It must, however, be admitted in justice to the mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law that there are many pleasant exceptions. Mothers-in-law there are in abundance who are willing to give the young wife any help in their power and afford her every chance of establishing herself in the household. They recognise the change in the times, and with the vague optimism of old age, hope for the best and cheerfully resign themselves to the lead of their sons’ wives. The wife too, on her part, is not insensible to these kindly advances and serves her mother-in-law with all her heart, ministers to her wants, and guides her gently as she totters to the grave. In many a household such peaceful relations subsist. Then, again, the child-birth pain is the purgatory out of which the young wife rises to be received with deeper love by the whole family, and by right of motherhood, strengthens her position in the household.
The child being, as a Japanese proverb says, the chain that binds the husband and the wife to each other, the latter’s hold on her husband’s affection becomes stronger when she is a mother; but a Japanese work on etiquette warns the wife that as her husband’s parents, brothers, and sisters, however well-intentioned they may be towards her, are not after all of her blood, she must be careful never to give cause for offence and be on her guard against any thoughtless deed or word likely to set their tongues wagging, and that she should consider herself to be in the enemy’s country and be prepared for surprises and ambuscades. The advice is no doubt sound; but it implies the possibility of family disturbances when too many of the husband’s near relatives live with him, and the inference is that however well-disposed such relatives may be, the wife cannot count for a certainty upon a life of unruffled calm, and their dwelling under the same roof with her must always be a factor, actual or potential, of domestic discord; in other words, so long as this custom holds, conjugal happiness must be more or less problematical.
Besides her husband’s parents, the wife has to reckon with his brothers and sisters. If he is the head of the family, he is probably the eldest child of his parents, and his sisters would have to treat his wife as an elder sister though she may actually be younger than themselves. Girls, however, being naturally impressionable, are, if they are well treated, easy to manage unless they are particularly ill-tempered or maliciously disposed; but if they think they are slighted, they become the most malignant of spies and exaggerate to their parents any fault she may be guilty of. The wife has therefore to win them over. Happily for her, the girls will be sooner or later disposed of in marriage; but her trials will be more than doubled if any of them leave their husbands and come home. They are then no longer innocent, chattering hobbledehoys; but having had an experience, unpleasant in all likelihood, of married life and lived in discord with their husbands or mothers-in-law, for otherwise they would not have been divorced, they look with envy upon any demonstration of conjugal affection and attempt to sow dissension in the family.
With her brothers-in-law the wife is on easier terms. They are not as a rule inquisitive; they treat her with indulgence; and in a quarrel they will cheerfully take her side against their brother. But she is put to her hardest task when there is a scapegrace among them. The trouble is of another sort than that which confronts her in dealing with a sister-in-law. The ne’er-do-well is usually, as in other countries, the youngest of the family and his mother’s spoilt child. His brother, knowing his evil ways, forbids his wife to have anything to do with him. But the scamp is smooth-tongued and, making up to her with offers of service, worms himself into her favour. The wife, too, knows that his enmity will certainly endanger her standing with his mother and, willing to give her pleasure, yields to his importunities and from time to time supplies him with money by cutting down the household expenses. Thus, with the best intentions she is placed in an awkward position; she must defraud her husband to please his mother, and if she is found out, she will be sharply brought round; and meanwhile, she lives in fear and trepidation.
With all these encumbrances in her home, the wife’s life may appear to be well-nigh intolerable. Fortunately for her, however, her husband’s family is not always so complete; it is not often that she finds there both parents, brothers and sisters in full force, and children by a former marriage. It would under such circumstances have been better, had she remained at home, though it may of course happen that the whole family are taken with her, or are easy-going and kindly-disposed, or are won by her tact, gentleness, and sweet temper. But even if they are not all that may be desired, the wife goes into the family with her eyes open; for when the proposal of marriage was informally made by the go-between, she could easily have ascertained through friends by inquiry in the neighbourhood the size and general character of the family with which her union was sought: and it was only by gross carelessness or wilful misrepresentation on the part of her agents that she could have been kept ignorant of the fate that awaited her.
If the wife is handicapped in her bid for conjugal happiness by the size of her husband’s family, he is under no less disadvantage for the same reason. If she finds it difficult to get on smoothly with all the members of his family, he encounters quite as much difficulty in feeding so many mouths; for the whole family are often dependent upon him, as in all probability his parents pinched themselves to find means for his education so that when he completed it and made his way in the world, he might make up for their sacrifices. But even if they had done nothing for him, he would still be expected to support them. The new Civil Code recognises this right on the part of the parents; and the head of the family has also to support his brothers and sisters and other members of his house, in addition to his wife and children. Besides these possible dependants whose claims are admitted by law, there are others whose appeals on the score of kinship however remote he cannot altogether ignore, as custom allows those related by blood or marriage to look for help to the least unfortunate among them. Thus, the father of a family has to spend the money he could otherwise save up for his children in maintaining his uncles, aunts, and cousins and some of his wife’s near relations, who, as long as he supports them, stick to him like leeches and follow him about with all the pertinacity of Sir Joseph Porter’s female relatives.
From the social point of view this is undoubtedly an excellent system, for the nation at large is not burdened with the support of its poor; only the comparatively few without relatives to whom they can turn have to be maintained at the public expense. We have not, therefore, so far been confronted by the pauper question, as the poor are provided for by their own people. But it cannot at the same time be denied that the system bears hardly upon the individuals on whom falls the duty of maintaining their poor relations; and especially is this the case with a young man at the threshold of his career. He marries, as we have already observed, not because he can support a family without embarrassment, but because he is in need of some one to manage his house. In the matter of marriage the Japanese is ordinarily improvident; he does not allow financial considerations to enter into his matrimonial plans. It is generally with great difficulty that he can afford to help his relatives. So that under the circumstances a young man married is often with us, if not actually a man that’s marred, at least one that is heavily handicapped and forced to struggle against great odds. A man who has to earn his own living must sweat and starve, slaving from morning till night, to support these drones; and whatever ambition he may have harboured in the flush of youth is ruthlessly dashed to the ground, and his life is frittered away in sordid cares and petty troubles.
The great authority for two centuries on the conduct of women who enter into matrimony was a work written by a Japanese scholar and based on the teachings of the Chinese sages. This book enjoins upon the wife unconditional obedience to her husband. She is told that she is in every respect his inferior, and she is expected to be so overwhelmed with the sense of her own unworthiness that she must in all things submit to her husband who is the absolute lord and master of her body and soul; whatever he may do, she is not to murmur against it, but she is to be humble when she is in the right; and all the while, over her hangs the Damocles’s sword of divorce. The position to which she is relegated by the Japanese guide to wifely conduct is merely that of an upper servant; for no matter how many domestics there may be in the house, she must do menial work. She must share with her husband all the hardships of grinding poverty; and when fortune smiles, he may live in luxury and entertain many friends, but she must not frequent public resorts or go sight-seeing. Wealth may bring her more conveniences, but not more pleasure; and until she is forty years old, she is not to be seen in company, but to remain at home minding her house and children.
Such are the injunctions of the Japanese authority on female conduct; but happily the practice is better than the precept. There may be, thanks to these teachings, furniture wives, as Lamb calls them, who are of little use beyond filling their places in their households; but human nature breaks even through the cast-iron rules which hold it down, and, the sages and moral guides notwithstanding, there are countless happy homes which are unfortunately less heard of than those in which dissensions are rife for the same reason as that our attention is always more drawn to careers of crime and adventure than to quiet, eventless lives. Had our women become what the old teachers wished them to be, it is certain that we should not have retained our vitality through the centuries of feudalism and burst out after ages of inert isolation into all the vigour and energy of a freshly-sprung nation. It is an indirect tribute to our women that the race has preserved unimpaired those high qualities which have since raised it to its present position among the nations of the world.
Japanese wives are gentle, docile, and obedient; but let not the western husbands who groan under petticoat government, imagine that Japanese benedicts always have it their own way, for even in Japan the grey mare is sometimes the better horse, as many a henpecked one knows to his cost. There are termagants and viragoes with us as in other countries; the only difference is that our scolds are not so obtrusive as those of the West, and yet do enough to convince the luckless wight that he has caught a Tartar. Just as the omission of honorifics in Japanese speech is as rude as the use of profane language in English, so the absence of those gentle manners with which we invariably associate our women is an even surer index of coarseness and vulgarity than the violence of a western shrew. The Japanese vixen can therefore, without any roughness of manners, nag and harass her husband quite as effectually, though her methods may be quieter than those of the occidental species.