The Japanese Woman.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 26, 26 June 1912, Page 13

The Japanese Woman.

In the interesting book upon Japan and the Japanese by Joseph E. Longford (published recently) there are one or two vivid sidelights upon the feminist question full of interest to us in these stirring times. How is, we ask, that Japan, which has evolved from meaiaevalism to modernity before our very eyes, has not given to her women something more than the occasional disfigurement of Paris fashion? Why is the woman still the humbler slave and inferior of her lord and master? One very important reason exists in the fact that in Japan the male population is sightly in excess of the female, and that in consequence all the young girls get.married. Marriage is thus their goal, quite security and although this makes the need of certain reforms no less desirable, the Japanese woman with her mind made up as io her future has resigned any independence of thought beforehand in accepting her natural destiny. This may seem sadly retrograde, but there is another side to the medal of this apparently dependent and servile existence. Mr. Longford tells us that one of the first Eng lish books to be translated and to find enormously wide popularity in Japan was no other than " Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures”! Here we get a glimpse of the eternal femin tie. Is it possible

that the soft-footed little lady who prosrates herself so admirably, who moves publicly with so much observance and deprecation about her potentate, can she, meek-eyed and sleek-headed, be really and truly the driving power and tyrant of the family? In the silent watches of the night, behind those paper panels is the balance made eyen? Does that praiseful tongue which has so extraordinarily be haved itself before folk shake out ail reefs and give to the partner of her life a long, sound and convincing bit of her mind? The great principles laid down in the Onna Daigaku, all founded on the sternest ethics of Confucianism, were that a woman should be brought up by her own parents so that when married she should be absolutely obedient to those of her husband; that she should avoid the society of men, even that of her husband’s relations or fellow vassals; that she should be gentle, conciliatory, and reverential to her husband, “ looking upon him as heaven,” never repaying anger with anger, never jealous, no matter what cause is given to her, but always yielding to him, never seeing

his faults, but always humbly acknowledging her own; always careful in his household; and a good many other things which rendered the Japanese woman the most perfect female type of humility, unselfishness, and patient endurance that the world his ever- seen.