Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

Children too, on their part, brighten every household; and were it not for their enlivening presence, the Japanese home with its staid manners and cold civilities would be intolerably dull. The wife, debarred as she usually is by household duties from social distractions, would if childless lead a monotonous life; and the absence of little ones she would take to heart as if she were personally to blame for it and feel that she has missed the primary object for which she entered into wedlock. She would also have to put up sometimes with the reproaches of her husband or his parents for this failure of issue and consent to the adoption of a child to whom she must concede the love which she had hoped to reserve for her own flesh and blood. But happily for the wife, we are on the whole a prolific nation untroubled by the phantom of race suicide, and every woman is prepared to bring up a family, which is in her eyes as much the wife’s destiny as in girlhood she looked upon marriage as her inevitable fate. Her absolute concentration upon her own home, though it is a serious obstacle to her social development, brings its compensation when her wedded life is crowned with maternity, and in the smiles of infancy she finds ample consolation for the monotony of her home. This intense love of children is one of the brightest traits of Japanese home life, and with the reverence for old age, gives it a tone of quiet, undemonstrative happiness.

It will therefore be readily imagined with what eagerness the arrival of the little stranger, is awaited and how the childless wife will move heaven and earth for the blessings of motherhood. She will try nostrums of every kind, submit to any regimen however irksome, that may be prescribed for her, and visit watering-places and other resorts for the improvement of her physical condition; she will offer prayers at one temple after another, or sometimes make long pilgrimages for the purpose, in defiance of the popular belief that a child born in answer to prayer is either itself doomed to early death or destined to cut short its parents’ lives.

When the unpleasant symptoms of morning-sickness warn the wife that she is about to become a mother, a midwife is called in from time to time to examine her and relieve her pain. In the fifth month an auspicious day is selected on which her relatives are invited to dinner to hear the formal announcement of her interesting state. On this day the midwife girds her under her clothes with a wide strip of bleached cotton, with the object of keeping the child as small as possible so as to ensure a light delivery. This girdle is worn up to the moment of birth. With the same object the wife does considerable amount of active housework, such as cleaning and sweeping the rooms, until the beginning of the last month when she ceases from all work and calmly awaits the delivery. Meanwhile, the midwife pays periodical visits, and in a well-to-do family she is often made to live in the house during the last month. She usually assists alone at the birth, for a doctor is seldom called in unless complications have set in or surgical operations are necessary. The accouchement, if indeed it can be so called which in Japan takes place in a sitting posture, is effected, if in the daytime, in a room darkened with half-closed doors and a screen round the bed. The delivery is left as far as possible to nature. The midwife, who is deeply versed in the intricacies of the lunar calendar, can always tell the exact hour at which the tide begins to flow, when the delivery oftenest occurs; and until that time she merely soothes and alleviates. On the whole, the curse of Eve sits lightly on her daughters in Japan, for which we have probably to thank the simplicity of our diet and mode of life. The woman who dies in child-birth is an object of infinite pity; her fate is supposed to be the consequence of her sins in a former state of existence. In lonely country-sides, in memory of such a woman, a piece of white cloth supported on four sticks is set over a stream, together with a ladle, with which passers-by are entreated to pour water into the cloth, because only when the cloth rots away completely will she be purged of her sins and enabled to enter Paradise.

Immediately the child is born, the midwife cuts off the umbilical cord, washes the child in warm water, and dresses it in swaddling clothes, after which it is shown to the mother and the rest of the family. The after-birth is put in an earthen dish and covered with another of the same material; the whole case is buried at the front entrance, inside the door if a boy and outside if a girl, the reason for the discrimination being that the latter is destined to leave her home and, therefore, is not a permanent member of the family. It is the custom now to have the case buried in a special ground by a company formed for the purpose.

THE FIRST VISIT TO THE LOCAL SHRINE.
(FROM A PICTURE BY SUKENOBU)

For the first day or two the child is given an infusion of a seaweed which acts as a purgative; and if the mother is yet too weak, she gets another woman to give it her milk until she is strong enough. She lies with her head propped up high, and the child sleeps with her. On the second day after the birth, the baby is washed again; and on the sixth, friends and relatives are invited to a dinner to celebrate the birth when the child’s name is given to it. The birth is also reported on that day to the local office. The mother does not leave her bed until the twenty-first day; and she is kept at low diet until the seventy-fifth day when she can take the usual food and is considered to be herself again. Until then she is supposed not to be purified and cannot enter a temple or a shrine. On the same day she resumes her household duties. In the meantime, the child is taken on the thirty-first day if a boy and on the thirty-third if a girl, to the shrine of the tutelary deity of the district, where prayers are offered for its welfare. Then calls are made on those friends and relatives who gave presents upon the child’s birth; and it receives from them various toys, the principal of which is a papier-maché dog. Such a dog is always placed at the head of the child’s bed at night as a charm against evil influences.

The child is at first fed entirely with its mother’s milk; if she is weak or sickly, a wet nurse is engaged in a family which can afford one, but in poor homes the child is nourished with a very thin rice-gruel. Cow’s milk is now largely used in Tokyo, and in many families given together with human milk. Very often the former is drunk in the daytime, and at night the mother who sleeps with the baby, suckles it with her own milk. In Japan the mother, unless her place is taken by the wet nurse, invariably sleeps with the youngest child, and never leaves it by itself in a cot or bed. This has the advantage that any ailment that the child may happen to suffer in the course of the night is not left to be discovered in the morning when it may be too late, but is detected at once and attended to before it becomes serious. Thus, for instance, any rise in temperature is immediately felt when the child gets its milk, and measures are taken accordingly.

THE “FIRST-EATING.”
(FROM A PICTURE BY SUKENOBU)