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

And now, after thirty-three years of the enlightened rule of the present Emperor, and of the beneficent life and example of the Empress Haru, is there any assurance that the progress made during their occupation of the throne will be continued in the lives of Japan's future rulers?

Prince Haru, or Yoshihito, is now a man twenty-two years of age, with character sufficiently developed to be used as the basis for a guess at what his qualities as a sovereign may prove to be. "As far as the East is from the West" have his life and education been from the life and education of his illustrious father. Instead of the curtained seclusion, the quiet and calm of the old palace in the old capital, the present Crown Prince has known from babyhood the sights and sounds of the stirring city of Tōkyō. He has driven in an open carriage or walked through its streets; he has been to school with boys of his own age, taking the school work and the drill and the games with the other boys, learning to know men and things and himself too, in a way in which none of his ancestors, since the days when they were simply savage chiefs, have had opportunity of knowing. As he grew toward manhood, his delicate health required that he leave the school and pursue his studies as his strength permitted, under masters; but he has retained his love for all athletic exercises, for dogs and horses and guns and bicycles, and he is as expert in outdoor sports as any youth of Western training. His mind is quick and eager, interested especially in foreign ways and thoughts, and seeking most of all to understand how other people think and feel and live. Though he has been emancipated to a wonderful degree from the state and ceremony that surrounded his ancestors, he is nevertheless impatient of what remains, and would gladly dispense with many forms that his conservative guardians regard as necessary; and these same guardians at times find their young eaglet difficult to manage. He has views and ideas of his own, and acts occasionally upon his own initiative in a way that fairly scandalizes his advisers. He wishes to visit his future subjects upon something like equal terms. The rôle of Son of Heaven seems to him less interesting at times than some smaller and more human part. When he walks, he wants to lead his own dog, not have him led by some one else; to stop in the street and watch the common people at their work; to drop in on his friends in a neighborly way and see how they live when they are not expecting a visit from royalty. Provided he does not go too fast or too far, when his turn comes to ascend the throne, he cannot but make a better emperor for the intimate personal knowledge that he is seeking and gaining of the lives and feelings of his people.

The Crown Princess Sada, who has now been for one year in the line of succession to the present beloved Empress, shows in her training and character the influence of the new impulse that is driving Japan forward. The circumstances that led to her selection as the bride of the Prince are in themselves curious enough to be worth recording. The Kujo family is one of the five families from which alone can the wife of the Crown Prince be chosen, and the present Prince Kujo is blessed with many daughters. Of these, the oldest is about the age of Prince Haru, and at one time it was hoped that she might be selected as his consort, but at last that hope was given up, and she was married to another prince. The second daughter was as bright and charming as the first, but she was just enough younger than the Prince to make her marriage with him so dangerous a matter according to all the rules that govern good and bad luck in Japan, that no hope was entertained for her, and she was married, when her time came, with no reference to the greatest match that any Japanese princess can make. The third daughter was six years younger than the Prince, so much younger that it was thought that he would be married long before she grew up, so no special care or attention was given to her. In her babyhood, like most Japanese babies of high rank, she was sent out into the country to be nursed. Her foster parents were plain farmer folk, who loved her and cared for her as their own child. She played bareheaded and barefooted in the sun and wind, tumbled about, jolly and happy, with the village children, and lived and grew like a kitten or a puppy rather than like a future empress until she was old enough for the kindergarten. Then she came back to Tōkyō, to her father's house, and from there she attended the Peeresses' School, going backward and forward every day with her bundle of books, and taking her share of the work and play with the other children. In her school-days she was noticeable for her great physical activity and her hearty enjoyment of the outdoor sports which form so important a part of the training in Japanese schools for girls at present; and for her strength of will and character among a class of students upon whom self-repression amounting almost to self-abnegation has been inculcated from earliest childhood.

When this little princess reached the age of fifteen, the Crown Prince's marriage, which had been somewhat deferred on account of his ill-health, was pressed forward, and to the extreme surprise of her own family, and of many others as well, the Princess Sada was chosen, largely on account of her great physical vigor. Then began a great change in her life. From being one of the lowest and least considered in her family, she was suddenly raised high above all the rest, even her father addressing her as a superior. The merry, romping school-girl was transformed in a few days into the great lady, too grand to associate on equal terms with any but the imperial family. Small cause was there for wonder if she shrank from the change and begged that the honor might be bestowed on some one else. The old free life was gone forever, and she dreaded the heavy responsibility that was to fall upon her slender shoulders.

The choice was made in August, 1899, and from the moment that the engagement was entered into, the Princess Sada became an honored guest in her father's house. She could no longer play with her brothers and sisters, or take a meal with any member of her own family. A new and handsome suite of rooms was built for her, her old wardrobe was discarded and an entirely new one provided for her, all her table service was new and distinct from that of the rest of the family, and she was addressed by all as if she were already Empress. Her studies were not given up, but masters were chosen for her who came to her and instructed her, with due deference to her high station, in the subjects that she had been studying at school. So passed the nine months of her engagement, and on May 8, 1900, she became one of the principals in a state wedding such as Japan had never before seen. Through all the show and ceremony she acquitted herself decorously and bravely, and since her marriage no word save of approval of the young wife has come out from the palace gates. Her little sisters-in-law, the four small daughters of the Emperor, enjoy nothing so much as to go and spend the day with her, for she is so amusing, and her life has been such a busy and happy one, that she comes like a breath of fresh air into the seclusion of the Court. Her young husband, too, finds in her congenial society, and his frail health seems to be daily strengthening with the brightness that has come into his home.

Great was the joy in the empire when, on April 29, 1901, this happy union was rendered still happier by the birth of a strong little prince to carry on the ancient line. By an auspicious coincidence, his birth came just at the time of the annual boys' feast, or Feast of Flags, and his naming day was appointed for May 5, the great day of the feast, when all Japan is decorated with giant carp swinging from tall poles outside of every house, and swimming vigorously at the ends of their tethers in the strong spring wind. The carp is to the Japanese mind the emblem of courage and perseverance, for he swims up the strongest current, leaping the waterfalls that oppose his progress. The baby was named by his grandfather, and will have the personal name of Hirohito, and the title Prince Michi. With this new little prince there are no polite fictions to maintain, nor conventional relationships to be established. He is the son of his father's lawful wife, as well as of his father. There is to be no breaking off of natural ties, and his own mother will nurse and care for him, a fortune that never falls to the lot of the imperial son of a mékaké. If he lives, he will be a standing argument in favor of monogamy, even in noble families, and his birth bodes well for family life throughout the country.

A pretty, but most shocking sight, if seen through the eyes of some of these old-fashioned attendants, is the semi-annual undo kai, or exercise day of the Peeresses' School. The large playground is, for this occasion, surrounded by seats divided off to accommodate invited guests of various ranks, who spend the day watching the entertainment. In the most honorable place, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, sits the Empress herself, for the education of the daughters of the nobles is a matter of the liveliest interest to her; and the parents and friends and teachers of the girls fill up all available seats after the school itself has been accommodated.

The programme is usually a long one, occupying the greater part of the morning and afternoon, with an interval for lunch. Most of the ordinary English field games—tennis, basket-ball, etc.—are played with skill and vigor, and in addition to these there are races of various kinds, devised to show, not simply fleetness of foot, but quickness of hand and wit as well. These races vary from year to year, as the ingenuity of the directors of the sports may be able to devise new forms of exercise. One extremely pretty contest is as follows: On the playground between the starting-point and the goal are set at equal distances four upright sticks for each runner. Four branches of cherry blossoms and four bright-colored ribbons for each contestant are laid on the ground at the starting-point. At the signal, each girl picks up a cherry branch and a ribbon, and runs to one of the upright sticks, tying the flowers firmly thereto; then she runs back for a second branch, and so on until all four have been fastened in place. The race is won by the child who first reaches the goal leaving behind her four blooming trees where before