A KINDLY JAPANESE CRITIC.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9913, 30 July 1910, Page 4

A KINDLY JAPANESE CRITIC.

("Woman's Life.")

The good sense and independence of the average English woman seem to have made a strong impression on a well-known Japanese lady educationist, who recently paid a visit to England. _ Mrs Yasui Tetsu, the lady in question. lately returned to Japan, and she has been giving to a Japanese audience in. Tokio some interesting views on English women and their home life. She told her audience that English women were not haughty as was very often supposed by people who misunderstood them.

"They are," she said, "very often charged with haughtiness, but this is more a result of their seriousness of temperament in contradistinction to the light-heartedness displayed by women of other countries than of their assumption of superiority." After this graceful tribute our Japanese critic had something to say of the strong self-confidence which is a characteristic of English '• women. " Why," she went on, " even schoolgirls will not blindly follow the instructions of a teacher unless convinced of their propriety." Speaking of the national exclusiveness of the English people, Mrs Tetsu said that Englishmen would not easily allow the admission of strangers into the home. She'found the relationships betweh man and wife generally " most affectionate and happy," and pointed out that man does not wield quite; the same absolute power in the home, as in her own country. Our Japanese friend must have been very fortunate in the people she met to be able to write that "English people have such well-proportioned ideas of their household economy that they never live out of their incomes." Concluding with a rap at the vanity of some of the little women of Japan., the speaker said that an English woman was never ashamed to go to any place in an attire which waa becoming to her station in life.