Japanese ladies, as a rule, do not go about very much, except those who have married foreigners or have lived abroad. A few ladies appear at foreign dinners with their husbands, but very often the men have dinners at which their wives do not appear. This may be partly owing to their inability to speak English.
But, as a whole, the women have little pleasure. When the man of the house entertains, he either takes his guests to a tea-house or calls in a geisha to help him do the honours, while his wife sits apart in a room by herself and is neither seen nor heard. The diversions, even of the well-to-do, are few, comprising the arrangement of flowers, the composition of poetry, and an occasional visit to the theatre.
Women are employed in manual work, in the fields, and in the loading of coal in the big ports, and more and more in the new industries. The kitchen-standard of wifehood is disappearing. Last winter a woman made a speech in public; this caused great excitement—in fact, it was said that she was the first Japanese woman to do such a thing. In spite of the many changes which are coming about, they are as far from being suffragists as we were a hundred years ago. The sex as a whole are a long way from anything like economic freedom.
A woman has recently been made bank-president in Tokyo—a quite unheard-of innovation. She is Madame Seno, a sort of Japanese Hetty Green. In spite of the fact that she is over seventy, she goes to her office every morning punctually. Her tastes are very frugal. She wears plain cotton kimonos, and travels third-class. At the outbreak of the Russian war, however, she was the first to offer her subscription to the Government.
The children have a very good time, spinning tops, flying kites, and playing battledore and shuttlecock. In the life of Japan everything has its place and period, and the children's games succeed one another in such due order that it is almost impossible to buy the toys of one month when the season has passed into the next month. It is extraordinary how the little people combine their work and play, for you see a small boy carrying a baby on his back staggering around on stilts, and another small boy pulling a loaded cart and rolling a hoop at the same time, and little girls with littler girls on their backs tossing balls into the air or bouncing them in the streets. It is really an unusual thing to see a woman or young girl in the street without a baby attached to her. I think one of the reasons why the Japanese race has not grown larger is because the children from a very early age carry such weights on their backs.
"Little girls with littler girls on their backs"
Mr. Brownell tells a story of a Japanese girl which shows the filial duty and faithfulness that prevail. It seems she fell in love with a foreigner, and he with her. His intentions were good, and, although he was obliged to go away on a trip, he wrote her that he would soon be back to make her his wife. During his absence, however, her parents arranged another marriage for the girl, and on his return he found this letter from her:
"Sir:—
"I am married and is called Mrs. Sodesuka, and by our Japanese morality and my natural temperament I decline for ever your impoliteness letter."
"Sodesuka Otoku."