Oriental Women

by Edward B. Pollard

There have been many able women in this land of the Cherry Blossom, and the Japanese people have not been blind to their claims to recognition as controlling forces. This is shown by the fact that no less than nine empresses have ruled the land. Some of them have been women of marked sagacity and influence. On the dim borderland of the mythical, for example, history shows us the heroic Empress Jingu Kogo, who, tradition says, was the conqueror of Corea, and the embodiment of all that is good and great in Japanese womanhood.

Among the women of Japanese legend is the Maiden of Unahi, the story of whose noble life and death has been often sung by the poets. Her tomb is to-day pointed out in the province of Settsu, between Kobe and Osaka. Such heroines of the earlier days have furnished inspiration for the women of Japan for many generations; and the ideals of domestic life are far higher than might be expected in a region of the world where women, as a rule, live out their round of life upon a general plane that is sorrowfully low.

The present generation in Japan has been truly blessed by the influence of an empress who is described as not only "charming, intellectual, refined, and lovely," but also "noble and beautiful in character." Haru Ko, born of noble parentage, became empress in the year 1868. Her husband had just come to the throne at the age of seventeen. This was the very year of the downfall of the Shogunate and the restoration of the imperial power. Though reared in seclusion at Kioto, the young empress began at once to measure up to the responsibilities which her position had in store for her. She proceeded to exert her influence in favor of the elevation of the women of her country. Without hesitancy, she mingled personally among the people, administering charity to them. Very early in her life as empress, in the year 1871, she gave a special audience to five little girls of the military class who were about to set out for America in order to study to prepare themselves for the larger life of womanhood in the new Japan. From the beginning of the school established for daughters of the nobility, who are expected to play an important part in the Japan that is to be, she has taken great interest in its progress.

The religious side of a Japanese woman's life, as has been intimated, is remarkably undeveloped. In the portico of a certain temple in the interior of Japan is found this inscription: "Neither horses, cattle, nor women admitted here." This may be taken as but one intimation of the fact that little in the way of religion is expected of the female sex. The introduction of Buddhism into Japan marked an epoch in the country's history; but Buddhism has done little for woman, for she does not occupy so exalted a position under it as under the more ancient religion. Shintoism has its priestesses and Buddhism its nuns, but neither of these religions has brought any noteworthy blessing to the women of the kingdom. The ancient religions still influence their lives. The multitude of temples still claim the veneration of the people. Kioto retains its eminence as the chief seat of ecclesiastical learning, but the Western spirit has found an entrance into the land of the Cherry Blossom; traditional customs are yielding to its influence, and inveterate prejudices are bending before it.

The progress of Christian ideals has in recent years been rapid, and Western religious teaching has advanced with giant strides. Recent legislation has done something to increase the stability of the home by making divorce less easy. The putting of concubinage under the ban by not allowing the children of concubines to inherit a noble title, making this law apply even to the son of the emperor himself, who must also hereafter be son of the empress if he would inherit the throne, will also mean much for the elevation of womanhood in the land of the cherry and the japonica.

XIV

WOMEN OF THE BACKWARD RACES OF THE EAST

No volume upon the women of the Orient could be deemed complete without some account of those women whose lives have been developed remote from the larger movements of civilization,--the women of the backward races, and those whose sphere has been contracted, not by social ideals simply, but by virtue of the lack of that larger opportunity of world contact which has given to some peoples a far more powerful impulse to progress than has been the privilege of others. As representatives of this class we may choose the women of the South Seas and of some of the African tribes. These will furnish us typical examples.

George Eliot has declared that "the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history." In the advance of the world's civilization from crude savagery to high culture, woman's part, though of incalculable value, has, generally speaking, been unheralded. Bearing the brunt of the downward burden, while man's shoulder presses upward, woman, from the beginning, has had a minor place in written history. But even among the obscurer races she has managed to bear her part with marked happiness. This seems to be notably true among the island women of the world. The peoples of the seas, removed from many of the pressing conditions and harsh frictions which are present in the larger countries of the continent, exhibit a freedom, if the term may be justly applied to undeveloped races, which is not the possession of many of the larger and older nations of men. One is prepared, of course, for great variety of blood, custom, and development among the peoples who inhabit the islands and the lands that lie out of the beaten track of travel and commerce. There is probably no part of the world where the races of mankind have become more mixed than in the South Seas.