As another illustration of the changed attitude toward Christianity, I may mention that a Japanese Buddhist once came to Doctor Hail's services armed with a dagger to kill the preacher, but had his attention caught by the sermon while waiting his chance and is now a missionary himself!
Perhaps in no other respect is Christianity working a greater change than in the general estimate of woman, although this is an objection the natives openly urge against Christianity. Just as in any conflict of interest the family in Japan has been everything and the individual nothing, so in every disagreement between husband and wife his opinions count for everything, hers for nothing. The orthodox and traditional Japanese view as to a woman's place has been very accurately and none too strongly set forth by the celebrated Japanese moralist, Kaibarra, writing on "The Whole Duty of Woman":
"The great lifelong duty of a woman is obedience. . . . Should her husband be roused at any time to anger, she must obey him with fear and trembling, and never set herself up against him in anger and forwardness. A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself and never weary of thinking how she may yield to her husband, and thus escape celestial castigation."
Similarly, in the "Greater Learning for Women" it is declared:
"The five worst maladies that afflict the female mind are indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy and silliness. These five maladies infest seven or eight out of every ten women, and it is from these that arises the inferiority of women to men."
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THE GREAT BUDDHA (DIABUTSU) AT KAMAKURA.
This gigantic figure of Buddha (a man's head would barely reach the statue's feet) singularly expresses the spirit of serene contemplation for which the Buddhist religion stands; is indeed, hauntingly suggestive of that dreamy Nirvana which it teaches is the goal of existence. There is perhaps no finer piece of statuary in the East than this.