Everywhere “the right of the father of a family” over his children has begun by being unlimited. In Japan it is still excessive, even over married daughters. Thus M. Bousquet, who was travelling in Japan a few years ago, relates that as he was lodging one day in the house of a young married couple, the father of the wife offered her to him, and the husband did not dream of protesting.[455]
A daughter represents a certain amount of capital, belonging first to the father and then to the husband; to alienate it without the consent of the proprietor is a theft, but with his authorisation the action becomes lawful, and therefore parents who are in difficulties negotiate their daughter without any intervention by the Japanese law. A young girl is even admired when she prostitutes herself from devotion. “The Japanese romances repeat to satiety the story of the virtuous virgin who voluntarily submits to this servitude in order to save her father from misery, or to pay the debts of her betrothed.”[456] In Japan, houses of prostitution are a national institution; the law regulates the costume of the women who inhabit them, and the duration of their stay. On this point Europe has little to envy Japan. But what is special to Japan is that the tikakie, the inmates of these houses, are placed there by their parents themselves, and for a price that is debated beforehand. These inmates of the tea-houses generally enter them from the age of fourteen or fifteen years, to live there till they are twenty-five years old. They are taught to dance, to sing, to play the guitar, and to write letters. They are lodged in handsome apartments, where men go to see them openly and without any mystery.
They are in no way dishonoured by their trade; many of them marry very well afterwards; it even happens that respectable citizens go to seek an agreeable wife in these houses of pleasure. The most beautiful among them are celebrated. After their death their portraits are placed in the temples. “In the temple of Asaxa,” says M. Bousquet, “is found a painting representing several Japanese ladies in full dress; they are, my guides tell me, the portraits of the most celebrated courtesans of Yeddo, which are annually placed here in their honour.” So also Dr. Schliemann reports that he has seen statues of deified courtesans in the Japanese temples. Their celestial intervention was implored in an original manner. The suppliants first wrote a prayer on a paper, then masticated the request and rolled it into a bullet, which they shot with an air-gun at the statues of these strange divinities.[457]
It is clear that the Japanese differ very much from us in their idea of feminine virtue. They have an idea, however, and do not in the least permit the women to love as they please. Thus the girl who gives herself to a lover without paternal authorisation is legally punished by sixty lashes with a whip, and the Japanese public would not endure in a play the personage of a young girl in love.[458]
It is not the chastity of woman, as we understand it, but her subjection, that Japanese morality requires. The woman is a thing possessed, and her immorality consists simply in disposing freely of herself.
As regards prostitution, Brahmanic India is scarcely more scrupulous than Japan, and there again we find religious prostitution practised in the temples, analogous to that which in ancient Greece was practised at Cyprus, Corinth, Miletus, Tenedos, Lesbos, Abydos, etc.[459]
According to the legend, the Buddha himself, Sakyamouni, when visiting the famous Indian town of Vesali, was received there by the great mistress of the courtesans.[460]
But the Brahmins have not been more strict in what concerns prostitution than the founder of the great Buddhist religion. On this point the accounts of travellers and missionaries supplement the silence of the Code of Manu. The writers of Lettres édifiantes found religious prostitution openly practised in the Brahmanic temples. “The people have put,” writes one of them, “the idol named Coppal in a neighbouring house; there she is served by priests and by Devadachi, or slaves of the gods. These are prostitute girls, whose employment is to dance and to ring little bells in cadence while singing infamous songs, either in the pagoda, or in the streets when the idol is carried out in state.”[461] In this case it was a matter of actual commerce, of trading for the profit of the priests, and the latter had recourse without any shame to what we call to-day the advertisement to attract the customers. “I heard,” relates the same missionary, “published with the blowing of a trumpet, that there was danger in frequenting the Devadachi who dwelt in the town; but that one could safely visit those who served in the temple of Coppal.”[462] An old traveller, Sonnerat, confirms the testimony of the missionaries of the seventeenth century. He affirms that, like all the other Hindoos, the Brahmins are much addicted to libertinage, and that, in their practical morality, it is not considered a fault to have commerce with a courtesan; that they have licentious books in which refined debauchery is taught ex professo; that they use love-charms, etc.[463]
I stop here, and purposely abstain from speaking of the prostitution of Europe. We know too well that it has always been very flourishing, as well in ancient Rome as in the Middle Ages, although they were so catholic. In old France it established itself boldly, in full daylight, to such a degree that some towns, that of Rouen for example, had their proxénètes jurés, wearing bronze medals with the arms of the town on them.[464] As for contemporary prostitution, it is superfluous to call attention to the fact that it is one of our great social diseases.
To sum up, the origin of prostitution goes back to the most primitive societies; it is anterior to all the forms of marriage, and it has persisted down to our own day in every country, and whatever might be the race, religion, form of government, or conjugal régime prevailing. Taken by itself, it would suffice to prove that monogamy is a type of marriage to which mankind has found it very difficult to bend itself; the very general existence of the concubinate completes the demonstration.