Japanese Girls and Women by Alice Mabel Bacon (best e reader for epub .txt) 📕

But of all the delights that come into the year, there is nothing to compare for joyous excitement with the great matsuri of the parish temple. For at least a week beforehand there are enough interesting things going on in every house and shop along the street to keep every small boy in the parish agog from morning till night. Here are lanterns being made with the mon of the gods on one side and the rising sun of the Japanese flag on the other. There a dancing platform is being erected, and at every stage of its development it is swarming with active youngsters, who shin up its poles, turn somersaults on the platform, and sit in rows on its edge, with bare legs swinging high over the heads of the passers-by; and when it is done, and the drums installed, they take turns all day and far into the night in keeping them going. Then, too, there are the dashi, or floats, on one of which each street in the parish spends its money and its ingenuity. How the boys haunt the shops in which they are being made! How they watch the wondrous changes of paper into flowers, and of bamboo and cotton cloth into sea waves, or castle walls, or monsters of earth or sea or air! How they chatter and wriggle and push and squirm for front places, when at last the great cars are built up in the open street, the marvelous edifices erected upon them, and at the top of all the heroic figures of well-known mythological or historical characters rise majestic in flowing robes! Then, when the black bullocks, resplendent in collars and halters of red rope, are yoked to the triumphal car, and the structure moves slowly down the shouting street, how the boys crawl into every joint and cranny of the dashi, how they hang from every beam, how they yell from before and behind in sheer abandon of joy! And at last, when the procession forms, and with fantastically garbed men marching in front and wild-eyed singers yelling just behind them, with dancing-girls on moving platforms and jugglers and tumblers on the dashi themselves, the twenty or more festal cars move, with frequent stops, down to the temple, to escort the sacred symbols on their annual pilgrimage through the parish, who so noisy or so ubiquitous as these same bullet-headed, blue-gowned boys? They bob up at every turn, ooze out at every pore of the procession, and enjoy, as only boys can enjoy, the noise and confusion, the barbaric splendor, the dancing and tumbling, the mumming and drumming, the excruciating howls of the singers, the jingling of the marshals' iron-ringed staves, the clapping of the great wooden clappers that time the movement and the stops of the pageant.

Better than all, perhaps, is the evening, when the streets, lighted by many lanterns, are filled with throngs of holiday-makers,—now stopping to stare in at some shop where the devout worshiper has established a beautiful shrine, has set out mochi and other offerings before some image, or has arranged a landscape garden in a box, or constructed a matsuri procession just entering the court of a miniature temple; now haggling with the ever-present booth-keepers for lanterns or cakes or hairpins to take back to the friends left at home. Suddenly there is a joyous, rhythmic shout of many excited boyish voices, there is a gleaming of square red lanterns, a whirl and a rush through the crowd. Now is the time to get out of the way, for the boys move quickly and are too excited to turn aside for anything. On they come at a sharp trot, each little round head bound about with a fillet of blue and white toweling, each lithe, active body more or less covered by a blue and white gown, all shouting in unison and bearing on their shoulders a miniature dashi, made most often of a saké tub mounted on a frame, and decorated with lanterns and white paper. They charge through the crowd, which makes way quickly at their approach, until the pace, the weight of their burden, and the frantic shouting exhaust their breath. Then they plunge down a side street, rest for a few moments, gather themselves together, and charge once more into the crowd. There must be some pretty tired little boys in the parish when the fun is all over, for these performances are kept up far into the night; but for absolute and perfect enjoyment there is nothing I have yet seen that seems to me to compare with the enjoyment that a Japanese boy gets out of a matsuri. It is worth being tired for!

There is no space in this work for a more detailed picture of life in a Japanese home. Enough has been said in this chapter to show that it is made up of many little things,—of cares and sorrows and pleasures,—just as is life in any American home, and it is the little things we care about that make the oneness of the family, and the nation, and the oneness, too, of humanity, if we can only understand one another.

The woman question in Japan is at the present moment a matter of much consideration. There seems to be an uneasy feeling in the minds of even the more conservative men that some change in the status of woman is inevitable, if the nation wishes to keep the pace it has set for itself. The Japanese women of the past and of the present are exactly suited to the position accorded them in society, and any attempt to alter them without changing their status only results in making square pegs for round holes. If the pegs hereafter are to be cut square, the holes must be enlarged and squared to fit them. The Japanese woman stands in no need of alteration unless her place in life is somehow enlarged, nor, on the other hand, can she fill a larger place without additional training. The men of New Japan, to whom the opinions and customs of the Western world are becoming daily more familiar, while they shrink aghast, in many cases, at the thought that their women may ever become like the forward, self-assertive, half-masculine women of the West, show a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with the smallness and narrowness of the lives of their wives and daughters,—a growing belief that better educated women would make better homes, and that the ideal home of Europe and America is the product of a more advanced civilization than that of Japan. Reluctantly in many cases, but still almost universally, it is admitted that in the interest of the homes and for the sake of future generations, something must be done to carry the women forward into a position more in harmony with what the nation is reaching for in other directions. This desire shows itself in individual efforts to improve by more advanced education daughters of exceptional promise, and in general efforts for the improvement of the condition of women. Well-to-do fathers are willing to spend more money on the education of their daughters, to send them abroad, if possible, to complete their studies, or to postpone the time of marriage so that plans for higher education may be carried through. Where, ten years ago, the number of women who had been abroad for study might be counted on the fingers of one hand, there are now three or four times that number in Tōkyō alone. Another sign of the times is the fact that husbands going abroad on business or for pleasure are more inclined to take their wives with them, even if it be only for a few months. There are now to be found, in all the larger cities, women who have spent a longer or shorter time in some foreign country, whose minds have been opened and whose horizons have been enlarged by contact with new ideas. All this cannot fail to have its effect, sooner or later, upon the country at large.

The efforts for the improvement of women in general may be grouped into four classes: by legislation, by education, through the press, and by means of societies for mutual improvement.

Of the recent legislation concerning marriage and divorce and its effect on the family, I have spoken in a preceding chapter. The latest statistics show that, while before the new laws were enacted divorces were one to every three marriages, they have now been reduced to one in five. It must be said, however, that the law is still somewhat in advance of public opinion. While the chance of permanence in marriage is better now than it was before the new code came into force, custom is still stronger than the law, and marriage is too often a temporary arrangement. In many cases the wife knows little or nothing of her new rights, and even when she does know, she has seldom the self-assertion to make a stand for them, but meekly submits to the dictates of those whom she is bound by custom, if not by law, to respect and obey without question. But the fact that the laws have actually been improved means, in a country like Japan, in which the government is the moulder of public opinion, that the custom will some day conform to the law.

In the matter of property owning, women, under the new code, are fairly independent. As I have already stated, every woman in Japan is expected to become a wife, and as a matter of fact, the number of unmarried women is so small that it is hardly necessary to mention them. Wives, under Japanese law, are divided into two classes: the wife who enters her husband's family, and the wife whose husband becomes a member of her family. In the latter case the wife is the head of the family, is responsible for the debts of the family, and has the right to use and profit by the husband's property. In the former case (and as I have already stated, the great majority of wives enter their husband's families), the husband is responsible, and has, consequently, the right to use and profit by his wife's property. In all cases, unless the husband is physically or mentally unfit, he has the management of his wife's wealth. In case of the husband's disability the woman takes care of her own. A wife may, by application to a court, cause the husband to furnish security for the property that she has intrusted to him; and she may, with her husband's consent, engage in independent business. The property that she thus acquires is her own and not the husband's. Any property in the family, the ownership of which is not perfectly established, belongs to the head of the family, whether male or female. We thus see that the law of