Japanese Girls and Women / Revised and Enlarged Edition

by Alice Mabel Bacon

Of the lack of permanence in the marriage relation among the lower classes, the domestic changes of one of my servants in Tōkyō afford an amusing illustration. The man, whom I had hired in the double capacity of jinrikisha man and bettō or groom, was a strong, faithful, pleasant-faced fellow, recently come to Tōkyō from the country. I inquired, when I engaged him, whether he had a wife, as I wanted some one who could remain in his room in the stable in care of the horse when he was pulling me about in the jinrikisha. He replied that he had a wife, but she was now at Utsunomiya, the country town from which he had come, but he would send for her at once, and she would be in Tōkyō in the course of a week or two. Two or three weeks passed and no wife appeared, so I inquired of my cook and head servant what had become of Yasaku's wife. He replied, with a twinkle in his eye, that she had found work in Utsunomiya and did not wish to come. A week more passed, and still no wife, and further inquiries elicited from the cook the information that Yasaku had divorced her for disobedience, and was on the lookout for a new and more docile helpmate. His first thought was of the maidservant of the Japanese family who lived in the same house with me, a broad-faced, red-cheeked country girl, of a very low grade of intelligence. He gave this up, however, because he thought it would not be polite to put my friends to inconvenience by taking away their servant. His next effort was by negotiation through a Tōkyō friend; but apparently Yasaku's country manners were not to the taste of the Tōkyō damsels, for he met with no success, and was at last driven to write to his father in Utsunomiya asking him to select him a wife and bring her down to Tōkyō.

The selection took a week or two, and at last my maid told me that Yasaku's wife was coming by the next morning's train. A look into the bettō's quarters in the stable showed great preparations for the bride. The mats, new-covered with nice straw matting, were white and clean; the shoji were mended with new paper; the walls covered with bright-colored pictures; and various new domestic conveniences had nearly bankrupted Yasaku, in spite of his large salary of ten dollars a month. He had ordered a fine feast at a neighboring tea house, had had cards printed with his own name in English and Japanese, and had altogether been to such great expense that he had had to put his winter clothes in pawn to secure the necessary money.

The day chosen for the marriage was rainy, and, though Yasaku spent all his time in going to trains, no bridal party appeared; and he came home at night disconsolate, to smoke his good-night pipe over his solitary hibachi. He was, no doubt, angry as well as disconsolate, for he sat down and penned a severe letter to his father, in which he said that, if the bride did not appear on the next day counted lucky for a wedding (no Japanese would be married on an unlucky day), they could send her back to her father's house, for he would none of her. This letter did its work, for on the next lucky day, about ten days later, the bride appeared, and Yasaku was given two days of holiday on the agreement that he should not be married again while he remained in my service. On the evening of the second day, the bride came in to pay me her respects, and, crouching on her hands and knees before me, literally trembled under the excitement of her first introduction to a foreigner. She was a girl of rather unattractive exterior, fat and heavy, and rather older than Yasaku had bargained for, I imagine; at any rate, from the first, he seemed dissatisfied with his "pig in a poke," and after a couple of months sent her home to her parents, and was all ready to start out again in the hope of better luck next time.

Here is another instance, from the woman's side. Upon one occasion, when I was visiting a Japanese lady of high rank who kept a retinue of servants, the woman who came in with the tea bowed and smiled upon me as if greeting me after a long absence. As I was in and out of the house nearly every day, I was a little surprised at this demonstration, which was quite different from the formal bow that is given by the servant to her mistress's guest upon ordinary occasions. When she went out my friend said, "You see O Kiku has come back." As I did not know that the woman had been away, the news of her return did not affect me greatly until I learned the history of her departure. It seemed that about a month before, she had left her mistress's house to be married; and the day before my visit she had quietly presented herself, and announced that she had come back, if they would take her in. My friend had asked her what had happened,—whether she had found her husband unkind. No, her husband was very nice, very kind and good, but his mother was simply unbearable; she made her work so hard that she actually had no time to rest at all. She had known before her marriage that her proposed mother-in-law was a hard task-mistress, but her husband had promised that his mother should live with his older brother, and they should have their housekeeping quite independent and separate. As the mother was then living with her older son, it seemed unlikely that she would care to move, and O Kiku San had married on that supposition. But it seemed that the wife of the older brother was both lazy and bad-tempered, and the new wife of the younger brother soon proved herself industrious and good-natured. As the mother's main thought was to go where she would get the most comfort and waiting upon, she moved from the elder son's house to that of her younger son, and began leading her new daughter-in-law such a life that she soon gave up the effort to live with her husband, sued for a divorce, obtained it, and was back in her old place, all in a month's time from the date of her marriage.

But our readers must not suppose, from the various incidents given, that few happy marriages take place in Japan, or that, in every rank of life, divorce is of every-day occurrence. On the contrary, there seems cause for wonder, not that there are so many divorces, but that there are so many happy marriages, with wives and husbands devoted and faithful. For a nobleman in the olden times to divorce his wife would have caused such a scandal and talk that it rarely occurred. If the wife were disliked, he need have little or nothing to do with her, their rooms, their meals, and their attendance being entirely separate, but he rarely took away from her the name of wife, empty as it might be. She usually would be from some other noble house, and great trouble would arise between the families if he attempted to divorce her. The samurai also, with the same loyalty which they displayed for their lords, were loyal to their wives, and many a novel has been written, or play acted, showing the devotion of husband and wife. The quiet, undemonstrative love, though very different from the ravings of a lover in the nineteenth century novel, is perhaps truer to life.

Among the merchants and lower classes there has been, and is, a much lower standard of morality, but the few years which have passed since the Revolution of 1868 are not a fair sample of what Japan has been. Noblemen, samurai, and merchants have had much to undergo in the great changes, and, as is the case in all such transition periods, old customs and restraints, and old standards of morality, have been broken down and have not been replaced. There is no doubt that men have run to excesses of all sorts, and divorces have been much more frequent of late years.[*]

Our little Japanese maiden knows, when she blackens her teeth, dons her wedding dress, and starts on her bridal journey to her husband's house, that upon her good behavior alone depend her chances of a happy life. She is to be henceforth the property of a man of whom she probably knows little, and who has the power, at any whim, to send her back to her father's house in disgrace, deprived of her children, with nothing to live for or hope for, except that some man will overlook the disgrace of her divorce, and by marrying her give her the only opportunity that a Japanese woman can have of a home other than that of a servant or dependent. That these evils will be remedied in time, there seems little reason to doubt, but just now the various cooks who are engaged in brewing the broth of the new civilization are disagreed in regard to the condiments required for its proper flavoring. The conservatives wish to flavor strongly with the subjection and dependence of women, believing that only by that means can feminine virtue be preserved. The younger men, of foreign education, would drop into the boiling pot the flavor of culture and broader outlook; for by this means they hope to secure happier homes for all, and better mothers for their children. The missionaries and native Christians believe that, when the whole mixture is well impregnated with practical Christianity, the desired result will be achieved. All are agreed on this point, that a strong public opinion is necessary before improved legislation can produce much effect; and so, for the present, legislation remains in the background, until the time shall come when it can be used in the right way.