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

Teachers spend much time in showing proper and improper combinations of different flowers, as well as the arrangement of them. Many different styles have come up, originated by the famous teachers who have founded various schools of the art,—an art which is unique and exceedingly popular, requiring artistic talent and a cultivated eye. One often sees, on going into the guest room of a Japanese house, a vase containing gracefully arranged flowers set in the tokonoma, or raised alcove of the room, under the solitary kakémono[10] that forms the chief ornament of the apartment. As these two things, the vase of flowers and the hanging scroll, are the only adornments, it is more necessary that the flowers should be carefully arranged, than in our crowded rooms, where a vase of flowers may easily escape the eye, perplexed by the multitude of objects which surround it.

The ceremonial tea must not be confounded with the ordinary serving of tea for refreshment. The proper making, and serving, and drinking of the ceremonial tea is the most formal of social observances, each step in which is prescribed by a rigid code of etiquette. The tea, instead of being the whole leaf, such as is used for ordinary occasions, is a fine, green powder. The infusion is made, not in a small pot, from which it is poured out into cups, but in a bowl, into which the hot water is poured from a dipper on to the powdered tea. The mixture is stirred with a bamboo whisk until it foams, then handed with much ceremony to the guest, who takes it with equal ceremony and drinks it from the bowl, emptying the receptacle at three gulps. Should there be a number of guests, tea is made for each in turn, in the order of their rank, in the same bowl. For this ceremonial tea, a special set of utensils is used, all of antique and severely simple style. The charcoal used for heating the water is of a peculiar variety; and the room in which the tea is made and served is built for that special purpose, and kept sacred for that use. This art, which is often part of the education of women of the higher classes, is taught by regular teachers, often by gentlewomen who have fallen into distressed circumstances.[*] I remember with great vividness a visit paid to an old lady living near a provincial city of Japan, who had for years supported herself by giving lessons in this politest of arts. Her little house, of the daintiest and neatest type, seemed filled to overflowing by three foreigners, whom she received with the courtliest of welcomes. At the request of my friend, an American lady engaged in missionary work in that part of the country, she gave us a lesson in the etiquette of the tea ceremony. Every motion, from the bringing in and arranging of the utensils to the final rinsing and wiping of the tea bowl, was according to rules strictly laid down, and the whole ceremony had more the solemnity of a religious ritual than the lightness and gayety of a social occasion.

Etiquette of all kinds is not left in Japan to chance, to be learned by observation and imitation of any model that may present itself, but is taught regularly by teachers who make a specialty of it. Everything in the daily life has its rules, and the etiquette teacher has them all at her fingers' ends. There have been several famous teachers of etiquette, and they have formed systems which differ in minor points, while agreeing in the principal rules. The etiquette of bowing, the position of the body, the arms, and the head while saluting, the methods of shutting and opening the door, rising and sitting down on the floor, the manner of serving a meal, or tea, are all, with the minutest details, taught to the young girls, who, I imagine, find it rather irksome. I know two young girls of new Japan who find nothing so wearisome as their etiquette lesson, and would gladly be excused from it. I have heard them, after their teacher had left, slyly make fun of her stiff and formal manners. Such people as she will, I fear, soon belong only to the past, though it still remains to be seen how much of European manners will be engrafted on the old formalities of Japanese life. It is, perhaps, because of this regular teaching in the ways of polite society, that the Japanese girl seems never at a loss, even under unusual circumstances, but bears herself with self-possession in places where young girls in America would be embarrassed and awkward.

But the Japanese are rapidly finding out that this busy nineteenth century gives little time for learning how to shut and open doors in the politest manner, and indeed such things under the newly established school system are now relegated entirely to the girls' schools, the boys having no lessons in etiquette.

The method of teaching flower-painting is so interesting that I must speak of it before I leave the subject of accomplishments. I have said that the acquisition of skill in writing the Chinese characters was the best possible preparation for skill in all other arts. This is especially true of the art of painting, which is simply the next step, after writing has been learned. The painting master, when he comes to the house, brings no design as a model, but sits down on the floor before the little desk, and on a sheet of paper paints with great rapidity the design that he wishes the pupil to copy. It may be simply two or three blades of grass upon which the pupil makes a beginning, but she is expected to make her picture with exactly the same number of bold strokes that the master puts into his. Again and again she blunders her strokes on to a sheet of paper, until at last, when sheet after sheet has been spoiled, she begins to see some semblance of the master's copy in her own daub. She perseveres, making copy after copy, until she is able from memory to put upon the paper at a moment's notice the three blades of grass to her master's satisfaction. Only then can she go on to a new copy, and only after many such designs have been committed to memory, and the free, dashing stroke necessary for Japanese painting has been acquired, is she allowed to undertake any copying from nature, or original designing.[*]

I have dwelt thus far only upon the entirely Japanese education that was permitted to women under the old régime. That it was an effective and refining system, all can testify who have made the acquaintance of any of the charming Japanese ladies whose schooling was finished before Commodore Perry disturbed the repose of old Japan. As I write, the image comes before me of a sweet-faced, bright-eyed little gentlewoman with whom it was my good fortune to become intimately acquainted during my stay in Tōkyō. A widow, left penniless, with one child to support, she earned the merest pittance by teaching sewing at one of the government schools in Tōkyō; but in all the circumstances of her life, narrow and busy as it needs must be, she proved herself a lady through and through. Polite, cheerful, an intelligent and cultivated reader, a thrifty housekeeper, a loving and careful mother, a true and helpful friend, her memory is associated with many of my pleasantest hours in Japan, and she is but one of the many who bear witness to the culture that might be acquired by women in the old days.

But the Japan of old is not the Japan of to-day, and in the school system now prevalent throughout the empire girls and boys are equally provided for. First the schools established by the various missionary societies, and then the government schools, offered to girls a broader education than the old instruction in Chinese, in etiquette, and in accomplishments. Now, every morning, the streets of the cities and villages are alive with boys and girls clattering along, with their books and lunch boxes in their hands, to the kindergarten, primary, grammar, high, or normal school. Every rank in life, every grade in learning, may find its proper place in the new school system, and the girls eagerly grasp their opportunities, and show themselves apt and willing students of the new learning offered to them.

By the new system, at its present stage of development, too much is expected of the Japanese boy or girl. The work required would be a burden to the quickest mind. The whole of the old education in Japanese and Chinese literature and composition—an education requiring the best years of a boy's life—is given, and grafted upon this, our common-school and high-school studies of mathematics, geography, history, and natural science. In addition to these, at all higher schools, one foreign language is required, and often two, English ranking first in the popular estimation. Many a headache do the poor, hard-working students have over the puzzling English language, in which they have to begin at the wrong end of the book and read across the page from left to right, instead of from top to bottom, and from right to left, as is natural to them. But in spite of its hard work, the new school life is cheerful and healthful, and the children enjoy it. It helps them to be really children, and, while they are young, to be merry and playful, not dignified and formal little ladies at all times. Upon the young girls, the influence of the schools is to make them more independent, self-reliant, and stronger women. In the houses of the higher classes, even now, much of the old-time system of repression is still in force. Children are indeed "seen but not heard," and from the time when they learn to walk they must learn to be polite and dignified. At school, the more progressive feeling of the times predominates among the authorities, and the children are encouraged to unbend and enjoy themselves in games and frolics, as true children should do. Much is done for the pleasure of the little ones, who often enjoy school better than home, and declare that they do not like holidays.[*]

But the young girl, who has finished this pleasant school life, with all its advantages, is not as well fitted as under the old system for the duties and trials of married life, unless under exceptional circumstances, where the husband chosen has advanced ideas. To those teaching the young girls of Japan to-day, the problem of how to educate them aright is a deep one, and with each newly trained girl sent out go many hopes, mingled with anxieties, in regard to the training she has had as a preparation for the new life she is about to enter. The few, the pioneers, will have to suffer for the happiness and good of the many, for the problem of grafting the new on to the old is indeed a difficult one, to be solved only after many experiments.

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