Another, and one of the chief causes for divorce in Japan, are the complications that naturally arise from the many people living in one house. Either party may seek divorce if ill-treated or insulted by the parents or grandparents of the other, and mothers-in-law, with their hard tongues and bitter words, are the frequent causes of separation of husband and wife. One provision of the law which serves to make most mothers endure any evil of their married life rather than sue for divorce is the fact that the children belong to the father, and the mother returns childless to her father’s house. In this country, where the woman is economically dependent upon her menfolk, even if she were allowed to take the children, quite likely they would not be made welcome in a home where there are always too many mouths to feed; therefore the Japanese mother puts up with many brutalities and heartaches in order to keep with her the only bright things she has in life, her children.
The Japanese wife leads a very busy life. In all but the very wealthiest and most aristocratic families the wife and daughters do a large part of the housework. In a house with no furniture, no carpets, no pictures, no stoves or furnaces, no windows to wash, no latest styles to be imitated in the making of clothing, there is not so much work in the care of a house as there is in the Western world, where the rooms are filled with a multitude of unnecessary articles that seem only made to give toil to women. But because of the lack of conveniences it takes time to properly care for the rooms in a Japanese house. Every morning there are the beds to be rolled up and placed in the closets, the mosquito-nets to be taken down, the rooms to be swept, dusted, and aired; and the veranda floor is polished several times a day as if it were a precious piece of silver. The cooking and washing of the dishes take a great deal of time, as the former is done over a tiny charcoal stove and the dishes are washed in cold water. There is not a moment of time that the wife is idle, as there is always the family sewing to be superintended, the mats and cushions to be recovered, the wadding to be renewed in the bed coverings and the winter kimonas. Many of the Japanese dresses must be taken to pieces whenever they are washed, and the wet breadths smoothed upon a board and placed in the sun to dry. The careful housewife makes over the older daughters’ dresses for the younger daughters, and these clothes are washed, turned, dyed, and made over and over again so long as there is a shred of the original material left to work upon.
The Japanese believe that a woman passes through three critical stages in her journey through life. If she passes her nineteenth, her thirty-third, and her thirty-seventh years safely, she has a chance of living to a good old age and seeing her children and her grandchildren grow up around her. Her most critical year is her thirty-third, and not only this year itself, but the years immediately preceding and following are considered inauspicious. Consequently there are three years during which period women will refrain as much as possible from acts which may appear like tempting Providence. When a woman attains her sixtieth birthday it is an occasion for great festivities, when she invites all her friends to a dinner to celebrate this wonderful event. If a man or woman should have occasion to celebrate their seventieth birthday, they distribute among their friends and relatives large red and white cakes with the character signifying “longevity” written upon them, and with each increasing year the old man or woman gain in the respect of their community.
When the last illness comes to father and mother it would be considered most unfilial for any of the children not to be present at the parent’s death-bed. When all is over the son or the wife wets his lips with water, and so universal is this custom that the expression “to wet the dying lips with water” has come to signify the tending of a patient in his last illness. One of the reasons why the Japanese believe that the wife should be younger than the husband is that she may be able to fulfil this last office for her loved one.
It is known that death is in the room by the placing upside down of a screen before the bed, and the quilt covering the body is reversed, the foot covering the dead man’s breast. A white cloth is laid over the face, as its exposure would be an obstacle to the soul’s journey on its road to the other world. Everything done for the dead is the reverse of that done for the living; for example, in the tub for the last bath cold water is poured first, then hot water added until it is of the right temperature. The head is shaved by touching it with the razor in small patches instead of running it continuously as in life. The burial garment is made by two women relatives, sewing with the same piece of thread in opposite directions, and the kimona is folded from right to left instead of from left to right as a man would wear it ordinarily. Mittens, leggings, and sandals are worn, the sandals being tied on the foot with the heel in the place of the toe, to signify that the dead must not return, drawn back by the love of the world. Around the neck is suspended a bag of Buddhist charms, and a small coin, or picture of a coin, with which to pay the ferryman. If the wife dies, the husband does not publicly mourn for her, although her children do; but if the husband dies the wife should mourn the rest of her life, and she often cuts off her long hair and places it in the coffin of her husband, showing that she resolves to be always faithful to his memory. In a child’s coffin a doll is placed to keep the child company on its first journey without mother or father. The last rite is to cover the body with incense-powder or dried aniseed, and then it is ready for the funeral ceremonies.
A funeral procession in Japan is an imposing affair. The corpse, in its palanquin or in the modern hearse, is preceded by men carrying large white lanterns on poles, bundles of flowers stuck in bamboo pedestals, stands of artificial flowers, and birds in enormous cages, which are set free at the temples as an act of merit. The priests, friends, and relatives move slowly and sadly to the temple, in which there is a service, then the bier is taken to the crematory by the chief mourner and the near relatives. The ashes are removed the next day to their permanent home in the public crematorium or in the temple burying-ground of the family.
For fifty days after the death incense and lights are kept burning before the tablet of the deceased at his late home, and prayers are offered at the grave for the same length of time. A priest comes from the temple every seventh day to offer incense and prayers with the sorrowing family, who believe that for forty-nine days the spirit of their dead wanders in the dark space that lies between this world and the next. Every seventh day it makes a step forward and is helped by the prayers of loved ones left behind. The sorrowing wife is taught that the spirit cannot tear itself away from its old home and hovers over it, and unless it is absolutely necessary no loving woman would remove from her home until the forty-nine days were past, for fear of giving sorrow to the spirit of her husband, if he did not find her in the place where they had passed together their years of happiness.
The dead are not quickly forgotten in Japan. Memorial services take place the forty-eighth day, the hundredth day, and the first anniversary of the death, and services are held for even fifty years. Lafcadio Hearn expresses the reverence which these people give their loved ones who have gone before them by saying:—
“In this worship we give the dead they are made divine. And the thought of this tender reverence will temper with consolation the melancholy that comes with age to all of us. Never in our Japan are the dead too quickly forgotten; by simple faith they are still thought to dwell among their beloved and their place within the home remains holy. When we pass to the land of shadows we know that loving lips will nightly murmur our names before the family shrine, that our faithful ones will beseech us in their pain and bless us in their joy. We will not be left alone upon the hillside, but loving hands will place before our tablet the fruit and flowers and dainty food that we were wont to like, and will pour for us the fragrant cup of tea or amber rice-wine. Strange changes are coming upon this land, old customs are vanishing, old beliefs are weakening, the thoughts of to-day will not be the thoughts of to-morrow; but of all this we will know nothing. We dream that for us as for our mothers the little lamps will burn on through the generations; we see in fancy the yet unborn, the children of our children’s children, bowing their tiny heads and making the filial obeisance before the tablet that bears our family name.”