In conclusion, we make one more quotation, from Miss Bacon’s “Japanese Girls and Women,” as follows:—
“The woman question in Japan is at the present moment a matter of much consideration. There seems to be an uneasy feeling in the minds of even the more conservative men that some change in the status of women is inevitable, if the nation wishes to keep the pace it has set for itself. The Japanese women of the past and of the present are exactly suited to the position accorded them in society, and any attempt to alter them without changing their status only results in making square pegs for round holes. If the pegs hereafter are to be cut square, the holes must be enlarged and squared to fit them. The Japanese woman stands in no need of alteration unless her place in life is somehow enlarged, nor, on the other hand, can she fill a larger place without additional training. The men of new Japan, to whom the opinions and customs of the western world are becoming daily more familiar, while they shrink aghast, in many cases, at the thought that their women may ever become like the forward, self-assertive, half-masculine women of the West, show a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with the smallness and narrowness of the lives of their wives and daughters—a growing belief that better-educated women would make better homes, and that the ideal home of Europe and America is the product of a more advanced civilization than that of Japan. Reluctantly in many cases, but still almost universally, it is admitted that in the interest of the homes, and for the sake of future generations, something must be done to carry the women forward into a position more in harmony with what the nation is reaching for in other directions. This desire shows itself in individual efforts to improve by more advanced education daughters of exceptional promise, and in general efforts for the improvement of the condition of women.”
Miss Bacon, in her book, traces very clearly the progress that has been made in the condition of woman, and shows how “better laws, broader education for the women, [and] a change in public opinion” are still necessary. And she affirms that “we can feel pretty sure that, when the people have become used to these [recent] changes [of the new Civil Code], other and more binding laws will be enacted, for the drift of enlightened public opinion seems to be in favor of securing better and more firmly established homes.”
The following is also worthy of quotation: “It is not possible to understand the actual progress made in Japan in improving the condition of women, without some consideration of the effect that Christian thought and Christian lives have had on the thought and lives of the modern Japanese.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
“The Real Japan,” chap. viii.; “Out of the Far East” (Hearn), pp. 85-125; “The Yankees of the East,” chaps. ix., xix.; “An American Missionary in Japan” (Gordon), chap. xv.; “Japan and her People,” vol. i. pp. 178-191; “A Japanese Interior” (Miss Bacon); “Every Day Japan” (Lloyd); and, last and best, Miss Bacon’s “Japanese Girls and Women,” revised edition, illustrated.
CHAPTER XIV
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Outline of Topics: Japanese syllabary; i-ro-ha arrangement; arrangement of fifty-sounds; modern inventions.—Chinese ideographs; Kata-kana; Hira-gana; Kana-majiri and Kana-tsuki; variety in pronunciation.—Japanese elocution.—Japanese syntax; logic in linguistics; a sample sentence; kind of language; topsy-turvy practices.—Ancient literature; poetry; naga-uta and tanka; hokku; a poem a picture.—Characteristics of Japanese poetry.—Modern literature: newspapers; press laws; English journals; Japanese journals; magazines and periodicals; books; what the Japanese read; their literary taste; foreign books; linguistic reforms, theory and practice.—Bibliography.
THE Japanese language belongs, philologically, to the Altaic family, and is of the agglutinative type. Practically, it is musical and easy to pronounce, but, on account of its long and involved sentences, difficult to learn. Its alphabet is not phonetic, but syllabic, and very simple and regular. It comprises 73 characters, of which 5 are duplicates of the same sounds, so that there are really only 68 distinct sounds. As many of the sounds, moreover, are only slight modifications of other sounds, they are represented by the same characters, with certain diacritical signs attached (as in the case of ha, ba, and pa). There are, consequently, in common use only 48 distinct characters, which are arranged in such an order as to form a stanza of poetry[131] as follows:—
Iro wa nioedo