4 Kwashi: Japanese confectionery
Notes for Chapter Eleven
1 The reader will find it well worth his while to consult the chapter entitled 'Domestic Service,' in Miss Bacon's Japanese Girls and Women, for an interesting and just presentation of the practical side of the subject, as relating to servants of both sexes. The poetical side, however, is not treated of—perhaps because intimately connected with religious beliefs which one writing from the Christian standpoint could not be expected to consider sympathetically. Domestic service in ancient Japan was both transfigured and regulated by religion; and the force of the religious sentiment concerning it may be divined from the Buddhist saying, still current:
Oya-ko wa is-se, Fufu wa ni-se, Shuju wa san-se.
The relation of parent and child endures for the space of one life only; that of husband and wife for the space of two lives; but the relation between msater and servant continues for the period of three existences.
2 The shocks continued, though with lessening frequency and violence, for more than six months after the cataclysm.
3 Of course the converse is the rule in condoling with the sufferer.
4 Dhammapada.
5 Dammikkasutta.
6 Dhammapada.