Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

Here, then, is the essential difference in the point of view taken of wedded life. In the West it is through romance that people enter into matrimony, and that is apt to melt before the hard facts of life; whereas in Japan we regard it in a more prosaic light, and the Japanese bride takes up the burden of married life at the threshold to lay it down only at the grave. Again, in the West a man may in a vague way think it time for him to marry and then look for a suitable partner; but more often it is the sight of the woman with whom he would willingly share the pleasures and pains of this world that awakens in him the desire to marry and prompts him to propose to her. The possession of the woman he has set his heart upon is the immediate motive of his marriage. In Japan, however, the young man finds life lonely by himself, or is pressed into marriage by his parents or friends, or fails to win the confidence of his circle while he remains single; and accordingly he or his parents ask friends to look for a suitable wife. The impelling cause is here the desire to have a well-ordered establishment, and love is something to be aroused and developed after marriage. As fewer elements of happiness enter into our method of wife-seeking than into the European, it may be conjectured that marriage is naturally a more risky venture with us in respect of domestic felicity. But then, we do not, when we marry, look so much for the fire and heat of love; we are content if the common cares and joys of conjugal life induce in the course of time the warm, equable glow of affection.

CHAPTER XV.
FAMILY RELATIONS.

The family the unit of society—Adoption—The wife’s family relations—The father—Retirement—The retired father—The mother-in-law—A strong-willed daughter-in-law—Tender relations—Domestic discord—Sisters-in-law—Brothers-in-law—The wife usually forewarned—The husband also handicapped—His burdens—Old Japan’s ideas of wifely duties—The Japanese wife’s qualities—Petticoat government—The wife’s influence.

WHEN a woman marries, her union with her husband is not more considered than her entry into his family. Marriage, it is true, has in all countries this twofold character; but it is especially the case in Japan where but a few decades separate us from the feudal times when, as in medieval Europe, the family was the unit of society; and it is only in recent years that the individual has begun to receive equal consideration with the family as an element of society. The Chinese sages laid down with great emphasis that the primary object of marriage is the perpetuation of the family line and that nothing is more unfilial than the failure of issue. Thus, feudalism and Confucianism combined to impress upon the nation the importance of the family succession. Moreover, every man has a natural desire to preserve his blood from extinction; and there is a still greater incentive towards the same end in the ancestor-worship which lies at the root of Shintoism. It is every man’s duty, according to that cult, to keep alive the memory of his ancestors, a duty which naturally devolves upon the head of the family; whence arises the necessity for every house of having a recognised head. And consequently, under the old regime primogeniture flourished in its strictest form; and younger sons and brothers were held of no account. In the feudal times the offices in the central government and in the daimiates were conferred only on the head of the family, the rest of which were merely his dependants. Cadets, therefore, could only acquire independence by being adopted into other families and becoming their heads, or in rare cases by founding branch families.

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

This system of adoption prevailed largely in the feudal times, and still exists, though not to so great an extent. For whereas adoption was formerly almost the only means of procuring independence open to the subordinate members of a family, now no one who is able to shift for himself would care to be adopted and to assume another’s surname unless some great advantage were to be gained thereby. Yet families without male issue must resort to adoption to prevent self-extinction. They adopt therefore from a family on a lower social level or one afflicted with too large a progeny. It is often a little child they undertake to bring up and so have a claim on its gratitude. A man who has daughters but no son, adopts a young man as his eldest daughter’s husband and makes him in due course the head of the family. Sometimes, the adoption and the marriage take place at the same time, when the bridegroom comes to the bride’s house and the usual relations between the two are reversed. The husband naturally assumes the wife’s surname. His position is not an enviable one; for though as the head of the family, he has a legal right to its property, still he is constantly reminded that he is an outsider and has to ingratiate himself with the members and relatives of the family. It is always possible to convene a meeting of these persons; and this council is all-powerful in the disposal of family affairs. In the old times, if a member of the family misbehaved himself disgracefully, the family council met and took measures for his punishment. It would act even against the will of the head; indeed, the head himself was not always exempt from its censure, and there are many instances of his being forced to retire in favour of a son or another member, and in military families, of his being required to wash away with his own life-blood the stain he had brought upon the family name. If one who had become the head by birth was so powerless in the presence of the family council, it will be readily surmised that the head by adoption would often be in a far worse plight than the other; he could be divorced from his wife if she was the daughter of the house, and driven out of the family. He would naturally be more liable than any other member to the censure of the family council.

If the adopted head of the family sometimes finds his position an irksome one, the wife who marries into another family has often, if it is a large one, as hard a time of it with her husband; she must not only put up with his whims and caprices, but she may have to bear with equal patience the humours of the rest of the family, who have her at their mercy as any one of them might by false representations easily prejudice her husband or his parents against her. She is constantly put on her mettle and has to guard against giving umbrage to any of her husband’s numerous relatives. Of course he may not happen to have a member of his family with him; but if he is living in his native place, a parent or some other near relative would probably be with him. Those who have come up from the country and made their way in the metropolis would more likely be by themselves as their parents would prefer to live at home and content themselves, if need be, with monthly remittances from their sons. If a man from the country has any one with him, it is commonly some young fellow, a relative, who lives with him to complete his education. Hence, as chances of discord increase with the size of the family, a girl or her parents not seldom stipulate, in looking for a husband, for a countryman rather than for a native of the capital. But as that condition cannot always be satisfied, the girl finds herself saddled with a father, mother, and other connections by marriage with whom she has to reckon if she would get on with her husband. Of these the most important are, needless to say, the parents.