The Women and Girls of Chrysanthemum Land.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 October 1904, Page 3

The Women and Girls of Chrysanthemum Land.

By WILLIAM GRUNER.

fBE Land of the Chrysanthemum upon which so much interest is just now feeing centred is one of the most romantic and artistically > r attractive of foreign lands. J Novelists and travellers f agree in singing its __^ praises, and even the most \ir veracious of the latter have little to say in dis-

paragement of its people or customs, and less to say in disparagement of its scenery and natural beauties. A land of flowers ! and the fairest of all the flowers are the human ones — its women ! For the women and gfirls of Japan are dainty, interesting: and feminine ; and although European fashions and customs of dress threaten to make unpicturesque the garb of Japanese women of the uoper classes, such ideas have happily not as yet pene-

trated very deep into the. feminine minds of Japan. Japanese women have many virtues and few vices, and not least amongst the former are those of a love of home and patriotism. In the last virtue they influence not a little, as do also the younger girls, the men of the nation. They inculcate the idea in the mind's of their sons that it is good to die whilst fighting for Japan, and though tears may shine in their eyes they will yet say, " Go and light, but do not return unless victorious." It is this teaching which has enabled the Japanese soldier to astonish the world in the manner he has so recently done. It will thus be seen that in this picturesque land, which in many ways to European eyes seems on so ridiculously small a scale, the women count largely. They have not yet attained to the sometimes un-

desirable freedom of the West, but they [lay an important part in all duties which should devolve upon women. They are industrious, frugal and happy : and. perhaps.

the hippincss is not a little traceable to the other characteristics.

]\l.any travellers ]jfa\ c attempted to describe the smile/of a Japanese woman'. It is a difficult task to attempt ; because it^ seems to proceed from within, and is not merely a ileetinu 1 expression! tin<jeinL>' her outward countenance. And yet to Western ideas she? would seem t/> have little to make her happy, for the position of '.the Japanese woman, with some exceptions, is not one of acknowledged social importance. Of course, in some households she reigns supreme ; 'out this supremacy is rather that of individual circumstance thtfn a national characteristic.

Most writers arrive that she is one of the gentlest a)d most lovable of women, and Sir Arnold has crystallised her position in social life in a very few words. lie says, " For her there are three obediences. She o'.eys, as a child, her father : as a wife, her husband ; and as a mother, her eldest s-nn."

And yet, although she may have little of the freedom of the Western women — freecjom which has not, in the opinion of many, added either to her grace or her charm — the ■laoanese woman is on the whole happy. No one who I nows her denies that she is sweet and charming.

Although to most travellers the life and thoughts of , Japanese girls and women are sealed hooks— for her true charm is not to he learned from the women of the shops, bazaars and restaurants, nor even from those one sees in the streets and in the temple grounds — one cannot fail to notice her courtesy and gentleness in almost al l circumstances of life. To truly know the whole charm of the Japanese girl, one must live in some household with her through a whole year ; for

there are phases and beauties of disDcsition which one discovers slowly, which vary even with the seasons themselves. Perhaps they are best seen in some village or town, as vet unconnected by railway with the more strenuous life of the biuycr cities. From her early days she is grounded in the laws of submission to her father, and her mother;, and her male relatives, by means of strarr-je vocal lessens vixen her by, 1 erhaps her grandfather, or by the refusal of '' Onna Daijaku," the famous work of the ancient moralist, named Kaibara, which freely translated may lie taken to mean,

"1 he whole Duty of Woman." And aithomrh her Western sisters would r rob ably treat its teachings with scorn, in the eves of most Japanese women it is regarded as a work of the greatest authority. The ovisha bulks larirHy in -Japanese life, so largely, indeed, that one would almost imagine from some Western writers that there are only oeishas in -Japrn. Their mission is to make life ha^nv, and their education is all to that end. No -Japanese feast or entertainment, whether in ,a puMic " chaya " or in a private house, seems complete without these dainty, brhht, little beings, who eon d-once, and sinu\, and tell stories, and plry on the strangely-shaped instruirenis which make the plaintive Japanese music.

But after all there arc many other tyr:es of women in .Japan. The (iuaint little sisters of quainter little Irothers who haunt the shaded courtyards of the temples with ba'-ie's strapped to their backs, and children, little more than babies themselves, toddling hither and ihither ur.der the shade of parer umbrellas, or inspecting, with eves which have for the nonce become fully opened, the wonderful marvels of the stalls of sweetmeats and beautifully finished toys carved in woods and bound with lacquer. And then, too, there are the

women of the countryside, patient, hard-working-, often sitting outside the rudest of houses, spinning silk with primitive machinery from hundreds^ of cocoons, or working kneedeep :in the water of the rice fields clad in smoke-blue kimonos or less. In the sunny streets of the villages of the interior more especially, one meets with the woman pedlar, striding along, bare-legged and short. skirted, with a bamboo pole across her shoulder, to each end of which is slung a tub or basket with

ropes like the car of a balloon. It is wonderful the weight these sturdy women will' thus carry, and as they go along the rop.d they call out their wares, and from the houses come other women bent on bargaining. In the tea-fields of Tsuchi, Yama, and of Uji, which is on the outskirts of Kioto, at the latter end of April and beginning of May, one meets with the tea-picker, often a picturesque figure with a strange,

white, cowl-like head-dress, busily engaged in the preparation and sorting of the leaves for the market. The women ar.d girls of Japan are devoted to flowers, and the lady gardener is by no means unknown. At the festivals of the flowers, as those of the plum blossom at Ujeno and Mukojima in April, and the wistaria at Kameido in May, and of the chrysanthemum, she is a familiar figure. At these festivals, indeed, one can see almost all types of Japanese women and girls.

Of the modern woman of Japan, who copies her European sisters, there is no need to speak. It is less easy to accept without regret the emancipated woman of Japan than the emancipated woman of a Western nation. For the women and girls of Chrysanthemum Land are as paper flowers to real blossoms when they appear without their own native charm, masquerading in the fashions and customs of an inartistic nation like ours.