“These are the doctrines taught by Confucius, Mencius, and the ancient sages, whose memory has been revered in China for thousands of years.”
And now, what wonder that Chinese civilisation and progress is, and remains, fossilised, inert, dead?
Japan.
“There is one supreme maxim upon which the conduct of a well-bred woman is made to turn, and this is ‘obedience.’ Life, the Japanese girl is taught, divides itself into three stages of obedience. In youth she is to obey her father; in marriage her husband; in widowhood her eldest son. Hence her preparation for life is always preparation for service. The marriage of the Japanese girl usually takes place when she is about seventeen. It is contrary to all custom that she should have any voice in it. Once married, she passes from her father’s household into the household of her husband, and her period of self-abnegation begins. Her own family is to be as nothing to her. Her duty is to charm the existence of her husband, and to please his relations. Custom demands that she shall always smile upon him, and that she shall carefully hide from him any signs of bad humour, jealousy, or physical pain.”—Tinseau (quoted in Review of Reviews, Vol. IV., p. 282.)
Note well the last two words of the above quotation; they have a bearing on much that will have to be said presently. Meanwhile, we read from another writer: “The expression, res angusta domi, might have been invented for Japan, so narrow of necessity is the wife’s home life. The husband mixes with the world, the wife does not; the husband has been somewhat inspired, and his thoughts widened by his intercourse with foreigners, the wife has not met them. The husband has more or less acquaintance with western learning; the wife has none. Affection between the two, within the limits which unequal intellectuality ruthlessly prescribes, there well may be, but the love which comes of a perfect intimacy, of mutual knowledge and common aspiration, there can rarely be. The very vocabulary of romantic love does not exist in Japanese; a fortiori, there is little of the fact.” Yet, under the influence of western civilisation, these things are changing rapidly, and Mr. Norman, the commissioner of the Pall Mall Gazette, further relates that “The generation that is now growing up will be very different. Not only will the men of it be more western, but the women also. As girls they will have been to schools like our schools at home, and they will have learned English, and history, and geography, and science, and foreign music; perhaps, even, something of politics and political economy. They will know something of ‘society,’ as we now use the term, and will both seek it and make it. The old home life will become unbearable to the woman, and she will demand the right of choosing her husband just as much as he chooses her. Then the rest will be easy.”
The harsh and restrained position, both of Japanese and Chinese women, is frequently attributed to Confucianism; yet the matter does not seem to be of any one creed, but rather of every religious creed. Thus Mrs. Reichardt tells us, concerning Mahommedan women and Mahommedan married life, that—
“A Mahommedan girl is brought up with the idea that she has nothing to do with love. It is ayib (shame) for her to love her husband. She dare not do it if she would. What he asks and expects of her is to tremble before him, and yield him unquestioning obedience. I have seen a husband look pleased and complacent when his wife looked afraid to lift up her eyes, even when visitors were present.”—(Nineteenth Century, June, 1891.)
Nor is Confucius alone, or the simple contagion of his teaching, rightly to be blamed for the following condition of things in our own dependency of
India.
The Bombay Guardian calls attention to an extraordinary book which is being circulated (early in 1891) broadcast, as a prize-book in the Government Girls’ School in the Bombay Presidency. The following quotations are given as specimens of the teachings set forth in the book:—