Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

THE servant question is as great a domestic problem with us as it is in other parts of the world. We too complain of our servants’ insubordination, idleness, wilfulness, talkativeness, and general contrariness. Old folk are constantly drumming into our ears that servants are not what they used to be in the good old days and that they have ceased to have their masters’ interests at heart and are ready to leave their present situation whenever better terms are elsewhere obtainable. That the character of servants has deteriorated admits of no doubt; but the fault lies as much with their masters and mistresses as with themselves. However, such as they are, they still retain many good qualities; and on the whole we are better off in this respect than our fellow-sufferers in the West.

Our servants are usually willing workers; they do not ask, nor would they indeed dream of asking, for free Sundays. They toil from day to day, week in week out, month after month, without a murmur at being put to incessant work. Like the clerks and apprentices in mercantile houses, they have by immemorial custom two holidays a year, on the sixteenth of January and July; but as in busy families they cannot all be spared at the same time, they are often given some other days in turn. Those who have homes in town pass the day with their families; but others from the country, that is, a majority of domestic servants, spend their holiday wandering aimlessly about the streets and parks in gaping wonder at the sights of the city.

The servants are, moreover, expected to work without intermission from morning till night. In some families a fixed time is given them daily for rest; but in most houses no such hour is set apart and they snatch what rest they can in the intervals of their work. They get up early in the morning, about five or half-past; but as those from the country are used to early rising, it is no hardship to them. It is the late hours that they succumb to. Where the master has a large social connection, is given to entertaining friends, or is found of cards, chequers, or other games, the house is often kept open till midnight or later. In such cases, however, the cook and others who have to rise early to prepare the breakfast, are allowed to go to bed at ten or thereabouts; but the servant who waits on the guests and brings them tea or wine has to sit up till they leave. It would also be a breach of hospitality for the family to go to bed and leave the host alone to entertain his guests; and so, with the exception of the children, the rest of the family wait patiently till the last guest departs. Indeed, the drowsy servants often resort, as a charm for expediting the lingering guest’s departure, to burning a pinch of moxa on his clogs or setting up a broomstick on its handle.

As the servants have no regular hours of work and rest, they have often to take their meals at odd hours. Punctuality is not a Japanese virtue, and the members of the family are not always regular in their meals. The hours are governed by the movements of the master of the house, and they are fairly regular if he is a government official, a professional man, or an employee of a private firm or company, who has to be at his office at fixed hours; but if the master’s habits are irregular from necessity or inclination, the family meals suffer accordingly. The servants are also expected to be ready at every beck and call, for a great deal of trivial task is imposed upon them. They are, for instance, often called from the kitchen to the parlour or sitting-room and then sent to fetch an article from an adjoining room. But as most houses in Japan are only of one or two stories and the living-room is always on the ground-floor, it is no difficult matter to clap our hands, which is the usual way of summoning a servant, or to holloa to her, for the sound has merely to penetrate one or two sliding-doors or probably none at all in summer. Thus, from the very ease with which a servant may be summoned, she is made to do a great deal which could be readily done without her help.

THE SERVANT AT THE SLIDING-DOOR.

The servant is trusted to a great degree. The lack of privacy which is one of the principal characteristics of a Japanese home places every room at the mercy of its inmates; and when the house is left for the day, as sometimes happens, in the servant’s charge, a dishonest domestic could easily purloin articles which would not be missed at the time. That such petty thefts are comparatively rare, must be put to the servant’s credit. On the other hand, she becomes a member of the family whose service she enters, to a greater extent than would be the case in other lands. The very lack of privacy makes her a party as it were to the private affairs of the family. She is set to work unmaking dresses or sewing them under her mistress’s eye and is often taught needlework, especially on long winter evenings, when mistress and servant talk together with less reserve than at other times, and a close sympathy arises between them, which may last through their lives. And many servants retain their love and respect for their mistress after they leave her service and call on her regularly every year with their husbands or children when they are married.

In the old days it was considered to betoken a lack of fidelity for a servant to change her situation; and many girls remained in the same family until they were grown-up women. In such cases the master would find for them suitable husbands or, if they were married through others’ good offices, give them the means to set up for themselves. The servants, too, looked upon it as a great honour to be so assisted by their master as it was a conclusive proof of their faithful service. This close mutual understanding is now less common, because there has been, so their employers complain, a serious falling off in the quality of the servants; but their masters, or rather their mistresses, are also to blame in the matter, for their attitude towards their subordinates has also changed. They no longer look upon them as permanent members of their household, and consequently take them less into confidence than formerly; which, however, is unavoidable since the good behaviour of the servants is not now guaranteed so securely as it used to be. In the old times servants were almost as much under their master’s authority as a vassal under his liege’s. To disobey a mistress’s order or to contradict her was considered an act of disloyalty, and the servant was kept in a state of complete subjection. On the other hand, a conscientious mistress had also on her part a sense of duty towards her servant, and looked after her and cared for her as for her own family.

Nowadays, however, this bond between mistress and maid has been loosened except in rare cases, at least in Tokyo. If the mistress has no definite knowledge of the servant’s antecedents, the latter has as vague an idea of the real standing of the family. Formerly, reputable families remained permanently settled in the same locality for generations, so that their social position was well known in the neighbourhood; while as for the samurai who came up to town with their lord, the name of the daimyo whom they followed was a sufficient guarantee of their respectability though they themselves might not be personally known. Hence, the servants could without difficulty obtain any information they desired respecting the family whose service they proposed to enter, and they had only themselves to blame if they were not, upon being installed therein, satisfied with its ways. But there is now in every grade of society such a large proportion of families from the country that the servant is often unable to find out their standing, past or present. She may not suffer from arrearage of her wages, though such a thing is by no means rare; but she does not feel quite so much at home as she would if she entered a family whose history is known to her. There is then mutual reserve, not to say distrust, when neither the employer nor the employee knows anything of the other’s antecedents. The servant may be dismissed one fine morning at a moment’s notice, or she may obtain leave to visit a sick relative, to whose bedside she would pretend to have been urgently summoned, and a few days later send to her employer’s for her belongings. It is not necessary to give warning; a few days’ notice may be thought due to the other party, though of course, in the case of old and tried servants, a greater consideration is mutually accorded, the domestic usually consenting to remain until a suitable successor has been found. The servant’s tenure of service is, then, generally precarious, and at the same time her mistress is never sure of having permanently secured a good servant. Indeed, if the servant is honest and diligent, it is seldom the fault of her employer if she leaves her service; for the mistress cannot do without a servant and if she has got hold of a good domestic, she is not likely to let her go willingly. The servant, on the other hand, may be quitting service to live at home, to be married, or to look for a better situation. She has more motives for parting company than her mistress.