Japanese Girls and Women / Revised and Enlarged Edition

by Alice Mabel Bacon

The education of the daimiō's daughter was conducted entirely at home.[35] Instead of going out to masters for instruction, she was taught by some one in the household,—one of her father's retainers, or perhaps a member of her own private retinue. Teachers for certain branches came from outside, and these were not expected to give the lesson within a certain time and hurry away, but they would remain, conversing, sipping tea, and partaking of sweetmeats, until their noble pupil was ready to receive them. Hospitality required that the teacher be offered a meal after the lesson, and this meal etiquette would not permit him to refuse, so that both teacher and pupil must spend much time waiting for each other and for the lesson.

Pursued in this leisurely way, the education of the noble's daughter could not advance very rapidly, and it usually ended with an extremely early marriage; and the girl wife would sometimes play with her doll in the new home until the living baby took its place to the young mother.

The samurai women, who in one position or another were close attendants on these noble ladies, performing for them every act of service, were often women of more than average intelligence and education. From childhood to old age, the noble ladies were never without one or more of these maids of honor, close at hand to help or advise. Some entered the service in the lower positions for only a short period, leaving sooner or later to be married; for continued service in a daimiō's household meant a single life. Many of them remained in the palace all their days, leading lives of devotion to their mistress; the comfort and ease of which hardly compensated for the endless formalities and the monotonous seclusion.

Even the less responsible and more menial positions were not looked down upon, and the higher offices in the household were exceedingly honorable. When, once in a long while, a day's leave of absence was granted to one of these gentlewomen, and, loaded with presents sent by the daimiō's lady, she went on her visit to her home, she was received as a greatly honored member of her own family. The respect which was paid to her knowledge of etiquette and dress was never lessened because of the menial services she might have performed for those of noble blood.

The lady who was the head attendant, and those in the higher positions, had a great deal of power and influence in matters that concerned their mistress and the household; just as the male retainers decided for the prince, and in their own way, many of the affairs of the province. The few conservative old ladies, the last relics of the numerous retainers that once filled the castle, who still remain faithful in attendance in the homes now deprived of the grandeur of the olden times, look with horror upon the innovations of the present day, and sigh for the glory of old Japan. It is only upon compulsion that they give up many of the now useless formalities, and resign themselves to seeing their once so honored lords jostle elbow to elbow with the common citizen.

I shall never forget the horror of one old lady, attendant on a noble's daughter of high rank, just entering the peeress' school, when it was told her that each student must carry in her own bundle of books and arrange them herself, and that the attendants were not allowed in the classroom. The poor old lady was doubtless indignant at the thought that her noble-born mistress should have to perform even so slight a task as the arranging of her own desk unaided.[*]

In the daimiōs' houses there was little of the culture or wit that graced the more aristocratic seclusion of Kyōto, and none of the duties and responsibilities that belonged to the samurai women, so that the life of the daimiō's lady was perhaps more purposeless, and less stimulating to the noble qualities, than the lives of any other of the women of Japan. Surrounded by endless restrictions of etiquette, lacking both the stimulus that comes from physical toil and that to be derived from intellectual exertion, the ladies of this class of the nobility simply vegetated. There is little wonder that the nobles degenerated both mentally and physically during the years when the Tokugawas held sway; for there was absolutely nothing in the lives of the women to fit them to be the wives and mothers of strong men. Delicate, dainty, refined, dexterous in all manner of little things but helpless to act for themselves,—ladies to the inmost core of their beings, with instincts of honor and of noblesse oblige appearing in them from earliest childhood,—the years of seclusion, of deference from hundreds of retainers, of constant instruction in the duties as well as the dignities of their position, have produced an abiding effect upon the minds of the women of this aristocracy, and to-day even the youngest and smallest of them have the virtues as well as the failings produced by nearly three centuries of training. They are lacking in force, in ambition, in clearness of thought, among a nation abounding in those qualities; but the national characteristics of dignity, charming manners, a quick sense of honor, and indomitable pride of race and nation, combined with a personal modesty almost deprecating in its humility,—these are found among the daughters of the nobles developed to their highest extent. With the qualities of gentleness and delicacy possessed by these ladies, which make them shrink from rough contact with the outer world, there are mingled the stronger qualities of moral and physical courage. A daimiō's wife, as befitted the wife of a warrior and the daughter of long generations of brave men, never shrank from facing danger and death when necessary; and considered the taking of her own life an honorable and easy escape from being captured by her enemy.

Two or three little ripples from the past broke into my life in Tōkyō, giving a little insight into those old feudal times, and the customs that were common then, but that are now gone forever. A story was told me in Japan by a lady who had herself, as a child, witnessed the events narrated. It illustrates the responsibility felt by the retainers for their lord and his house. A daimiō fell into disgrace with the Shōgun, and was banished to his own capital,—a castle town several days' journey from Yedo,—as a punishment for some offense. The castle gates were closed, and no communication with the outer world allowed. During this period of disgrace, it happened that the noble fell ill, and died quite suddenly before his punishment was ended. His death under such circumstances was the most terrible thing that could befall either himself or his family, as his funeral must be without the ordinary tokens of respect; and his tombstone, instead of bearing tribute to his virtues, and the favor in which he had been held by his lord, must be simply the monument of his disgrace. This being the case, the retainers felt that these evils must be averted at any cost. Knowing that the Shōgun's anger was probably not so great as to make him wish to bring eternal disgrace to their dead lord, they at once decided to send a messenger to the Shōgun, begging for pardon on the plea of desperate illness, and asking the restoration of his favor before the approach of death. The death was not announced, but the floor of the room in which the man had died was lifted up, and the body let down to the ground beneath; and through all the town it was announced that the daimiō was hopelessly ill. Forty days passed before the Shōgun sent to the retainers the token that the disgrace was removed, and during all those forty days, in castle and barrack and village, the fiction of the daimiō's illness was kept up. As soon as the messengers returned, the body was drawn up again through the floor and placed on the bed; and all the retainers, from the least unto the greatest, were summoned into the room to congratulate their master upon his restoration to favor. One by one they entered the darkened room, prostrated themselves before the corpse, and uttered the formal words of congratulation. Then when all, even to the little girl who, grown to womanhood, told me the story, had been through the horrible ceremony, it was announced that the master was dead,—that he had died immediately after the return of the messenger with the good tidings of pardon. All obstacles being thus removed, the funeral was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance; and the tombstone of the daimiō to-day gives no hint of the disgrace from which he so narrowly escaped.

Another instance very similar, throwing some light on the custom of adoption or yōshi, referred to in a previous chapter, was the case of a nobleman who died without children, and without an heir appointed to inherit his title. It would never have done, in sending in the official notice of death, to be unable to name the legal head of the house and the successor to the title. There was also no male relative to perform the office of chief mourner at the funeral; and so the death of the nobleman was kept secret, and his house showed no signs of mourning during a long period, until a son satisfactory to all the members of the household had been adopted. When the legal notice of the adoption had been sent in, and the son received into the family as heir, then, and only then, was the death of the lord announced, the period of mourning begun, and the funeral ceremony performed.

Upon one occasion I was visiting a Japanese lady, who knew the interest that I took in seeing and procuring the old-fashioned embroidered kimonos, which are now entirely out of style in Japan, and which can only be obtained at second-hand clothing stores, or at private sale. My friend said that she had just been shown an assortment of old garments which were offered at private sale by the heirs of a lady, recently deceased, who had once been a maid of honor in a daimiō's house. The clothes were still in the house, and were brought in, in a great basket, for my inspection. Very beautiful garments they were, of silk, crêpe, and linen, embroidered elaborately, and in extremely good order. Many of them seemed not to have been worn at all, but had been kept folded away for years, and only brought out when a fitting occasion came round at the proper season of the year. As we turned over the beautiful fabrics, a black broadcloth garment at the bottom of the basket aroused my curiosity, and I pulled it out and held it up for closer inspection. A curious garment it was, bound with white, and with a great white crest appliqué on the middle of the back. Curious white stripes gave the coat a military look, and it seemed appropriate rather to the wardrobe of some two-sworded warrior than to that of a gentlewoman of the old type. To the question, How did such a coat come to be in such a place? the older lady of the company—one to whom the old days were still the natural order and the new customs an exotic growth—explained that the garment rightfully belonged in the wardrobe of any lady-in-waiting in a daimiō's house, for it was made to wear in case of fire or attack when the men were away, and the women were expected to guard the premises. Further search among the relics of the past brought to light the rest of the costume: silk hakama, or full kilted trousers; a stiff, manlike black silk cap bound with a white band; and a spear cover of broadcloth, with a great white crest upon it, like the one on the broadcloth coat. These made up the uniform which must be donned in time of need by the ladies of the palace or the castle, for the defense of their lord's property. They had been folded away for twenty years among the embroidered robes, to come to light at last for the purpose of showing to a foreigner a phase of the old life that was so much a matter of course to the older Japanese that it never occurred to them even to mention it to a stranger. The elder lady of the house was wonderfully amused at my interest in these mute memorials of the past, and could never comprehend why I was willing to expend the sum of one dollar for the sake of gaining possession of a set of garments for which I could have no possible use. The uniform had probably never been worn in actual warfare, but its owner had been trained in the use of the long-handled spear, the cover of which she had kept stored away all these years; and had regarded herself as liable to be called into action at any time as one of the home guard, when the male retainers of her lord were in the field.