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

The oldest dolls did not represent the Emperor and Empress, but simply a man and a woman, and were modeled closely after the old white paper dolls of the religious ceremony. When the Tokugawa Shōguns had firmly established their splendid court at Yedo, a decree was issued designating the five feast days upon which the daimiōs were to present themselves at the Shōgun's palace and offer their congratulations. One of the days thus appointed was the third day of the third month. It is believed that the giving of the chief place at the feast to effigies of the Emperor and Empress was a part of the policy of the Shōgunate,—a policy which aimed to keep alive the spirit of loyalty to the throne, while at the same time the occupant of the throne remained a puppet in the hands of his vice-gerent.

Each girl born into a family has a pair of O Hina Sama placed for her upon the red-covered shelf, on the first Feast of Dolls that comes after her birth. When, as a bride, she goes to her husband's house, she carries the dolls with her, and the first feast after her marriage she observes with special ceremonies. Until she has a daughter old enough to carry out the observance, she must keep up the ceremony. The feast, as it exists to-day, is said by the Japanese to serve three purposes: it makes the children of both sexes loyal to the imperial family, it interests the girls in housekeeping, and it trains them in ceremonial etiquette.

Because of the complexity of the Chinese language and the time needed for its mastery, there has been a movement to lessen the study of pure Chinese in the government schools, or abolish it altogether, and with this to simplify the use of the ideographs in the Sinico-Japanese. The educational department is requiring that text-books be limited in their use of ideographs; that those used be written in only one way and that the simplest, and that the kana (the Japanese syllabary) be substituted wherever possible. Several plans for reform in this matter are being agitated, one of which is to limit the use of ideographs to nouns and verbs only.

No one who has been in Japan can have failed to notice the peculiarly strident quality of the Japanese voice in singing, a quality that is gained by professional singers through much labor and actual physical suffering. That this is not a natural characteristic of the Japanese voice is shown by the fact that in speaking, the voices, both of children and adults, are low and sweet. It seems to me to be brought about by the pursuit of a wrong musical ideal, or at least, of a musical ideal quite distinct from that of the Western world. In Japan one seldom finds singing birds kept in cages, but instead crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and other noisy members of the insect family may be seen exposed for sale in the daintiest of cages any summer night in the Tōkyō streets. These insects delight the ears of the Japanese with their melody, and it seems to me that the voices of singers throughout the empire are modeled after the shrill, rattling chirp of the insect, rather than after the fuller notes of the bird's song.

The introduction of European music by the schools and churches has already begun to show in the songs of the children in the streets, and where ten years ago one might live in Tōkyō for a year, and never hear a note of music except the semi-musical cries of the workmen, when they are pulling or striking in concert, now there are few days when some strain of song from some passing school-child does not come in at the window of one's house in any quarter of the city. The progress made in catching foreign ideas of time and tune is quite surprising, but the singing will never be acceptable to the foreign ear until the voice is modulated according to the foreign standards.

It is said by Japanese versed in the most refined ways that a woman who has learned the tea ceremony thoroughly is easily known by her superior bearing and manner on all occasions.

Whatever plant she begins with is taken up in a series of studies,—leaves, flowers, roots, and stalks being shown in every possible position and combination,—until not only the stroke is mastered, but the plant is thoroughly known. In the book that lies before me as I write, a book used as a copy-book by a young lady beginning the practice of the art, the teacher has devoted six large pages to studies of one small and simple flower and the pupil has covered hundreds of sheets of paper with efforts to imitate the designs. She has now finished that part of the course, and can, at a moment's notice, reproduce with just the right strokes any of the designs or any part of the plant. The next step forward will be a similar series of bamboo.

In the government schools for girls, much attention is paid just now to physical culture. The gymnastic exercises rank with the Chinese and English and mathematics as important parts of the course, and the girls are encouraged to spend their recesses out-of-doors, engaging in all kinds of athletic sports. Races, ball games, tugs-of-war, marches, and quadrilles are entered into with zest and enjoyment, and the girls in their dark red hakama are as well able to move quickly and freely as girls of the same age in America. If it were not for the queer pigeon-toed gait, acquired by years of walking in narrow kimono and on high clogs, the Japanese girls would be fully abreast of the American in all these sports. So strongly has the idea of the necessity for physical strength seized upon the nation, that a girl of delicate physique has less chance of marriage than one who is robust and strong.

It is in the mistakes and failures made in adapting the education given in the schools to the exact conditions that present themselves in the constantly changing Japan of to-day, that the opponents of all alteration in the education of women find their strongest arguments. The conservatives point with scorn to this girl whose new ideas have led her into folly or trouble, or to that one whose health has been broken down by the adverse conditions surrounding her student life, and say, "This will be the case with all our women if we continue this insane practice of educating them along new lines." Advance in female education, as in all other lines of progress in Japan, is a series of violent actions and reactions. In 1889, partly through ill-advised conduct on the part of supporters of the cause, one of the most serious reverses that has come in the progress of Western education for women began to show itself. The reaction was helped along by a paper read before some of the most influential men of Japan, and subsequently reported and discussed in the newspapers, by a German professor in the medical department of the imperial University in Tōkyō. The paper was a serious warning to the men of the country that no women could be good wives, mothers, and housekeepers and at the same time have undergone a thorough literary education. The arguments were reinforced by statistics showing that American college women either did not marry, or that if they married they had very few children. All Japan took fright at this alarming showing, and for several years the education of girls in anything more than the primary studies was not encouraged by the government. The lowest depth of this reaction was reached during or soon after the Japan-China war, when the growth of national vanity resulted in a temporary disdain for all foreign ideas. The tide has turned again now, girls' schools that have been closed for years are being reopened, young men who are thinking of marrying are looking for educated wives, and among the women themselves there is a strong desire for self-improvement. Under this impulse a new generation of educated women will be added to those already exerting an influence in the country, and it is to be hoped that the forward movement will be more difficult to set back when the next reactionary wave strikes the Japanese coast.

The obi is supposed to express by its length the hope that the marriage may be an enduring one. Among the more modernized Japanese a ring is now often given in place of, or, in the wealthier classes, in addition to the obi.

It is interesting, however, as a sign of the times, to notice that for the wedding of the Crown Prince, in May, 1900, the Shinto high priest, who is master of ceremonies at the Imperial Court, instituted a solemn religious ceremony within the sanctuary of the palace. Following the example set in so high a quarter, a number of couples, during the winter of 1900-1901, have repaired to Shinto temples in various parts of the empire, to secure the sanction of the ancient national faith upon their union. But still, for the great majority of the Japanese, the wedding ceremony is what it has always been.

Although new methods of transportation have come into use now in most of the Japanese cities, and wheeled carts drawn by men or horses are used for carrying all other kinds of luggage, the wedding outfit, wrapped in great cloths on which the crest of the bride's family is conspicuous, is borne on men's shoulders to the bridegroom's home, the length of the baggage train and the number and size of the burdens showing the wealth and importance of the bride's family. The bride who goes to her husband's house well provided by her own family, will carry, not only a full wardrobe and the house-furnishings already mentioned, but will be supplied, so far as foresight can manage it, with all the little things that she can need for months in advance. Paper, pens, ink, postage stamps, needles, thread, and sewing materials of all kinds, a store of dress materials and other things to be given as presents to any and all who may do her favors, and pocket money with which she may make good any deficiencies, or meet any unforeseen emergency. When she goes from her father's house, she should be so thoroughly fitted out that she will not have to ask her husband for the smallest thing for a number of months. The parents of the bride, in giving up their daughter, as they do when she marries, show the estimation in which they have held her by the beauty and completeness of the trousseau with which they provide her. The expense of this wedding outfit is often very great, persons