vegetables stringy, and the pastry crust soggy.