Hgggg ®bff&8!sp mm 1 If ins ' 3&$fe •ehptiwffiSa'; Rp.ijSSnv; BiS Mw mm 1 ffl wW 2uKf SSjaRffl « >.vif] i. nw A8 MH SrEtSwr.sf If |j|sj|f 11 a $ Wbf,- Ctbrarp of Che Cheolocjical ^etninarp PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY Delavan L. Pierson if\ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/womanleaveninjapOOdefo , - A JAPANESE MADONNA Educated Christian Mother [J The Woman Leaven in Japan By Charlotte B. DeForest Published by THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS West Medford, Massachusetts 1923 Copyright, 1923, by THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS The Vermont Printing Company Brattleboro STATEMENT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS In securing Miss Charlotte De Forest as the author of our woman’s text book on Japan we were peculiarly fortunate. Japan is Miss DeForest’s own country, in a certain sense, as she is the daughter of the distin¬ guished pioneer missionary of the American Board, Dr. John H. DeForest. She knew and loved Japan as a child, and has studied it through all its rapidly changing phases, quick to see opportunities for im¬ provement but with a clear and sympathetic under¬ standing of the many admirable qualities of the Japanese. After Miss DeForest’s graduation from Smith college, she returned to take up educational work in Japan where she has served with great ability and distinction. With characteristic modesty Miss DeForest with¬ holds the fact that she is now president of Kobe col¬ lege, which she describes so impartially in Chapter IV on colleges for women. She has seen the Leaven at work and has been a factor in its working. We recommend this book, “The Woman and the Leaven in Japan” to circles of women who are plan¬ ning the program meetings for their local societies, as well as to young women’s organizations and college groups. 3 4 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan We suggest, as an admirable background, Mr. Galen Fisher’s more advanced study book, “Creative Forces in Japan,” issued by the Missionary Education Move¬ ment. The brevity of Miss DeForest’s book prevents her giving historical events in connection with the es¬ tablishment of Christian missions in Japan. We would advise the use of the two books wherever a careful study is to be made. May we also recommend for genuine joy, the read¬ ing of our junior book, “The Honorable Japanese Fan,” by Miss Margaret Applegarth, which will bring the scent and color of cherry blossoms and the happy faces and gay fancies of the children of Japan into our older circles with the joy which children always bring. The Central Committee will publish the “How to Use” early this year. It is in preparation by Miss Gertrude Schultz. The book by Mr. Galen Fisher carries the imprint of the Central Committee as does this more special¬ ized woman’s book. The Committee has urged the Woman’s Boards of Foreign Missions to publish leaflets and pamphlets on their own missionary work in Japan as valuable sup¬ plementary material for the study this year. Mrs. Henry W. Peabody, Chairman Miss Gertrude Schultz, Secretary Mrs. Frank Gaylord Cook, Treasurer Miss Alice M. Kyle Mrs. Frank Mason North Miss O. H. Lawrence Mrs. A. V. Pohlman Miss Emily Tillotson LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Facing Page A Japanese Madonna . Frontispiece Four Generations of Christians . 16 A Modern Japanese Home—Braiding Hat Straw . 21 Daily Vacation Bible School . 28 A Christian Bride, 1922 . 33 An Outdoor Summer Sunday School . 48 A Sunday School in Japan . 53 The Hour for Games in the Daily Vacation Bible School 60 A Neighborhood Sunday School . 65 First Class in Training for Social Secretaryship Ser¬ vice, Y.W.C.A. 80 Athletic Leaders, Tokyo College . 85 The Five Pioneers of 1871 . 92 The Bucket Ceremony at Kwassui College—Group of Married Women College Students . 97 Doshisha Girls’ College Y.W.C.A. . 112 Gymnasium Class in Tokyo Woman’s College—Annual Field Day . 117 The Buddhist Nun Who Became a Christian—Binzuru, Popular God of Healing . 124 Three Leading Educators . 129 Christian School for Deaf Children, Tokyo . 144 Commencement Day Procession . 149 A Prayer Meeting in Zako San’s Store . 156 Free Christian Clinic Held Daily in Yokohama . 161 Miss Michi Kawai and Her Mother . 176 Madame Kaji Yajima and Miss Azuma Moriya . 181 Madame Nobu Jo and the Home of the Kobe Woman’s Welfare Association . 188 5 I PREFACE Ume Kage Nashi Tsuki ochite Mado niwa kage wo Tomenedomo Kayawa kakururu Yowa no ume kamo “The Unseen Plum Tree” “The moon has set. No longer on the pane Falls the soft shadow of the plum tree fair. Its fragrance yet Makes night’s concealment vain And tells the secret of its presence there.” HIS is the poem that Madame Yajima, Japan’s «■» most famous Christian woman, has given for the cover of this book. It is one that she wrote some time ago and especially likes. She explains that it means that, even if w T e cannot see into people’s hearts, there may be faith hidden there just the same. The leaven works unseen, pervasively. The plum blossom had been chosen for the cover design before the poem came to make it doubly ap¬ propriate. For the plum blossom has from of old in Japanese art and literature symbolized the peculiarly feminine virtues. It is among the earliest flowers to brave the winter’s cold; it is modest and lasts long,— emblem of womanly patience, chastity, and humility. 7 8 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan The cover design was worked out by a mission school girl under the supervision of her art teacher. To these friends and many others who have con¬ tributed facts or photographs or suggestions I grate¬ fully acknowledge indebtedness. In order that I might not as a foreigner misrepresent Japan, I asked differ¬ ent Japanese friends who had been abroad and knew western viewpoints to read and criticize each a chap¬ ter, as follows: Chapter I.—Rev. Dan jo Ebina, President of Doshisha University; Mr. Hachiro Taguchi, Lecturer on Civics at Kobe College. Chapter II.—Mrs. Fuji Tsukamoto (Wilson Col¬ lege), Kobe. Chapter III.—Miss Tetsu Yasui (Cambridge), Dean of the Woman’s Christian College, Tokyo. Chapter IV.—Miss Koto Yamada (Vassar), Miss Tsuda’s English College, Tokyo. Chapter V.—Miss Michi Kawai (Bryn Mawr), General Secretary of the Japan Young Women’s Christian Associ¬ ation. Chapter VI.—Mrs. William Merrell Vories (nee Hitotsuyanagi) (Bryn Mawr), Hachiman, Omi. Preface 9 The reader is profiting by their helpful suggestions and so I anticipate her thanks and express them con¬ jointly with my own. My special gratitude is due to Miss Hide Shohara of the English faculty of Kobe College for her aid in collecting, selecting, and trans¬ lating Japanese material and assisting with the clerical work of the manuscript. May the prayers we have offered for this book, as we worked on it side by side, be fulfilled in its being also a bit of the leaven that is to become the Kingdom of God among the nations! Charlotte B. De Forest. Kobe College, October, 1922. n THE WOMAN AND THE LEAVEN IN JAPAN PROLOGUE— The Spreading Leaven In 1869 two Japanese women were baptized in Tokyo—the first Protestant Christian women of Japan. The first man had been baptized five years earlier. Now Japan’s Protestant Christians number one hundred and twenty thousand. The first Prates- tant Christian church was organized in 1872 in Yoko¬ hama. Now there are one thousand three hundred and fifty churches, and over a thousand more places where Christianity is regularly preached. Sixty years ago Japan’s only hope of learning Chris¬ tianity was through foreign missionaries. Now there are over four thousand Japanese Christian workers of all sorts. While gratefully accepting for their land the help of the foreign mission forces and ready to welcome an increase of them, the Japanese Christians have so caught the missionary spirit of the Early Church that there are ten Japanese missionary boards supporting Christian preachers to their own people and to other peoples—Koreans, Formosans, Marshall Islanders—under their flag, with incipient work in China for Chinese. Since the days when Mrs. Hepburn and Mrs. Bal- lagh began in 1867 to teach a little group of Japanese 11 12 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan girls in Yokohama, the entire national school system has been developed from kindergarten to university. Yet the Christian school has so far prospered and de¬ veloped that to-day about five per cent of the entire group of those in schools higher than elementary grade are studying under Christian auspices. The enrol¬ ment of Christian Sunday schools is one hundred and seventy thousand, with an average of one teacher to twenty-six pupils. From 1912 to 1920 the population of Japan proper increased six and a half per cent. In the same eight years the enrolment of the Protestant churches has increased eighty-five per cent. How has the leaven spread thus? It is a wonderful story of vision and inspiration, of prayer and toil,—too great and too full for any one little book. But the part that women have had in it, and are having, not as separate from that of men, but as one phase of a great joint enterprise, it is our joy¬ ful task to sketch here together. And it is further our privilege, if God so grant us faith, to see in the ac¬ complishments of the past and in the opportunities of the present the call to unflagging zeal and increasing earnestness in working for the day when every knee in Japan shall bow, not to ancestors in worship, not to the spirit of fox or badger in fear, nor to the blazing sun in awe, not to the abstraction, Amida, nor the his¬ toric Buddha nor the multitude of his avatars as saviours from suffering and evil, but to the one univer¬ sal Father and to Jesus Christ, who has revealed Him. The coming of that day is as sure as the words that Prologue 13 shall not pass away,—“I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Note: As all previous mission study textbooks on Japan have treated its religions, it is not necessary to repeat here. Most opportunely there have appeared two articles in “The Chris¬ tian Movement in Japan” for 1922, giving up-to-date treat¬ ment of the two principal religions of Japan: Dr. R. C. Arm¬ strong’s “Popular Buddhism in Japan,” and Rev. Albertus Pieters’s “The Religious Influence of Shinto.” There could hardly be more appropriate material for the opening session of a mission study class on Japan. “The Christian Movement” is issued annually by the united Christian forces of Japan, and its two or three latest volumes, together with the monthly magazine, The Japan Evangelist, a journal of Christian work in Japan issued under the same auspices, are the most valuable sources of current information for students of the condition of Christianity in Japan. Both may be secured from the Methodist Publishing House, Ginza Shichome, Tokyo. The subscription price of The Japan Evangelist is $2.50 a year. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER ONE Then and Now 1. Japan Revolutionized in Seventy Years. 2. Internationalization. 3. Political and Social Progress. CHAPTER ONE Then and Now. Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range. Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change. —Tennyson The Rip Van Winkle of Japan was a fisherman. Enticed by a mermaid to a species of Neptune’s palace far under the sea, there he lives for a seemingly brief space of time in luxurious oblivion of earth; when a violated vow breaks the spell, he discovers himself back in the world of men, an old, old man left by the passing years to behold an age to v/hich he is a stranger. His three hundred and fifty years or so of absence (according to the ancient historians) leave him, upon disenchantment, no alternative but to die. The valley of Kiso Fukushima, through which the central railroad of Japan winds its way amid ever-shifting scenes of mountain beauty, has its legend of the spot where the dire awakening took place. 1. Japan Revolutionized in Seventy Years A modern Urashima would not need to stay away as long as his prototype did. The seventy years that have passed since Commodore Perry knocked at Ja- 15 IS The Woman and the Leaven in Japan pan’s doors, are longer than is needed to afford an ample shock to his sensibilities. If he has slept fifty years or even less he will find on waking today enough change of every sort to make him feel in a new world. Western contacts have affected dress, architecture, food, home, customs, amusements, public utilities, thoughts, ideals. He will need a new dictionary to un¬ derstand the language of the day. Versus the old days of leisurely travel on foot, or by chair and jinrikisha, he now has to accommodate himself to electrics, auto¬ mobiles, and express trains. The old lunar calendar by which he regulated his days has given way to the world’s calendar, and spring is no longer precipitated by New Year’s Day—much poetic license to the con¬ trary. The clock, the time-table, the factory whistle, the noon gun, regulate New Japan. Men do not wear their hair tied at the crown of the head, nor do samurai stalk the streets with their two swords—the long and the short—as under the old regime. Traffic police and railway police are some of the recent additions to its modern system for the guardianship of the public peace. The postal system includes all forms of mail and money transfer,—in fact, Japan had parcel post and postal savings departments before the United States did. Aeroplane mails are being developed. “Movies,” expositions, operas, a modern stage,—base¬ ball, tennis, golf and athletic meets,—institutes, rallies, tournaments, propaganda, and publicity movements— Japan is full of them. To escape these changes, our modern Urashima would have to go to lonely fishing . HHn co < i H CO HH Pi W o o CO s O i—i H <1 « W W o Pi 0 o . ,• a *h'*■' « -g -“'S >>*= , CO O : > cs « CO k ■ g ° °3 £ S3 i.J'SscS a ■£ as a>„ C .Sftljts ^ s ®:i ° 0-5 •S'g ,X3 cd . Si'S 3 a O 3 ® c3 TJ R C? -*—' Q. d' sh *r g « £ £fC ® £ «,; g ■o P« JH P P p «J p f!-s| H,§ ^ (Bo* S«J ® O > ? 2 ea « 3 o °-a 53 CO ££ q ■*“* o g co c Fh .2 P CO l Then and Now 17 villages or isolated mountain towns; and even into many of these, electric bulbs, daily newspapers, and telephones have penetrated. As a preliminary to getting acquainted with the woman of new Japan, let us see what some of the changes are that especially affect her and her environ¬ ment. Language Made Over Language in any land is a mirror for change. For¬ eign words have crowded into the every-day life of the Japanese people with many of the articles they rep¬ resent. A missionary stopping over night in a hotel in an interior city chatted in the vernacular with the maid who was serving his evening meal. “Do you know English?” he asked. “O no, I am an ignorant girl. How should I know any English?” “But you do,” he said. “What did you just bring up to light my room with?” “Rampu” (lamp) she replied. “Yes, and what did you use to light it?” “ Matchi she said. “And what language are those words?” “Why, Jap¬ anese,” she supposed. “No, they are English. And what did you spread on the quilts when you laid out the bedding for me?” “Shiitsu And so on, through a list of common words to the “inki” with which he had written in the hotel registry. Besides, there is a multitude of new Chinese compounds that have been created to meet the demands of the age,—the new thought-world of science, philosophy, economics, reli¬ gion. As Christianity lifted the old Greek word for “love” out of the mire, so has it done with the Japanese 18 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan word “ai,” the meaning of which has been transformed into a Christian fullness. There was no word to ex¬ press the meaning of “service,” so one has evolved in recent years. “Inspiration,” “revival,” “democracy,” “strike,” are samples of words that have been taken over bodily by transliteration into Japanese. The word for God, Kami, that used to be vague because of its applicability to any number of nature gods and god¬ desses, deified heroes, and spirits of ancestors, has now for all educated people a new content corresponding to that of the English word when capitalized. Home Interiors One of the most important changes now in process is that of house-styles. In the larger cities there is a strong tendency among the educated classes, accus¬ tomed at school to chairs or benches, to desert their cushions on the white, soft-matted floor in favor of a desk or table with seats to match. Statistics from the physical examinations of young men of the nation for military service have shown an increase in average height in the years since modern education has been introduced. Doubtless, sitting on chairs in school is partly responsible for this. Having a table with chairs at home, however, means space, and space sometimes means an additional room in one’s dwelling; so that there is now evolving in Japan an interesting type of what one might call “Eurasian” architecture—a mix¬ ture, or at least a juxtaposition, of models from the East and West. In calling in upper middle-class homes, one is not infrequently ushered into a foreign- Then and Now 19 style room, or a Japanese room fitted up with foreign furniture. In this case, slats will have been nailed on the bottom of the table and chair legs, to prevent their making indentations on the soft floor-mats. The Japanese house has of course an intimate con¬ nection with the woman problem. Built so that two or three of its outside walls are thrown open during the day and closed with a cumbersome procession of slid¬ ing wooden doors at night, the Japanese house is easy to rob if left even for a few minutes without an occu¬ pant. The frequent reason for a woman’s inability to attend a meeting or accept an invitation is, not “I couldn’t leave the baby”—(for she would take the baby with her), but “I couldn’t leave the house.” Even when the outside doors—the “armor doors” as the word literally means—are slid into place and fastened, the Japanese has a sense of insecurity, both from thieves and from fire, in leaving a house without an occupant. Said a Japanese reporter to me one day at a dinner given to newspaper men—“Your women of the West can turn a key in a lock and go out with ease of mind. But our Japanese women will not be truly emancipated to take their share of activities outside the home until Japanese architecture is reformed.” Shoes vs. Clogs House styles have an interesting connection with wearing apparel—footwear first of all. An absolute rule in a genuine Japanese house forbids stepping into it in footgear that has come in contact with the ground. Sandals, clogs, shoes, whatever they may be, must be 20 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan shed at the entrance. Shoes are of course much more trouble to get in and out of than sandals or clogs. Yet they allow so much more freedom in walking, and are so inalienable a part of a European man’s costume, that they have come into great vogue for men, and are increasingly popular with girls and women. One com¬ mon style of shoe is that sometimes called in America the ‘‘nurses’ shoe” or the “Congress shoe,” without fastenings but with rubber insertions at the sides to allow of pulling on and off easily. Missionaries have often used such shoes; missionary slang has, for self- evident reasons, labeled them “evangelastics.” Public buildings on the modern plan permit now the wearing of shoes straight in from the street; but clogs must still be changed at the door, and for theatres and assembly halls an elaborate amount of footgear-checking has often to be done. To take an hour in emptying a hall of a thousand people, however, tries the patience of the modern Orient; and a frequent present practice is to supply at the door newspapers in which to wrap clogs; then each person carries his own clogs into meeting and out again. The hall in the meantime has provided him with a substitute pair of public sandals. In the rapid growth of the shoe habit in Japan, there is something to be deplored. The Occident is not yet shod with so much regard to foot hygiene as to make it a safe guide for an inquiring people; and foolish and deforming models from the West are seen in Japan’s shoe stores and in her streets. The desire to be taller adds to the temptation to wear high heels. The draw- . A MODERN JAPANESE HOME BRAIDING HAT STRAW A Home Industry Then and Now 21 back of the Japanese clogs and sandals is the shuffling, dragging habit they induce, with a consequent lack of spring and freedom in the use of the ankle. The native footwear has, however, developed a very healthy foot. Prof. H. H. Wilder of Smith College, who has made some study of ink-prints of the soles of different races, says that whereas in America ninety out of one hun¬ dred prints of feet show arch trouble, the reverse pro¬ portion holds in Japan. The thong of the sandal, pass¬ ing between the large toe and its neighbor, helps to strengthen the arch muscles. Must the Kimono Go? To return to the relation of house styles to costume, the kimono that fits the body closely below the hips lends itself with the perfection of neatness to the Jap¬ anese sitting posture on the floor; the plaited skirt of the modern school-girl or the professional woman, on the contrary, seems sprawly on the floor, and gets badly wrinkled in both front and back by one’s sitting on one’s knees. European costume for men, too, becomes hopelessly baggy at the knees when indulged in for Japanese sitting. A Japanese man wearing European costume at business or in his office generally changes to Japanese costume on his return home to the mats at evening. For business purposes he prefers the Euro¬ pean. One Japanese professor said to another who had clung persistently to the native costume even in his classroom, “But if I wear it, I find my kimono sleeves rubbing the blackboard when I write, and my flowing 22 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan haori (a kind of dress coat) catching on the furniture.” “So do I,” admitted the other. This transitional period in which a man needs both kinds of outfit is acknowledged to be very expensive. But the men of Japan are very extensively using both. They have been the first to make a radical departure from the traditional national costume. Next come the children. European style of dress is recommending itself to thoughtful parents as preferable to the Jap¬ anese style for both economic and hygienic reasons. One pastor’s wife declares that she now dresses her three girls and three boys on little more than half what it cost before to clothe them in Japanese style. Freedom or Warmth Hygienically, European dress allows a child’s limbs greater freedom, it is easier to keep clean, it is lighter weight in winter than the Japanese wadded garments, and it distributes warmth more evenly over the body. In a recent Sunday School exercise on Flower Sunday, in one of the large Japanese churches, twenty out of twenty-six in a primary class that went on the platform to sing were wearing European costume; in an inter¬ mediate class of girls, seventeen out of thirty-six were in western style. White and somber blues and browns do not suit the children as well aesthetically as their own traditional combinations do. The color schemes that the nation has worked out in its costumes for gen¬ erations and centuries are ideal with the Japanese hair and complexion, and one misses a certain subtle satis¬ faction of that sort when the native garb is discarded Then and Now 23 for the foreign. Doubtless, however, the future will work out some compromise plan by which combina¬ tions or modifications of styles will utilize the good points of both. A change to European costume makes necessary a change in methods of heating. The hibachi or brazier that is the universal heater in a Japanese house is suf¬ ficient to warm one’s hands and face when one is sit¬ ting on one’s feet and wearing padded garments to keep the rest of one’s self at a comfortable temperature. But when one is sitting on a chair and wearing European clothes, it becomes necessary to have a more diffused and even heat. Stoves, gas fire-places, furnaces are all being tried out in Japan today. Points in Favor of European Costume The indigenous style of underwear for girls and women consists of a shirt shaped like the upper half of a kimono (with variable sleeve-styles) and a petticoat like the lower half to be folded round the body and tied at the waist. Increasingly, however, the foreign- style union-suit is being adopted, either in jersey weave or cotton cloth, especially for men and children. The traditional woman’s dress, the kimono, is held in place by bands or soft strips of cloth tied around the hips and around the waist. Its crowning glory is the obi, one foot or less wide and from ten to twelve and a half feet long, lined and interlined (except for lighter varie¬ ties), doubled and wound twice round the waist and arranged at the back in one of several conventional forms as fashion or occasion may dictate. The charm 24 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan of the kimono lines around neck, shoulder and bust, the grace of the long sleeve, the trimness and elegance of the well-selected and well-adjusted costume hardly need be dwelt on here. It is not only the sentimentalist among foreign visitors to Japan, but the old seasoned resident as well, that grants ungrudging admiration to the beauty and modesty of the completed product of the Japanese costumer, and that deplores ill-guided attempts to substitute European models for Japanese. But the attempts at this substitution are daily becoming more and more successful and widespread and it is worth while to look for the underlying reasons. Imperial Court Adopts European Dress The Imperial Court has from the beginning of the modern era adopted European dress as official, pre¬ sumably for diplomatic reasons. Hospital nurses and Red Cross nurses wear a uniform modeled on the European, for practical and hygienic reasons. Imita¬ tion and love of novelty, that might be large factors in the West, do not so strongly affect the conservative Japanese woman. We must look further to account for the tendency of women more and more to consider the advantages of European costume. “Really, Japanese dress is very awkward,” said my Japanese hostess one morning at the breakfast table, as she saved her sleeve from too close contact with the electric plate where the toast was browning. If she had been at work in her kitchen, she would have been wearing a tasuki or cord, looping back the sleeves and crossing behind the shoulders. But that badge of labor Then and Now 25 could not be worn at mealtimes or with company. (And if you challenge the fact of bread at a Japanese meal, let me explain that white baker’s bread can be gotten now in all of Japan’s large cities, and that this lady was merely giving me such a breakfast of fruit and corn flakes and marmalade as her husband, after the years he had spent abroad before his marriage, pre¬ ferred.) “I have just bought this electric plate,” she went on; “you know I let my maid go last month, and this is the very first thing I bought with the money that is being saved by not keeping help. This lightens work, too, you see, as it saves much time over getting a charcoal fire started for cooking.” Hers was a home of the upper middle class. She had been married about two years, and illness in the family had necessitated economizing by a reduction in running expenses. Japanese Costume Inconvenient, Expensive “But to go back to clothes,” she went on, “Japanese dress costs so much. For instance, a good kimono will have crepe for the facing that binds the edge of the skirt. Two or three wearings, if one walks at all vig¬ orously, will go right through that crepe, so it really is cheaper to ride in a jinrikisha and save the wear and tear. Then our wash dresses have to be ripped to pieces for washing and put together again afterward, so that it takes a lot of time if you do it yourself, and costs if you send it out. For footgear, a pair of geta (clogs) may cost four or five yen, but they won’t wear but a few weeks if one is leading an active life. I 26 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan haven’t had to have any new dresses since I was married—” Here I interrupted to ask how many she had in her trousseau. “One hundred,” she replied. “You know that in Japan, when the yuino or engagement gifts are ex¬ changed and the agreement thus formally concluded, the bride sends with her gift to the groom a list of the things she will bring with her to her new home. I put down 100 kimonos on mine, though I really had a few more. They were not all new, you know, and included all kinds, of course, summer and winter and inter¬ mediate, lined and unlined, work dresses, ceremonial dresses with the family crest on, and so on. I had only three wedding dresses in my wedding set, though some people have five and some even seven.” “Do you mean the white, red, and black of the ancient custom ?” I asked ; for tradition has had a bride wear white—the funeral color—when she leaves her own home, as henceforth dead to that, put on red (the child’s color) when she enters the bridegroom’s home into which she is now as it were newly-born, and don black, the unchanging color of fidelity and chastity, for the consummation of the marriage ceremony. “No,” said this modern bride, “one is for the cere¬ mony itself; one for the announcement dinner that fol¬ lows it, and one to wear in making first calls on your friends, properly the next day. Those three, of course, I had to have, but I’m sorry I had so many others because although the cut doesn’t change much in Japan, Then and Now 27 fashions do alter in fabrics, colors, and patterns, with every season. I’m bound to wear these out; but when I have to get a new outfit in a few years more, I am seriously wondering whether European dress would not be less expensive.” These remarks call to mind some figures that were given at an economic exhibition in Tokyo in 1918 or 1919. The figures gave what percentage of a year’s income was commonly spent in different countries on a wedding outfit. From 8% in England, they rose at varying degrees among the nations of the European continent to higher figures in Asia, coming to a climax with 300% in China, and 250% in Japan. The moral, of course, was to point economy. The hygienic motive is also to be considered. The closeness of the Japanese costume is hampering to shoulder, trunk, and lower limbs. The obi is hot and heavy, in spite of the modern tendency to lessen both size and weight. The confining band around the hips and the fact that the narrow kimono flies open with a long stride, hinder freedom of leg-motion in walking. The Japanese woman in native costume is forced to walk more from her knees than from her hips. In round-dancing, which is of recent years find¬ ing its way into the social circles of the cosmopolitan centers, the motion from the knees in Japanese cos¬ tume becomes accentuated. No Curling-tongs for Japanese Women The ancient styles of hair-dressing—elaborately oiled, tied, and moulded forms done to last for days at 28 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan a time and hence necessitating wooden neck-rests for pillows at night—are still common outside the ranks of school-girls and professional or business women. One wonders sometimes at their persistence. But after all, the oil and the ties and the moulds are like curling- tongs, hairnets, and “rats”—merely the set of tools by which refractory locks are subdued to conform to an aesthetic ideal whose permanent elements, apart from temporary vagaries of fashion, have commended them¬ selves to womanhood down through the centuries. The so-called “western” styles of hairdressing are, how¬ ever, so common as to cause no comment except in cases of marked variation from the normal pompadour or part. The Japanese woman instinctively dislikes curly or wavy hair. Hence tongs and curling-pins are uncalled for on her dresser. But all forms of coiffure consistent with the ideal of straight, glossy, severely disciplined locks, are being tried out in Japan to-day. In the early years of Meiji (the era 1868-1912, the “Enlightened Reign” in which the great modern re¬ forms were inaugurated) it was the Christian Japanese women who pioneered in introducing Western styles of head-dress. The objections to the old style were the oil, and the time consumed. Professional hair-dress¬ ers, too, were notorious gossips, and sometimes go- betweens for illicit negotiations. No Blackened Teeth for Christian Women Other points of appearance in regard to which the Christian women pioneered a protest, were shaven eye¬ brows and blackened teeth. The old notion that fos- I DAILY VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL Woman’s Christian College Then and Now 29 tered these things for a married woman was that now that she had a husband she must render herself unat¬ tractive to other men. For a Christian woman in those days to fly in the face of custom and keep her eyebrows and white teeth required a degree of courage that may be difficult to appreciate in America where individual preference in personal styles has so long been re¬ spected. But the old forms fled quickly in the face of modern ideas. An elderly Christian woman of the early days—so runs the story—-was followed on the street one day by a respectable man of middle age, who, coming up to her at her entrance, said, “Pardon me—I think you are a Christian because your eyebrows are not shaven nor your teeth blackened. I have come up from the coun¬ try to find a daughter-in-law. I want a Christian. Can you help me find one ?” And she did. 2. Internationalization The great modern process of internationalization, progressing in all lands, has probably made in no coun¬ try greater proportional strides than in Japan. Inter¬ nationalization depends on states of mind and reveals itself in multitudes of states of body. Shimaguni Konjo, the “island nation spirit/’ is the phrase by which Japan denominates provincialism. One reason for the extent to which foreign clothes, manners, and houses are being adopted is the growth of the sense of universality in humanity, a natural consequence of the national development from a hermit nation seventy 30 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan years ago to one of the world’s powers to-day. Dr. Ebina, now president of Doshisha University, was once addressing an audience on the subject of inter¬ nationalism, and said in effect: '‘Why is our population now so much larger than when we opened our doors to the West? Is it because our knowledge of hygiene has improved so that life is better cared for and pre¬ served? Doubtless in part, but that does not wholly account for it. No, in those days we had to keep our population down by killing the extra babies.* We were not any less tender-hearted then than now, but there wasn’t food for any more people—we had only what we could raise on our own islands; the govern¬ ment had to regulate our living by making severe sumptuary laws and limiting families. But after we started contact with the outside world and began to import foodstuffs, we were no longer driven to in¬ human acts to save the nation from starvation. We have greatly profited by our interdependence with other nations.” Cosmopolitan Food Lists of imports tell how many bushels of wheat and rice and how many tons of canned goods land annually *One of the early Christian pastors was a child saved from such a premature death. His father, under the dire pressure of circumstance, had decided that this baby was the one too many, and started with the child to the canal to drown him. But the little fellow in his arms looked up and smiled into his face, and the father could not compel himself to carry out his purpose. He turned back and took the child home. A son of the next generation is now in the ministry. Needless to say, infanticide is heavily penalized by modern Jap¬ anese law. Then and Now 31 on Japan’s shores. But Irish potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, and other garden produce, as well as many garden flowers, have been introduced by seed from the West and have now established themselves and become naturalized products. Milk, Cream, and Strawberries Cow's milk as an article of diet was practically unknown in Old Japan. In the beginning of the modern era, it was sold in small measurefuls for the sick only. Now many modern dairies have been opened, and in some places butter, cream, and cheese are being produced. Small bottles of hot milk are peddled at the railway stations—as are also boxes of sandwiches, and in the season, ice-cream cones and strawberries. In general the lack of grazing facilities prevents the development of rich milk. The fields are worked intensively with two or more crops a year of grain or vegetables or both, and hillsides are frequently covered with a tough bamboo grass, whose sharp leaves, cutting cattle mouths, are unsuitable for graz¬ ing. In the northern island of Hokkaido, with its cli¬ mate and soil of the north temperate zone and its large districts opened for colonization, splendid dairy farms have been established. The best known one is that of the Christian family, Utsunomiya, whose butter goes by parcel post all over the empire and helps the older missionaries to forget their ancient anxieties lest the tub butter or the can butter from abroad should have turned rancid on the journey. This progressive Jap¬ anese family is seeking to work out the best dairying 32 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan methods for Japan. One of its sons with his wife is now in Denmark studying the methods used there to bring them back for Hokkaido application. How About Chopsticks? The availability of so many articles of diet from the West has brought the Japanese housekeeper new prob¬ lems of cooking and serving. There is a world of domestic science and practical problems opening before her in her kitchen and dining-room. Knives and forks and spoons begin to creep in. Their advantage over chopsticks is that not so much detailed preparation is required for the food they are to handle. Food to be eaten with chopsticks must be correspondingly cut up in the kitchen, unless it can be easily broken up or handled as a unit to bite from. Individual portions are served, thus increasing the housewife’s labor. A Chris¬ tian pastor in a talk to young girls once explained how his household had simplified its meal-serving. “We have each one large dish apiece instead of a number of small ones, and each one serves himself at the table. This saves the mother a great deal of time and work.” Western dishes are creeping in on many menus; dining- cars and restaurants frequently serve both foreign and Japanese meals to order. Cooking and dressmaking classes are among the most attractive forms of service that a missionary woman can offer. Enterprising Christian Native Women Some devoted Japanese Christian women are feeling the powerful urge to help their fellow-women to better js A CHRISTIAN BRIDE, 1922 Then and Now 33 living through means like these. One, the wife of a Christian business man, proprietor of a large dry goods store, had a two years’ training at the Boston -Cooking School when young. Now she conducts large free classes in foreign cooking for the women of her com¬ munity. Another, the wife of Prof. Morimoto of Sapporo Agricultural College, was in America with her husband during his period of study at Johns Hopkins and herself studied domestic science. She is an en¬ thusiast on the right way of doing household tasks, and helps her husband in the editing of a magazine “for the betterment of Japanese homes.” Mrs. Motoko Hani is another Christian woman who is having a wide influence for good. She publishes in Tokyo a monthly magazine, “The Woman’s Com¬ panion,” that has an extensive circulation, and fur¬ nishes information about dress, food, and other do¬ mestic subjects. It is said that Mrs. Hani, more than any other person, has brought into its present vogue European dress for children. A sales department and (in 1922) a summer school for European dress-making add concreteness to the magazine matter. Consulta¬ tions about personal problems are sometimes made through the magazine, and a truly Christian attitude and spirit are illustrated in the advice given. 3. Political and Social Progress The social and political changes in woman’s position are hardly less striking than the changes in her per¬ sonal appearance and her housekeeping. The one new 34 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan modern restriction on woman’s sphere regards the Throne. The history of Japan records nine reigning empresses; but the constitution of the Empire, adopted in 1889, like the Salic Law of France, forbids a wom¬ an’s accession to the crown. In the early years of modern Japan, the general public was little encouraged to take part in political affairs. Students were not ex¬ pected to read newspapers or to know about govern¬ ment matters. No wonder then that women, having as yet little education for public-mindness, were included with minors in the law that prohibited not only their promoting of political meetings, but even their attend¬ ance at such gatherings. Last spring (1922) I congratu¬ lated a Japanese friend on the birth of a little daughter. “What have you named her?” I asked. “Haru ko,” was the reply. “We write it with the character for governing; you know the Diet has just repealed that law forbidding women to have anything to do with politics. The name of that law begins with the char¬ acter chi, or haru; so we chose that for our baby to commemorate this important fact in the progress of women in Japan.” Advance of Women Towards Equality In the olden times a man’s wife never walked beside him on the street; if she accompanied him, it was by following. Now-a-days it is no unusual thing in pro¬ gressive centers to see a couple walking side by side. The old derogatory forms of speech, applied to one’s wife because required by a sense of proper humility when referring to one’s own possessions, are passing Then and Now 35 into desuetude. A gentleman of the old school may still use the epistolary Chinese terms, “gusai” (foolish wife) or “keisai” (“thorn-wife”) in writing of his wife. But the younger generation feels no compunc¬ tion in leaving off the qualifying word. Nor is a mod¬ ern man, when asked how many children he has, so likely to follow the ancient precedent and reply with the number of sons only, omitting the daughters. The four factors operating all the world over to rouse women—education, religion, economic pressure, social organization—have brought the Japanese woman out of her ancient limitations into a world of unbounded possibilities. SELECTIONS The letters and essays of the students in Japanese Chris¬ tian colleges are flashlight pictures of Japan, past, present, and to come. The two quotations from English themes which follow suggest two phases of the woman movement in Japan. Woman's Field “Today more than half of the human race are the women . . . . Now all fields are calling for woman. We must stand up without any delay. Japanese women, however, are still dreaming and are living in the old idea of the Orient. Con¬ fucius says in his book, ‘Women and fools cannot be taught.’ Shakespeare says, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman.’ Most of the women in Japan do not feel shame that she is treated as those words. Though some educated women are rising up to shake off the disgraceful yoke of the old idea, they are only few. We cannot find any reason why we must be under the man’s feet, and yet we don’t declare the woman to be above the man like some women who cry for their privilege, mis- 36 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan understanding their real standpoint, only being carried by the breast of the current thoughts. “God is always fair. He has given the man a strong body, brave soul, and field which only he can cultivate. The woman is given also her own field which can be cultivated only by her gentleness, and her love which God has given especially to her. Using her privilege, she has to act freely in her own field. There is no need to be just like an Oriental princess of the olden days—that period had gone already. Some women—the so-called awakened women,—are demanding to be given suffrage; but before that they must themselves make an effort to be treated as a human being for (by) their free work in their own field. No longer can the women endure their slave-like treatment. “Wife must be wife, not high maid-servant; mother must be mother, not nurse; human being must be human being. Wom¬ an is not a decoration of home, but a living spirit, or light,— this is the idea which the strong, new woman who is going to save her sisters from their poor condition is proclaiming to-day in Japan. “But what is the field for the woman? I call it the world in which the woman can act freely, rather that field in which only woman can work and where the work, moreover, is most effectual in the woman’s hand. “Since the great war, woman’s field has been much enlarged, but she must be very careful about the borders. She must not forget her standpoint because, if she loses her nature, it means to lose her whole opportunity. There is an interesting story which illustrates our condition: a tortoise which had been created to walk on the ground one day wished that he could fly in the sky. He asked an eagle to take him with him, but before he flew very high, he slipped off and broke his beautiful shell. This story teaches us the poor results of misusing one’s nature. As we are women, we must walk in woman’s field. Now we cannot wait in vain for it to be opened by the hand of man, but woman herself must Then and Now 37 try to do it, knocking loudly on it because of the wives who are treated as dolls, for mothers who must take care of (the) children of her husband’s wives in the same house with her own; for the girls in the factory who are destroying their body and soul under the dog-like leader.” A Home “The home of which I am going to tell you is standing in the most beautiful part of our city, near the mountain. It is made of white wood which is very beautifully finished and it is a large house. Its style is pure Japanese. “In that house an interesting family is living. How many people are there, do you think? There are twenty people! Father, mother, nine children—their aunt, three maids and a sewing woman and three servants, and one son who cannot come back now, even for his vacation, because he is studying in America. “All the brothers and sisters of this family are very kind to each other—when they go anywhere they always like to go together, but one girl who is sixteen years old has been sick in her room for nearly a year, so she cannot go anywhere. Whenever they are in the home they are comforting her as much as possible, therefore she cannot be lonely at all. Al¬ though she has been sick so long it has not spoiled her beauty. Her complexion is very sweet like a cherry-blossom and she is never thin. Her parents can give her every comfort and she is like a beautiful princess in the fairy tales. “The members of this home are earnest Christians, so it is very pure. The father is master of a great office and he is a kind man and father.” OUTLINE OF CHAPTER TWO The Japanese Family System 1. Primary Confucian Virtues: Loyalty, Filial Piety. 2. Marriage a Social Obligation. 3. How a Japanese Girl is Married: Conservative and Progressive Practice. 4. Monogamy and Divorce. 5. The Married Woman's Status. 6. Christian Marriage: The Story of M. San. CHAPTER TWO The Japanese Family System It is Christianity that has brought to us the conception of a pure home founded on the union of one man with one wom¬ an. Confucianism, Buddhism, and our native Shinto and Bushido did not .... present monogamy as an ideal. On the contrary, I may say, each of these religions rather encour- aged the preservation of family by concubinage. The new word “Katei,” a translation of the English word “home,” is now popularly used to express the idea of a happy and pure home life. This home life, as illustrated by many missionary families, is recognized as an ideal at which to aim. It is Christianity that has given many such homes to Japan, and in them is the real hope for a healthy and sane national life. Tasuku Harada, D. D. A missionary in Japan sometimes has an oppor¬ tunity to address a school or a club where a direct ser¬ mon on Christianity would not be allowed, or at least would not be welcomed. My father, in his long mis¬ sionary life in Japan, had a number of such opportuni¬ ties. He had a favorite lecture on “Ethics” that he used to illustrate by a diagram of two intersecting squares. 1. Primary Confucian Virtues: Loyalty , Filial Piety By way of introduction to this lecture my father would say in effect: “All civilized nations have devel¬ oped to a certain degree those virtues or moral qualities that are essential to the success of individual or com- 39 40 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan munity life. The overlapping section of the squares in my diagram represents these virtues, held in common among all nations. There are, however, certain virtues that the Orient has developed to a higher degree than the Occident; and vice versa. The protruding sections of my squares will represent these two groups, the pe¬ culiar virtues of the East and the peculiar virtues of the West.” Then, starting from the Confucian virtues with their emphasis on what may be called the perpen¬ dicular relationship between superiors and inferiors, he would pass on to show how these virtues should be supplemented by the more horizontal virtues of dem¬ ocracy and individual worth as developed under the influence of the teachings of Christ. It is to these per¬ pendicular virtues that we now turn our attention, in order to see their influence on the social structure of Japan. The main perpendicular virtues are two; loyalty and filial piety, heart allegiance to one’s overlord and de¬ voted service to one’s progenitors. In a country like Japan, where the emperor is ideally conceived of as the father of all his people, and where the imperial line and the nation as well take their descent from the gods of the mythological age, the two virtues are in es¬ sence one. To the non-critical mind of the past wor¬ ship of the gods, worship of the emperor, and wor¬ ship of ancestors merged in one attitude of spirit. “The basis of Japanese society is gratitude for favors re¬ ceived,” is the substance of what one modern Japanese writer has said on this subject. 41 The Japanese Family System Subjection of Woman The attitude of gratitude, working itself out in Japanese society of the Middle Ages, crystallized itself for men in the chivalry code of Bushido, “The Warrior Way,” with its fundamental allegiance to the overlord. For women the practical expression of this same atti¬ tude in daily?' life was summed up in a classic of some two hundred and fifty years ago, called Onna Daigaku , or “The Greater Learning for Women.” It points out that a woman’s substitute for an overlord is her hus¬ band and that she “must serve him with all worship and reverence.” “A woman should look on her hus¬ band as if he were Heaven itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to her husband and thus escape celestial castigation.”* But behind both alle¬ giances—that of the man to his overlord, and that of the woman to her husband—lies the allegiance to an¬ cestors. Ancestor Worship Gratitude to ancestors involves keeping the ancestral tablets in honor, and making certain offerings and vis¬ its to graves; but, most of all, it requires keeping up the family line to insure a worshiping posterity, and maintaining family honor untarnished. “It is not right toward our ancestors,” said a mother recently, weep¬ ing over a threatened family scandal. “You have brought disgrace to our house,” said a man even in these modern times to his unfaithful wife; “The only •Quotations made from Onna Daigaku in this chapter are from Chamberlain’s translation in “Woman and Wisdom of Japan.” 42 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan way you can wipe out this dishonor is by taking your own life. ,> The duties toward ancestors necessitate having a head of the family upon whom the responsibility is lo¬ cated. In olden times he was a veritable patriarch, with power of life and death over the members of his house except his parents. Now his authority is legally much curtailed, but the weight of tradition permits such a head, whether man or woman, large powers of control in relation to the personal destiny of the de¬ pendent members of the family. In weighty matters, such as sale of property, or marriage agreements, a council of the chief relatives is often held; decisions reached by such a council have a practically irresisti¬ ble authority in family affairs. There is an impressive scene in a novel in which a prodigal son has caused much trouble and disgrace. A council of the relatives is pressing the father to disown him. One after an¬ other has put his seal to the paper casting out of the family the offending member. The broken-hearted father hesitates to add his own essential seal. The relatives urge him to more fortitude of will, but he cannot bring himself to the decisive act. The impasse is dramatically broken by the sudden entrance of the son himself, who has returned and overheard the talk from the piazza outside. His father’s refusal to dis¬ own him has broken up the wells of pride and obstinacy within him, and with tears and contrition he resolves to enter on a new life. The family tie is a strong one, because it contains, 43 The Japanese Family System in addition to natural human love, the strong inbred elements of responsibility of the older members for the younger, and respect and obedience on the part of the younger toward the older. There is a famous story of an old time judge who used this family bond to bring about a settlement out of court for a property quarrel brought to him by two brothers. He had the two brothers shown into a large, cold room with but one brazier in the center and left them waiting there for some hours. They sat at first on opposite sides of the room, but the temperature drew them in time to the brazier where, warming hands together over the coals, they began to be reminiscent of early home days and childhood experiences. When the judge finally sum¬ moned them, they had made up their quarrel and were ready to depart. 2. Marriage a Social Obligation The necessity of keeping up the family line makes marriage a social obligation, and renders the choice of a partner more a matter of family than of the indi¬ vidual. The person selected should be of similar family ideals and standards. The parent should be the one to decide the choice. He does so after careful investigation of the candidate. The go-between, who at least nominally conducts the investigation, is a mar¬ ried friend of suitable experience, and many different sources of information are consulted. The go-be¬ tween, or his agent, is a familiar figure in a school office, a friend’s home, a place of business connections, 44 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan or even at a confidential agency, to which it is some¬ times easier to delegate the matter. Some of these confidential agencies are strictly matrimonial bureaus, a modern development in view of changing conditions that have lightened family responsibility and loosened individual bonds. The first such bureau was started in Tokyo in 1900, and eighteen years later there were twenty-seven such institutions in that city alone. They had had in that period 10,032 applications (more than half men), and had arranged 3660 marriages (more than half of these being of women applicants). The largest number of women applicants reported them¬ selves as having no employment; of the men more were merchants or in business companies than any¬ thing else. While the list includes various of the humbler occupations, it contains also a surprising num¬ ber of educated people, as officials, teachers, doctors, military men. Matrimonial Bureaus Regulated The police investigation that collected these facts was made in 1919, in order to correct abuses of which some of the agencies had been guilty, and resulted in the promulgation of certain regulations for their con¬ trol. No application is to be accepted unless accom¬ panied by a copy of the applicant’s census register, and, in case he or she is under age, a certificate of the parent’s or guardian’s consent to the application. (The age after which the modern Civil Code per¬ mits marriage independent of a parent or guardian is for men thirty, for women twenty-five.) The appli- 45 I ■ The Japanese Family System cant reports his own vital statistics, with statements about his family including grandparents, about his business, income, and property, grade of living, and the kind of mate desired. The points that the bureau ex¬ pects to investigate for both parties before making a marriage introduction are: the progenitors on both sides of the family for three generations back; uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters; details of the life his¬ tory of father and mother, with statement as to char¬ acter, tastes, health; the same for the person concerned, with the addition of details about education, “mental ability, accomplishments, any bad habits, past and pres¬ ent conduct, amount of sake drunk, any secret rela¬ tions with a member of the other sex, appearance, bear¬ ing and physique, property and the property of the head of the house, home conditions, reputation and its correctness, behavior during any specified period, whether previously married or not, whether ever con¬ victed of a crime.” Newspaper advertisements for a partner in marriage are also a modern development in Japan. The large majority of marriages, however, are pri¬ vately arranged. The detailed statement of the work of a marriage bureau has been given here merely to illustrate the principles on which the arrangements are made. Where the bureau or the go-between is honest, the advantages are obvious, and many happy matches result. Temptation to gild the report is, however, universally recognized. A Christian school that had given correct information to an agency about a medio- 46 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan ere girl afterward learned from another inquirer that she was being represented by the agency as of unusual attainments. The school, therefore, blacklisted that agency as not to be trusted with information in future. Marriage the Business of Parents As stated above, upon the parent devolves the re¬ sponsibility of the decision. The young people them¬ selves are often consulted and have an opportunity to express an opinion,—increasingly so in these days. However, family pressure is often very severe. An ex¬ treme case is of a mission school graduate who a few summers ago was being beaten almost daily by her father in his attempt to bring her to consent to marry the non-Christian man whom he had chosen for her. She endured, however, and had the joy later of secur¬ ing a Christian husband. Another Christian girl, re¬ sisting the marriage her family desired for her with a non-Christian man, a sake brewer, was dealt with by a council of the relatives, who in a long argument pressed on her the family break that her refusal would bring about, and finally in the late hours of the night won her consent. She had come to feel that her duty was to sacrifice her own ideals and hopes for the harmony of the family. That the young people of Japan today should have so little voice in the matter of marriage is not strange, not only because they are under authority, but because they have had no mixed social life and do not know young people of the other sex, except relatives. They, 47 The Japanese Family System therefore, have no basis of experience for sound judg¬ ment. The separation of the sexes, very strenuously urged in Onna Daigaku, is still marked in many ways. Seats in churches are still largely separate for the women. Some mothers in conservative places hesi¬ tate to let their daughters go to church because they may get acquainted with bad young men there. At church sociables it is almost impossible to persuade the men and the women to sit together. Mixed choirs in some of the larger centers may be said only recently to have passed the experimental stage. Coeducation above the elementary grades is un¬ known in Japan but for a few exceptions in university grade work or in specializing schools. In one of the modern instruction books on morals for the second year class in a girls’ high school, a model of virtue is quoted in the case of a poetess of ancient times who, when obliged to attend poetry meetings where men were present, always sat on the other side of the sliding doors so as to be modestly hidden from view. Yet many of the girls who read that chapter are jost¬ ling elbows with men in the crowded street cars on which they commute to school, have men teachers as well as women, meet their brothers’ friends when they come to visit, and are thrown with men in a hundred and one common business ways of the modern world. Free Marriages The ideal of the moralist or conservative who tries to have these contacts all kept impersonal or merely me¬ chanical is an impossible one. Acquaintances result and 48 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan ripen into friendships, and friendships into love, as the world over. Resultant marriages are called “free mar¬ riages,’’ because the individual, rather than the family, controls the choice. That does not mean, however, that the families of the two are ignored. Probably they become the formal agents of negotiations before the match is legally consummated. Even “free marriages” generally have some married friends to act as nominal “go-betweens,” to promote the union. A lawyer re ¬ cently told me that his estimate was that two out of ten matches in Osaka nowadays are “free marriages.” Probably the proportion is greater in less conservative cities like Tokyo and Kobe. Frequently, however, there are difficulties in the way of the union which the young people desire. Per¬ haps it is some hereditary taint in one family—leprosy, tuberculosis, insanity are particularly feared. Per¬ haps it is some unsuitability of health, education, or so¬ cial standing. Perhaps it is because each one is the head, or is to succeed to the headship, of a family, so that neither can leave his own house to become a mem¬ ber of another. An only child, whether son or daugh¬ ter, has a responsibility for carrying on the family name, (if it is a daughter, her husband drops his family name for hers) and there are a few cases of a love being sacrificed for that inherited responsibility. It is possible, however, to meet the situation by the adoption by one family of a new heir. The child of a relative is often adopted for an heir, especially in child¬ less families where adoption is imperative. Sometimes AN OUTDOOR SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL 49 The Japanese Family System the marriage is permitted on the condition that the first¬ born child shall take the heirship in the family that was deprived of an heir by the marriage. Not infrequently a childless couple adopt both a boy and a girl, with the expectation that at a suitable age they will marry each other. 3. How a Japanese Girl is Married: Conservative and Progressive Practice The following essay by a young woman in a Chris¬ tian college represents the old conservative type of Japanese marriage today. Fortunately, however, parents nowadays, especially Christian parents, are more and more giving their daughters the privilege of acquaintance with a fiance before marriage. The emi¬ nent educator, Miss Tsuda, has in fact for years taught her students that, although acquaintance be¬ fore engagement is not yet generally feasible, it is their right to claim opportunities for meeting after engagement, and even to break the engagement, if acquaintance does not give promise of future happi¬ ness. The sketch, with a few corrections in the Eng¬ lish, follows: “Free marriage is deemed not to be a decent thing for the people in Japan where the principle of family system prevails. And there are very few chances for the young people to associate with each other. These two facts hold the parents of a grown-up young man responsible for finding him a wife, instead of the son himself. Wealth, lineage, social influence are the first 50 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan consideration. Character, education, physical make¬ up come next to be considered. Whether or not there exists a love between the two young people is a ques¬ tion of little importance. “After choosing a candidate, the next step to be taken is to ascertain, through a go-between, if the par¬ ents of the young girl in question are willing to let their daughter marry the young man. In case the answer is given in the affirmative after a thorough investigation by the parents, a special kind of interview is to take place between the future bride and bridegroom, some¬ times in the presence of the parents, the go-between always performing the duty of introducing the pair. This interview is called miai in Japanese, which means ‘looking at each other/ This is an indispensable part of the marriage process, and it affords, in most cases, the first opportunity for the young people of seeing each other. Usually the park, the theatre, and other public places are used for this purpose. “If the young man chooses the woman for his life- mate the miai usually ends in matrimony. The young woman in Japan is remarkably obedient to her parents and their consent to miai signifies their consent to the marriage. Generally the woman of early age, espe¬ cially brought up in such a way as described, in ten cases out of ten could not even have a glance at her suitor during the miai, being very shy and in an un¬ settled feeling all that time. The young man with his intellectual insight through a single miai and the young girl with not even a single glance at him,—that closes the miai. 51 The Japanese Family System “Both parties thus agreeing, the bridegroom will make a present called yuino * through the hand of the go-between in token of contracting the bargain. The yuino consists of the future wife’s clothes, in most cases; but sometimes money. Sometimes a catalogue of the list of things to be given to the bride is presented as a yuino without the actual presents at that moment. Then, if the negotiation goes smoothly, the matrimo¬ nial ceremony is soon to follow. “Under certain circumstances it will be postponed for over a year. But between the time of yuino and their marriage ceremony the two people, future wife and husband, still remain as strangers to each other’s character. It is considered very important to fulfil the contract of yuino and therefore no matter what new discovery is made which proves the danger of the girl’s marriage it will be ignored; the girl, being merely a doll, is sent away to her new home, usually carrying with her a dagger, which is presented to her by her par¬ ents with the following words: ‘You have no home ex¬ cept your husband’s now. This is your friend.’ Thus she attends her matrimonial ceremony and gets mar¬ ried in the presence of the Japanese marriage god.” Christian Ideals of Marriage The modern progressive type of marriage arrange¬ ment may be illustrated by the following extract, dated 1922. A Christian father of moderate means, who had sent his daughter through a mission school, published ‘Generally the yuino is sent from each side to the other, not only from the groom. 52 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan an article telling how her engagement and marriage had taken place. It shows how the Christian teaching of individual worth and individual responsibility has been applied in real life. He tells the story thus: “It was on a certain day of February last year that this question of marriage of my daughter was brought up—at the reception held after the wedding my daugh¬ ter remembered the date so distinctly that she was teased by a person who sat next to her and she blushed. Both my daughter and I were away at business and her mother was in bed with a slight cold. Mr. and Mrs. K., our relatives, called and brought up the ques¬ tion. They told my wife that the man they had in mind was from our prefecture, and although still a student was a promising young man with no depen¬ dents who might trouble him. After the matter had been discussed among the three of us, parents and daughter, we came to the decision that my daughter might associate with the man for a proper length of time and if they should come to a good understanding and want to marry they would be at liberty to do so. The most essential matter in marriage is the will of the two young people concerned. This is a matter of course, and yet in this world where so many unnatural things happen, from the first I decided that should be my attitude as a father. “After the miai, (the formal interview before mar¬ riage), correspondence followed between the two and later they called on each other and came to trust each other and became engaged. It was toward the end . A SUNDAY SCHOOL IN JAPAN 53 The Japanese Family System of summer last year. Her father and mother, and Mr. and Mrs. K. who acted as their go-betweens, were only their advisers and leaders during this time. There was no family property on either side to be the cause of trouble, neither were there any relatives that might interfere with them. ‘‘With their love and good sense, and the sympathy and guidance of the people around, everything went well, and at last the wedding was held to-day. With¬ out any old customs to trouble them, very simply and solemnly the union of a pure man and a pure woman was consummated by their respected old pastor.” 4. Monogamy and Divorce The treatment of marriage as a contract of con¬ venience is changing, in company with the growing realization of the dignity and rights of womanhood. The marriage of the Crown Prince (now Emperor) in 1900 was accompanied by religious rites in the pal¬ ace shrine; this was an innovation that gave the event a sacred significance indicative of the new attitude toward marriage. The influence of the Christian wed¬ ding ceremony, with its solemn vows of responsibility, has been so great that in recent years many marriages have been performed with similar rites conducted by a Shinto priest. One of the most popular places for weddings is the Hibiya Shrine in Tokyo, which, it is said, must be spoken for long beforehand, in order to secure a date. Bigamy has for many years been illegal. The maintenance of a secondary establishment by a 54 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan man who can afford it is frequently condoned by so¬ ciety, especially if the wife is an invalid. But the Christian conception of a monogamous marriage is gaining steadily in influence. A prefectural governor was recently invited to the wedding of one of his sub¬ ordinate officials. The ceremony was in a church, and was followed, as the Japanese custom is, by brief con¬ gratulatory addresses or messages from representa¬ tives of groups of friends. The governor, represent¬ ing the groom’s official circle of friends, spoke a few very genuine words of felicitation, in the course of which he said, “I have never seen a Christian wedding ceremony before this. It is so solemn and sacred that it seems almost a desecration to make a commonplace speech here. I am especially impressed with the vows of faithfulness between one husband and one wife.” The deacons of the church felt as if that one wedding had been a whole evangelistic campaign. The famous Confucian “seven reasons for divorce” held also in Japan up to the modern era and were in¬ cluded in the Onna Daigaku. As that book became a common item in a bride’s trousseau, the women of Japan were trained to go to great lengths of submis¬ sion and forbearance rather than invite a marriage rupture. As the children of a marriage belong to the father, a divorce would generally mean to the wife the loss of her children. Therein lies a powerful motive to endure and to make herself endurable. It is quite often the case, however, in unhappy marriages, that the trouble is not between the husband and the wife, but between the husband’s relatives and the wife. The Japanese Family System 55 The Patriarchal Family In old-style families where the bride goes to live with the husband’s parents, with perhaps grandparents, too, and brothers with their families under one generous patriarchal roof, there are many difficulties of self¬ adaptation. The Onna Daigaku speaks in no uncer¬ tain tones on her new obligations: “After marriage her duty is to honor her father-in-law and mother-in-law, to honor them beyond her father and mother, to love and reverence them with all ardor, and to tend them with practice of every filial piety ... As brothers-in- law and sisters-in-law are the brothers and sisters of a woman’s husband, they deserve all her reverence,” etc. A divorce “by mutual consent,” probably the common¬ est kind in Japan today, is generally spoken of in some such terms as, “She has gone back to her own home.” The social estimate of divorce in the Onna Daigaku is: “A woman once married, and then divorced, has wan¬ dered from the ‘way’ and is covered with great shame, even if she should enter into a second union with a man of wealth and position.” When the young daugh¬ ter of a house has “returned” in this way after a brief married experience, the matter is kept as quiet as possi¬ ble to facilitate the arranging of another match. The latest available statistics give the number of marriages in Japan in 1918 as 503,286, and the number of divorces that same year as 56,741, or 11.3 per cent of the marriages. The decrease in the percentage of divorces in the last twenty-five years is striking. The average percentage of divorce to marriage in five 56 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan years from 1894 to 1898 was 27.3 per cent; the figures for the successive quinquenniums down to 1918 stand at 18.1 per cent, 15.6 per cent, 13.6 per cent, and 12.8 per cent respectively. This reduction of percentages by more than one-half is partly the result of the spread of Christian ideals. These figures do not, however, include the so-called “hidden divorces,” i.e., the separations after unregis¬ tered marriages. The legality of a marriage in Japan depends on its being registered. If the registration is delayed for any considerable time after the social or religious ceremony, the couple have a chance to see whether they really wish the arrangement to stand. If they do not, it can be dissolved without ceremony, as the marriage was never legally consummated. Such cases are more often due to neglect than to the inten¬ tion of making a trial marriage. It is of interest, how¬ ever, that a woman’s right to claim damages in such a case was established in 1915 by a court decision against the husband. It is one of the responsibilities of a Christian pastor performing a marriage ceremony to ascertain that the registration takes place promptly. In case of a child resulting from a trial match or any other irregular union, if it is not desired by the father and legalized by him, the family system provides a beneficent arrangement by which it is adopted by the parents of the mother. It is thus given a definite stand¬ ing and saved from the social handicap that might otherwise blight its life. One change that modern life and thought are bring- 57 The Japanese Family System ing about is that a young couple now frequently set up housekeeping for themselves instead of remaining under the parental roof. It is not only the young peo¬ ple that desire this; the old people, too, often wish it. Even where temperaments are congenial and purposes kindly, it is a relief not to have the conflicting ideals and customs of the past and the present in too insis¬ tent a contact. 5. The Married Woman’s Status The legal status of women under the modern civil code of Japan still shows in striking manner the in¬ fluence of the family system. While a girl attains her majority, like her brother, at the age of twenty, and is, while single, as free as he in the performance of juris¬ tic acts, marriage at once changes her status to one of incompetency. She may not lend or borrow money, transfer her own real estate, or do any important legal act without her husband's authorization. She is only partly out of the subjections to which the traditions of the past have assigned her. Her own daughter, in a question of succession to the house, may be set aside in favor of the son of her husband’s concubine.* A lecturer from the Law Department of the Kyoto Imperial University, speaking in 1919 before a large audience of women on women’s place in the family system, told his hearers, after enumerating their dis- *It is to be noted that a committee is already at work on the re¬ vision of Books IV and V of the Civil Code of Japan, namely, those sections dealing with the family relations and succession. Japan has traveled far since this part of the Civil Code was enacted in 1898, and the revision will evidence that progress. 58 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan abilities under this system, that in his opinion the day of that system was past. He pointed out that the social and political reasons for the family system have ceased to have weight; that education being now in the hands of the state and not the family, and contact between the government and the individual being now direct, a representative of a family organization is no longer a necessary medium of communication between the two; that the only reason left now for the family system in Japan is the religious one—ancestor worship. He said, “It is ludicrous for Japan to have at the present time a system discarded two thousand years ago in Europe. Ancestor worship should be otherwise provided for— possibly by some central shrine in which all families of a village or a group unite for common observances and thus relieve the individual household; and the family system should be abolished.” Yet lovers of Japan, who see what the family sys¬ tem has done, under the guiding providence of God, to build fundamental virtues in society and individual, can hope that it will be abolished only as it is super¬ seded by the higher ideals of the Christian home: a freedom balanced by responsibility, a single standard of purity, its law that of mutual service within and that of leavening without, its allegiance to the one Father of whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named. The woman of Japan has developed, under the old system, a character of wonderful beauty in modest self-effacement and self-abnegation. 59 The Japanese Family System 6. Christian Marriage: The Story of M. San How the love of Christ, implanted upon such char¬ acter, works out, is illustrated in the following story that I am permitted to quote from a personal letter written recently by the missionary in the case. It shows (as she calls it) the characteristic power of a Japanese woman “to win by passive resistance.” Though dated a generation ago, it might have happened to-day; and we have the advantage of knowing how it all turned out. This, then, is the story of a girl whom we will call “M. San.”* “About thirty-three years ago, one morning as I came from church I found an elegantly dressed Japa¬ nese lady at my gate. At once she greeted me with the assurance of a friend, saying she had been baptized in Tokyo, but had recently come here; and not knowing whether there were any Christians here or not, she was trying to find out, and had come to our gate and found that a missionary was living there. She was so cordial and enthusiastic, I feared she might be a little off, as Japanese women I had met so far were very reserved. A young Japanese man, a Christian, my teacher, was there. I asked him to talk with her. She proved to be the wife of an officer. Her husband had been op¬ posed to her becoming a Christian, and so she was hav¬ ing a hard time to keep her faith. In a short time she brought the daughter of another officer to the school. After a few months the girl was baptized, but all *San is the polite Japanese suffix to be used with the name of a person. GO The Woman and the Leaven in Japan seemed to go well with her until the parents thought it time for the girl to be married. They had betrothed her to an army man years before, without her knowl¬ edge or consent. When she was told to stop school and get ready to marry she refused to marry the man, saying she was a Christian and could not marry a man who drank sake. This was unheard-of rebellion, the daughter of a samurai refusing to do as she was bidden by her family. Did not the family know better than she what was for her good, which was what was good for the family? Then the father said that that was what he had gained by allowing his daughter to asso¬ ciate with foreigners and Christians. “A disobedient daughter was a disgrace to any sam¬ urai household. At once she was stopped from school. Then she was confined in the home and made to do the roughest work of the house. She was not allowed any communication with her friends. We were told it was useless to call or to try in any way to pacify the family. The wife of the officer who had led her to the school also went to the house in vain. This lady one day sent a messenger asking me to come to her without de¬ lay. One of the Japanese teachers and myself at once went to her. She said her husband had kicked her that morning and ordered her to have all her things ready to leave his house forever by the time he returned from his duties at four o’clock that afternoon. She was in great distress and asked if we did not think she might become a Bible woman. She said that perhaps for her lack of faith this had come to her. HOUR FOR GAMES IN THE DAILY VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL The Japanese Family System 61 “We asked all particulars. While she had done noth¬ ing that was wrong from a Christian standpoint, or in our eyes, she had done some things that it was not con¬ sidered the right thing for a Japanese wife to do. I told her I did not think God would call her to be a Bible woman, while she would have to leave her children to be brought up by those who are opposed to Christianity. We advised her to go to her husband on his return and tell him she had done wrong in some things, ask his par¬ don, but tell him she could not leave her children. She did so. The husband was sullen for some weeks, but after a time he consented to come with his wife to a meal here in our home. He was very fond of foreign food. I did my best to make a meal that I knew he would like. He was not very gracious all the evening, but he ate heartily. He forbade his wife going to church. I advised her to be the humble Japanese wife until his resentment would pass. He was inflicting punishment on his wife because she had caused the trouble in a fellow officer’s house by leading the daugh¬ ter into strange ways and doctrines. “One day while I was in church the wife of the stub¬ born officer came and asked if I would tell her how to make the pudding we had for supper the last time they had a meal with us. I never took more satisfaction in giving a recipe,* even if I did leave church to do so, for I felt the winter anger was beginning to thaw and the better side of the man coming to the front. I knew that, at heart, he was an honest man and kind, but with a *Inside information reveals the fact that this was a sweet potato pudding. 62 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan rough exterior. Weeks passed, and I heard nothing of our imprisoned girl. The afternoon Sunday school in which she had been helping seemed lonely without her. She was missed in the school, but no word of sympathy could we send. After some months, one Sunday after¬ noon as I entered the little Sunday school room, what was my surprise to see M. San sitting among the chil¬ dren as if she had never been absent, as calm as of old, smiling and happy. Not being Japanese I could but show my surprise. She said that tomorrow the lady who had led her to be a Christian would call and tell me all. She added, T am very happy. God’s promises hold good. I was comforted by the passages of Scrip¬ ture I had memorized.”, “The next day the lady called. Her story was thus. T did as you recommended, until my husband seemed to forget all the disagreeable days of the past. I man¬ aged to get him to meet this young man of the church, who is now a student in Kansei Gakuin.* This young man has no family responsibilities. He can be adopted into the M. household and marry the daughter and become the head of the house. My husband saw what a fine young man he was, and went to the M. family and told them that he had been a fool to treat his wife as he had done, for he knew she was a better woman for being a Christian. Now as the daugh¬ ter was determined not to give up her faith, would it not be better to take this young man as her hus¬ band, and forgive the girl? The old man was in a *The large Methodist College in Kobe. 63 The Japanese Family System mood to do something if he could only save his face. The Oriental could not bear to lose face. He had wit¬ nessed the gentleness as well as the firmness of the daughter. Every one fell in love with the young man. In a few days we were invited to the M. house to a feast and to add our blessing to the young couple. The guests were the church members. As you know, this couple lived happily ever afterwards, and they have seen their children grow up in the nurture of the Lord, and they have now grandchildren going the same way.” SELECTIONS The students in the Japanese Christian colleges have various backgrounds of family life and of wider experience, which color all their college work. Home pictures are good material for rhetoric classes. My Little Sister “I have a little sister of nine years old—I will describe her. She has a rather round face, a little chin, and lovely eyes and mouth. Her hair, I am sorry, is not quite black, but it is plenty. Every time I go home from the Dormitory I used to cut her hair short all the same length and tie a ribbon on the top of it. (A dark blue one becomes her best, I know). “But about her hair I want to tell you something. The last time I went home I was surprised to see her hair cut so short that almost all her whole ears appear from under it! ‘I cut it myself this time/ she said, ‘only getting the help of the maid. It is far better like this.’ “She has an elder brother and she plays among his friends with him. She never cries, even when other boys might cry sometimes. Our parents feel sorry to notice her using a 64 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan boy’s way of talking. But my sister’s husband loves her best, and her mischief also. “Often he will say to her, ‘Oh, yes, you are a very nice, charming, lovely,’ and then he adds in a small voice, ‘I mean, that is you might be if you were a boy.’ Then she jumps up at him and scratches at his face as well as his arms and hands. Fighting against her monkeyish pranks, he con¬ tinues like this: ‘Oh, yes, yes, just in such a manner as this boys often do. Have you ever seen a lady?’ etc., etc. “Our mother gave her old, black parasol to her to use as her small umbrella for rainy days. She seems so glad to have it that she carries it every day to school, caring not whether it is dry or rainy. “Her poor mark in school is Arithmetic. Her best one is in Composition. I read some of them. She wrote many things about us her friends loving or hating, even about the very teacher’s face or manner. The brother-in-law, our father and mother and I, so-and-so and our dialogues or conversations made models for her writing. There were some places I felt so sorry about, that they had to be written. “This little sister was quite a dandy when she was very small. She used to like to change her dress more than four times a day, but. she has grown a nice girl now and no more wants such foolish things as this. She wears her little kimono with her hakama (skirt) over it now to school and sometimes foreign dress, too. Would you love such a little sister?” Ideals of service are often unconsciously shown in class ex¬ ercises, and practical religion finds a place there. A Little Sunday School Boy “I know a sweet, little story about a boy—he is one of my pupils in Sunday-school. He was a naughty, restless, little boy of nine years. I shall never forget his dark, clear eyes like the stars in an autumn sky and his lovely manner when he listened, ♦ 65 The Japanese Family System “One day after I had been talking about prayer I asked them whether they had any experience in prayer or not. Then he stood and began to talk. He blushed and his voice was exciting. I listened to him entirely forgetting that he was the same little boy who was holding the door when I had first tried to come into the room! “This was his story—one afternoon he went to the moun¬ tain-side with his friends to pick some wild flowers for their painting class. While he was gathering flowers he found a frog which jumped before him, out from the bushes. He di¬ rected all his attention to it and followed where it went. But suddenly it disappeared from his sight. He went on and on, searching for it further. Then he suddenly began to look around him and he found himself alone in a dark wood which he had never seen before. “The tears rushed to his eyes. He threw the flowers on the ground and almost he was going to cry badly, but suddenly he remembered the last lesson of Sunday-school. So he rubbed off the tears and knelt on the soft grass and lifted up his eyes toward Heaven just as his picture of little Samuel did in the lesson-paper. “When he finished his short prayer and listened he soon heard the voices of his friends calling him. He jumped up and started to run toward the calling, and ran and ran, follow¬ ing the narrow path which he had not seen before. Only a little while after he met his companions, who came to search for him. “As he, so small, was telling this story to us, I thought how he was too little to go to the hillside without some older friends.” OUTLINE OF CHAPTER THREE The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 1. Child Life. 2. Morals, Manners and Dolls. 3. Girls' High Schools, Native and Christian. 4. Problems for Girls Who Become Christian. CHAPTER THREE The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan “Today is the day that this baby of mine Makes the first visit to the shrine. What shall we ask for when we pray? That our baby be kept in health alway.” So runs a song sung to generation after generation of babies in Japan. When the baby is a month old, he is taken on a first miyamairi, or pilgrimage to the tutelary shrine of its village. It is the first great occa¬ sion in the baby’s life. A special ceremonial dress has been made after the baby’s birth—as the choice of colors depends upon whether it is a boy or a girl—and with suitable offerings the mother, and perhaps a woman relative or friend or two, take the baby for an act of devotion that is at once a parental acknowledg¬ ment and a prayer for future blessings. 1. Child Life In Japan one’s age is counted by the number of calendar years in which one has lived; one is always at least one year older by the Japanese count than by the American, and a baby less than a full year old may often be called two. Thus practically every other year in the small child’s life there comes a stated pilgrim¬ age. On November fifteenth is the shichi-go-san no iwai or “seven-five-three celebration,” when all Japan 67 68 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan aged three, five, and seven, dresses in its best and cele¬ brates its growing stature by a visit to its guardian shrine. But a still bigger day to Young Japan is the day when it first goes to school. On the first of April* after its real sixth birthday, it dons its fresh school uniform, straps over its shoulder its new school-bag, and trudges forth with all the mixed joys and trepida¬ tion of the explorer of a promised land. It sits on chairs at desks in classes of fifty or so, has both men and women teachers,f with school six days in the week, pays a small tuition fee and buys its own books, and in general loves its school and its teachers with the warm loyalty of its youth. An occasional child, perhaps one in eighty, is fortunate enough to go to kindergarten.^ The kindergarten is a recognized part of the educational system of Japan, but not compul¬ sory. The first kindergarten was started by the gov¬ ernment in 1875, only three years after the public school system was inaugurated. Ten years later saw the establishment of the first Christian kindergarten, the forerunner of 242 others listed with it in the 1921 statistics of “The Christian Movement in Japan.” The *The Japanese school year begins in April and ends late in March, with a short vacation before reopening. The longer summer vacation and ten days or so about New Year’s divide the year into three terms. tin 1919 the proportion of women teachers in the elementary schools was 44.8%. There were 25,625 elementary schools, with an enrolment of over eight million. $No statistics are available for stating the exact proportion. In 1919 there were about 52,000 children in the 612 kindergartens recorded in the official statistics. Presumably there were between three and four million children of kindergarten age. The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 69 vital importance of these Christian kindergartens will be dwelt on in a later chapter. Primary Schools There are very few Christian elementary schools in Japan—twenty-seven out of over twenty-five thousand elementary schools in the land. The reason is the strict requirement of conformity to government regu¬ lations during the six years of compulsory education. Few private agencies have established such schools. There is a marked tendency in recent years, however, to greater elasticity in the government system; num¬ bers of private schools have been springing up under wealthy patronage, and Christians will find an increas¬ ing opening in this field. The child’s life in the elementary school is varied and interesting. There are the usual fundamentals in its own language, geography, and history, and in na¬ ture study and arithmetic; there are the ever-loved forms of handicraft in paper, clay, and bamboo; there are drawing and singing, and for the girls sewing. Much attention is given to physical education, and be¬ sides the prescribed gymnastics much is made of games, excursions, and athletic meets. Parents’ days are great days, when the copy-books, drawings, com¬ positions, hand-work—in fact, all available produc¬ tions—of the pupils are on exhibition, and the children themselves act as receiving committee, ushers, and guides to the eager relatives and friends who come to inspect. Elaborate programs, musical and literary, are staged for visitors. 70 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan Fairy Tales In these programs a wealth of old Japanese folk¬ lore and traditions is drawn on, as well as modern dialogue and song. There is the hero-tale of Momo- taro, the Beach Boy, loved by all Japanese children; with his faithful followers, the Dog, the Monkey, and the Pheasant, he accomplished the destruction of a galaxy of demons and has served as a model of youthful courage ever since. There is the sweet story of the Matsuyama Mirror, from the ancient days, when polished metal was used for a reflecting surface and such an instrument was a rare possession: a dying mother had given her treasured mirror to her daughter, saying, “Whenever you are lonely, look in this box and you will find me there to comfort you.” It was true; the girl found unfailing joy in the likeness of her mother in the mirror. When an uncongenial stepmother entered the family and tried to poison the mind of the father with suspicions of the girl’s in¬ tentions, it was the discovery of her in the act of thus finding consolation from her mother that convinced him of her filial piety, brought the stepmother to tears of contrition, and restored the family harmony. There is, too, the story of the Sun-Goddess Ama- terasu, the ancestress of Japan,—how when she hid in a cave because her naughty brother had played a trick on her (as naughty young brothers will) and the world was troubled because of the darkness, the God of the Strong Hands pulled away the rock at the mouth of the cave, and the rooster greeted cheerily the The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 71 first rays that preceded her exit. That is why you see a rooster with a drum in pictures of the rising sun— the drum having been used by the other gods and god¬ desses to make merry and entice the peevish goddess out. This myth of an eclipse, and others from the thousand years of stories that antedate real history, are a vital part of a Japanese child’s education and are taught as history not only to the children in the primary schools, but to their older brothers and sisters in secondary schools as well. When the modern educational system was founded in 1872, and an Imperial Rescript established the standard that “henceforward education shall be so dif¬ fused that there may not be a village with an ignorant family, nor a family with an ignorant member,” the Department of Education made no sudden break with the past in the teaching of the nation’s origin. To have knocked out the foundations of the national faith with¬ out providing a constructive substitute might have threatened unknown evils to state and society. In the building of a distinct nationalism through the agency of the public school system, the old religious ideas of the divine origin of the Imperial line and of the nation seemed to the educators indispensable. In spite of the progress of knowledge and the influence of thought from the West, this system of teaching mythology as history still prevails; and teachers who from their own higher training and wider reading are familiar with the critical attitude of modern thinkers toward ancient stories of origins still follow the beaten track and teach 72 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan what is set before them. This condition, however, can¬ not long stand out against the new spirit of internation¬ alism that is invading Japan; and Japanese voices are being raised in protest against it. Mythology vs. History Writes a Waseda University professor in a recent magazine ;* “What an anachronism it is to depend upon mythology for ancient historical facts! ... It is narrow-minded of Japanese historians to hunt up the source of Japanese mythology in Japan only. Now is the time when mythology should be released to a wider sphere. As the history of Europe cannot be solved in Europe only, so Japanese history requires explanations not confined in Japan alone . . . What is seen in Japan’s ancient history has been found in histories of the South Sea Islands and many other places. We should not limit our research to the small space which now forms our territory . . . Even school children know that there must be a gap between history and mythology, although they cannot define it like learned men. To begin the first page of history with mythological stories is old- fashioned and false ... We want to know everything about our ancestors exactly as they were, and trace the true course of our progress.” 2. Morals, Manners and Dolls A study in Japanese schools that deserves special mention is shushin, or morals. This subject in speci- *Kaiho, Jan., 1922. Translated in the Japan Advertiser, The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 73 ally prepared graded text books is carried through both elementary and secondary schools, and covers not only the two fundamental national virtues, but a long list of others, as kindness, truthfulness, thrift, dili¬ gence, unselfishness, care of others’ property, public spirit. I once saw a lesson in shnshin taught dramati¬ cally to a class of the third or the fourth grade. The story was of two children on their way home from school; one breaks the thong of her wooden clog and has to stop; the other one assists her by taking her bundles and helping in a temporary mending of the thong with some available bit of cord. The teacher called up little girls in couples and had them go through in pantomime in front of the class the scene of kindly helpfulness. Shushin The formal basis for the teaching of shushin is the Imperial Rescript on Education. This document was issued by the beloved Meiji Emperor in 1890 and em¬ bodies the ideals for national and individual character as developed from Confucian ethics. It is not only studied in the class-room, but read with ceremony at special school exercises on the “three great holidays.”* The reading is preceded by the singing of the national *These holidays are: New Year’s Day, when all Japan adds one year to its age, and a new page of life is turned with the shihohai, the wor¬ ship of “the 800,000 gods” in the four quarters of the compass—for Christians the worship of the one all-comprising God in a church service—on the first day of the year; Kigensetsu, February 11, the an¬ niversary of the founding of the Empire in 660 B. C. and of the pro¬ mulgation of the modern constitution in 1889; and the Day for celebrating the Emperor’s Birthday, October 31. (The real birthday is August 31, but the national celebration is in the autumn.) In girls’ schools, the Empress’s Birthday, June 25, is also observed. 74 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan song, Kimigayo; the audience remains standing while the scroll is respectfully removed from its silk wrap¬ pings in a specially prepared box, and listens with bowed head to the impressively intoned reading by the principal or the head teacher. An effective song of response is frequently used in girls’ schools to close the ceremony. It may be remarked in passing that there is nothing in this Rescript in any way conflicting with Christ’s teachings. It is read at these functions in Christian schools as well as in all others. Besides the formal teaching of morals, there are the things that everywhere in a girl’s life help to develop valuable traits of character. Her games, often played on the street with a companion or two,—tossing bean- bags in intricate ways in a sing-song counting accom¬ paniment, battledore and shuttlecock (the New Year game), hop-scotch (even with clogs!), blind-man’s- buff, jumping rope, tag,—all help to perseverance and friendly competition. Her doll-plays include tea-par- ties and dressings up and lullabies; Japanese dolls have one enjoyment which the dolls of the West do not have— riding on their mothers’ backs like real babies! Sometimes a cushion is rolled up and tied on the little girl’s back as preparation for carrying the baby brother or sister with whom she is soon to be entrusted. With introduction of the baby carriage and of knowledge of the laws of hygiene, however, the carrying of the babies on the back has considerably diminished among the upper classes. The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 75 Fascinating Festivals The daily doll-plays have, as everywhere, their in¬ herent value for developing the domestic instinct. There is, besides, an annual doll-play that is very dear to the Japanese child’s heart, and that speaks of pat¬ riotism and beauty as well as of home life. That is the ancient Dolls’ Festival on the third day of the third month. For that day the precious historic “dolls” or statuettes are taken out of the storehouses and set up on carefully arranged tiers of shelves—the Emperor and the Empress above in the stately glory of their ancient robes; the Prime Minister of the Left and the Prime Minister of the Right, and the court ladies in gorgeous attire; then five court musicians with their quaint instruments; and below, the vases of peach blossoms, and the feast of special cakes, white, red, and green for this festival, on dainty stands with all the miniature charm of dolls’ tea sets in the West. Other lesser figures may be added ad libitum to the display. No wonder the little girl’s heart swells within her breast during the few precious days when these treasures are brought out to view, and she and her friends gather to enjoy them and have their little par¬ ties at one another’s home. But even this pretty do¬ mestic celebration has had to be attacked by the tem¬ perance societies, because one of its main delicacies is the shirozake, a modified form of sake, from which a child might readily acquire his first taste for alcoholic liquor. The little girl will join her brother in the celebration 76 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan of the Boys’ Festival, too, on the fifth day of the fifth month, and will share his pleasure in the statuettes of ancient warriors, and in the great cloth or paper fish that float in the wind from the high pole where they have been strung—one for every boy in the family— to inspire him with the same perseverance in overcom¬ ing difficulty that the strong-backed carp displays when he swims up a waterfall. Then there is the O Bon, that beautiful expression of the world’s universal feeling for its dead. It is the Japanese Hallowe’en on the sixteenth night of the seventh month. The family graves are weeded and tidied in preparation, fresh offerings of flowers are laid there, fires are set and illuminations made to light the way of the spirits to their old haunts and back. The immortality of the soul is no new idea to the Japa¬ nese child. 3. Girls’ High Schools, Native and Christian The completing of the six years of compulsory edu¬ cation marks an epoch in every girl’s life. Although the upper and upper-middle classes now generally send their daughters either to the higher elementary school for two years more, or to a secondary school of some sort—industrial, commercial, normal, household science, or regular high school—the large majority of the four million girls in the elementary schools to-day will have no further formal education except training in sewing. Many of them go to work in their own homes, helping with the house-keeping and the care of The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 77 younger children, or helping in the family business, whether it be shop-keeping, farming, or one of many of the petty trades still conducted in an individual way in spite of the modern tendency to swallow up small business into large. Home industries there still are, though these have been much reduced by the introduc¬ tion of factories. The raising of silk-worms in the home occupies multitudes of women and girls in cer¬ tain districts of Japan; the pasting of match-boxes, matting-weaving, dyeing, embroidering are some of the ways of money-making at home. Many go out as nurse-girls or house-maids, many enter factories, es¬ pecially silk and cotton spinning and weaving estab¬ lishments. Six hundred and eighty-two thousand girls are in¬ cluded in the Home Office report on child workers of all sorts, and 96,000 girls under fifteen years of age out of a total of 763,000 female employees were at work in factories at the end of 1918. Twenty thousand three hundred and ninety-eight girls under eighteen were in training for geisha or dancing-girls.* Of those who have had a little more education, many go into telephone offices, or ticket offices, or take brief training for clerical positions in business houses. A large factory may run its own training courses for such girls. We hope in a later chapter to get glimpses of the life of some of these workers. Let us now follow the 120,- *See Dr. S. L. Gulick’s “Working Women of Japan” for interesting chapters on women in these various occupations. 78 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan 000 more fortunate girls in the high schools of today, where body and mind are being developed for a larger service to their generation. They carry a heavy sche¬ dule of thirty hours of class work a week, of which generally three are gymnastics, two singing, one draw¬ ing, one Japanese penmanship, and four to eight sew¬ ing—for a girl should learn to make all the hand- sewed Japanese garments of man, woman, and child, and besides learn to use a Singer sewing-machine! Hard Study Called For Then she must have elements of all the sciences, and must study the history and geography not only of Japan and the Orient, which, of course, come first, but likewise, though only in Outline, that of Europe and North and South America. For mathematics, she continues arithmetic with a little abacus practice on the side, has elementary geography, and does or does not touch algebra, as her school happens to prescribe. Her study of her own language, in graded readers with a wide variety of material, involves learning many Chinese characters that are even more fundamental to Japanese literature than Latin is to English* In fact, the study of Chinese ideographs cannot be called that of a foreign language, so incorporated has it become. The girl's foreign language is English, generally two or three hours a week, required in some high schools, elective in others, but growing in importance as Ja¬ pan’s contacts with the West increase. Domestic science gives the girl practical experience in cooking, laundering, and household accounting; besides, her The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 79 school tasks include taking her turn at cleaning class¬ rooms and halls; and in some government school dor¬ mitories the students themselves have charge of pro¬ viding and cooking their meals, and running the house¬ hold expenses. The domestic and social side of her training is often further promoted by the girl’s parents, by the addition of private lessons in music, flower arrangement, and ceremonial tea. Some of the high schools provide these subjects as electives. The koto, that has had in Japanese society the place of the piano in the West, is a long, thirteen-stringed instrument laid on the floor, while the player, sitting on her feet on a cushion be¬ hind it, uses plectrums on thumb and two fingers of the right hand to pluck the strings, with the left hand free to adjust bridges and press strings to alter pitch. It traditionally takes seven years to learn to play the koto well. Flower arrangement in any one of several recognized systems, and the tea ceremony, of which there are different schools, demand also many years of practice for perfection in detail. Both arts require a high standard of patience and self-control and, when mastered, become an expression of poetry in human life. Like all meditative graces, they are suffering from the rush and pressure of the modern active life, and their elaborate forms of a more deliberate age are being abridged to save at least something of their essence to the social world of today. It is in the item of girls’ high schools that the Chris¬ tian movement of Japan has made its largest numerical 80 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan contribution to the cause of education. There are fifty-four Christian girls’ schools of secondary grade, chiefly mission schools, a few being Christian schools under Japanese support and control. Their total en¬ rolment is about 13,000. The entire number of girls’ high schools,—public and recognized private schools— is 455, with an enrolment of about 130,000. Religion Not Taught in Public Schools Thus the Christian schools represent about one- tenth of the high school education of girls in Japan. They are chiefly schools of recognized standing with the Department of Education, of two types: one type identical with the government high schools, the other “equivalent to” a government high school. The former type, conforming completely to the national educa¬ tional system, has no religious teaching in its curricu¬ lum or formal school exercise. By a fundamental pro¬ hibition of religion Buddhism, Shintoism, and Chris¬ tianity are alike excluded from government schools. Mission schools of this type have their Bible classes and religious meetings voluntary and out of school hours. The second type has Bible teaching in its cur¬ riculum and required chapel attendance, sometimes even required attendance at church or Sunday school, and a little more freedom in its courses and text¬ books. The strong point of a mission school, besides its religious training, is its English teaching, as it has one or more foreign teachers and few of the purely Japanese schools do; and often a mission school offers special advantages in instrumental music. Piano and i mm d £ FIRST CLASS IN TRAINING FOR SOCIAL SECRETARYSHIP SERVICE, ' The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 81 the reed-organ, particularly the former, have grown into great popularity in recent years with a corre¬ sponding growth in the appreciation of western music. When mission schools started in the ’70’s,* they were pioneers in girls’ education. They had the field so largely to themselves at first that they went their own way and enjoyed a fair degree of prosperity dur¬ ing the years when Christianity and things foreign were popular. Then in the ’90’s came the nationalis¬ tic reaction when western civilization and thought were at a discount and the Christian movement seemed to suffer a check. Attendance at Christian schools fell off; some were even closed. With the revision of the treaties with the West on the eve of the new century the tide turned, but mission schools found that they had been losing ground in more ways than mere num¬ bers. The government school system had been perfect¬ ed and every large center had its well-equipped girls’ high school with systematized course and licensed teachers. Mission Handicaps Most mission schools had no standing with the government except a permission to exist, and few if any teachers with government licenses. Their equipment was not up to date nor their constituency such as to make them known. Of course, there were shining exceptions, but in general the first decade of the century was a time of mission schools’ waking up *Ferris Seminary, Yokohama, started in 1870 by the Mission of the Reformed Church in America, was the first Christian girls’ school in Japan. 82 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan to the competition they had to face, of their asking their home boards for increased appropriations for better equipment and for improving the teaching force. Without these things they could not secure government recognition; and without that recognition their graduates were handicapped in entering higher schools or seeking teaching positions. Now the ma¬ jority of mission schools have the essential recogni¬ tion; they have received impartial, or even kindly, treatment from the government; their value for char¬ acter training is recognized beyond their circle, and in these days of pressure for educational opportunity some mission schools in large cities, like the purely Japanese schools, are rejecting hundreds of candi¬ dates annually for lack of room. 4. Problems for Girls Who Become Christian The celebration of the national holidays presents no religious problem to Christian schools. The “Three Great Holidays” have already been mentioned. The four holidays of a distinctly religious nature are not observed by any special ceremony at school. These days are the two equinoctial festivals for the worship of the imperial ancestors, and the two harvest festi¬ vals, the first in October when the new rice is offered to the gods, and the second in November when the Emperor first formally partakes of the new rice. This festival, November 23, has been appropriated in some mission schools as a Thanksgiving Day, and a near Sunday is being increasingly observed among the The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 83 churches as such an occasion. On these four holidays the Emperor in a representative capacity performs for the nation certain ceremonies, within the imperial pal¬ ace shrine, to the Sun-Goddess and the imperial spirits. Emperor Worship A nearer problem is the question of reverence or worship paid to the portrait of the Emperor in a Ja¬ panese school. Some mission schools have no picture of the Emperor, declining the honor as one involving too great a responsibility. The ceremonious care that must be given to such an object is a burden not to be lightly undertaken. The question whether the rev¬ erence paid to it is worship or not has agitated many a conscientious heart, but the general opinion now is that it does not compromise a Christian to take part in such a ceremony. The Japanese word ogamu, “to worship” like the Greek word in the original of Revelation 3 :9, does not define the theological status of its object. Neither does the act of bowing, in a country where bowing is a universal form of greeting and of expres¬ sing reverence. The one act definitely limited to wor¬ ship is joining the palms of the raised hands and bow¬ ing over them. This I have never seen done in a school when students were bowing to the Imperial portraits. The educational authorities claim that cere¬ monious reverence to the Emperor is not a religious, but a patriotic act. A similar explanation must be given when schools are ordered to take their pupils for worship (?) at a shrine. There are many deified heroes in Japan somewhat like the canonized saints in 84 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan Europe; only, in Japan the line between deities and the heroic dead is very faintly drawn. The undiscrimi- nating mind reveres both as something superhuman. The Christian Japanese discriminates and continues to revere. Dealing with Superstition The problem to a Christian and to a mission school and its solution are illustrated by this incident related by the late President Takagi of Aoyama Gakuin (the Methodist Episcopal men’s college in Tokyo) : “There is a shrine in the city district where I live, and once they came around through the district to col¬ lect subscriptions for repairs on this shrine. I said, T don’t know what this shrine is in honor of, and, be¬ ing a Christian, I cannot contribute to what I don’t know about.’ So I asked the collector to wait until I could investigate. I went to the Bureau of Religions in the government and looked up the history of this shrine. I found that it was in reality a double shrine, one part being dedicated to an ancient hero, one to oni no ko, ‘the demon’s son.’ I told the collector that I would gladly help to preserve the memory of the patriot honored at the shrine, but as a Christian I could not share in the worship of the demon’s son; and, as the two seemed bound together in this case, I must decline to contribute.” An intelligent attitude like this hastens the passing of superstitions. It is a temptation in Japan as else¬ where, either to conform to prevailing customs or at¬ titudes because that is the path of least resistance, or " 1 :v. :\w ■ ‘ ’■ ■?■■ v- \ • •■ * ATHLETIC LEADERS, TOKYO COLLEGE The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 85 to break with them entirely and be a social iconoclast. In moral matters the modern Christian, like the chosen people of old, must hear the word, “Come ye out from among them and be ye separate.” But in the opinion of many, both missionaries and Japanese Christians, there are questions of national tradition or theological import where severance is non-essential; where the Pauline gift of “discernings of spirits,” by discrimi¬ nating between the good and its alloy, the permanent and the temporary in Japan’s inheritance from the past, may best promote the coming of the Kingdom of God. A mission school girl has thus summarized her un¬ derstanding of the problem: “There was also hero- worship in Greece. Christianity treated it as follows: God gives certain men a special power to do His will. Therefore, they are only the representatives of God’s power. We are all right to reverence the heroes, but we must not forget that above them is God who con¬ trols over us and over the universe.” An illustrative incident occurred last year, when schools all over the nation were invited to contribute to the repair of the Kashiwabara Shrine, the shrine that marks the traditional grave of the Emperor Jim- mu, the founder of the Empire. In one of the mission schools to which the appeal came, it was treated as an educational opportunity. The cause was presented and a Japanese pastor was asked to speak in chapel on the meaning of the contribution and the modern change of attitude towards the great dead from the 86 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan ancient Shinto conception of their deification to the Christian one of grateful admiration and reverence. Voluntary subscriptions from teachers and students were then forwarded in the name of the school. Another Japanese pastor, one trained at Princeton, said to me a few years ago, “I believe that a Christian girl in an old-fashioned home can often give a stronger witness to her Christianity by doing the filial task as¬ signed her of placing the daily flowers and offerings before the ancestral tablets in a true spirit of service, than by calling the whole thing heathen and refusing to have anything to do with it.” There is a class of ideas, however, that is merely evolving out of a religious status into that of folk-lore or convention. The Seven Gods of Good Luck, for instance, are being (like the gods of Greece and Rome in the West) used for decorative purposes, even on mercantile symbols or advertisements. The gate decorations at New Year’s time include, besides em¬ blems of long life and prosperity, the tufted straw rope hung on shrines, sacred trees, etc., in the ancient Shin¬ to worship; yet I have recently seen this used on the gates of Christians who evidently thought of it as nothing more than a form of conventional art. What of Incense Burning? In a Christian girls’ school it once happened that the funerals of two students came on the same day. Both funeral services were in Buddhist temples, and to each a group of students went under the chaperonage of a Japanese Christian teacher to pay their last tribute The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 87 to a school friend. In each service, as usual, there was given at the close opportunity for friends to go up to the casket, bow, and sprinkle incense on the bra¬ zier before it. The teacher in charge of one group per¬ mitted her students to join in this act; the one in charge of the other group did not. On returning to school, notes were compared and much discussion fol¬ lowed as to the meaning of the burning of the incense. The discussion was finally closed with the opinion of the resident Japanese pastor that incense-burning in this case was merely the conventionalized form of greeting to the departed, like laying flowers at a grave, and that it did not signify necessarily worship. The difference of opinion among Christians themselves on points like these is one of the signs of the transition of thought through which the age is passing, and of the conflict of ideas old and new amid which young Japan is feeling its way. Most of the students in Christian schools are not from Christian homes. Their parents have sent them for one of several possible reasons: because the local government school was full and could not take them; because some friend had a daughter there, or the girl wished to go with a friend; because the English and the music attracted them; because they thought re¬ ligion was a good thing for women; or because they had seen the fruits of Christianity and really wanted it. Some do not care if their daughters do become Christians; some hope they will not, and use pressure to dissuade them if they show tendencies that way. 88 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan The main reason for fearing a girl’s conversion is that it might endanger her marriage chances; and, in any case, it would introduce a divergent element in the home-life, which usually connects its joyful occasions with Shinto ceremonies, and its funerals and death anniversaries with Buddhist ones. The Conquering Love of Christ There is a power in the love of Christ, however, that overcomes these obstacles; and when the girl, respond¬ ing to that love under the guidance of a Christian teacher, comes to the point of making a life decision to follow Christ, she is ready to be patient, to wait and work and suffer, if need be, that her parents may be brought to know and share that love with her. One girl who had made the decision for herself had asked her father for permission to be baptized, and had been refused. She waited a while, going on in school, and asked again with the same result. She con¬ tinued to ask at intervals, however, and finally, when she felt that he was weakening, she made consent easy for him by writing home from the school dormitory, “There is to be a baptismal service in the church week after next, and, if I don’t hear from you before that, I shall know that you are willing I should be baptized then.” He availed himself of this means of escape and failed to answer the letter. The daughter and a younger sister were the means of bringing him later on his death-bed to a joyful, personal sense of the love of Christ. She and her husband are now officers in The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 89 the Japanese Salvation Army, with a happy, little family of soldiers growing up around them. Of the thousands of girls who have gone out of these mission schools to homes all over Japan, many of them wives of pastors or teachers, many of them influential in the churches of their locality, helping to leaven with the leaven of Christ the life about them,— of these volumes might be written. Most of those who have stayed in a mission school long enough to gradu¬ ate are professed Christians. But the many who have stayed only a short time will never forget the impress of the Christian ideal that came to them there. They are different because they have been there. The average Japanese girl is married at about twenty years of age. If she has been to high school she takes a year or two after graduation for special training in sewing or cooking or both, in preparation for the marriage that her elders are seeking for her. As the male population of Japan exceeds the female, there is a potential husband for every normal girl; and she looks forward with all of a maiden’s high hopes to the bridal day of her dreams. SELECTIONS In the religious development of a student the yielding of the will is sometimes a late step, coming long after intellec¬ tual conviction of the truth of Christ. The following ex¬ tract is autobiographical, although written in the third person. It is the story of an orphan who had fought loneliness and ill health all her life, and had entered a Christian college after graduation from a secular high school. At the time of these extracts, her years in a Christian atmosphere had led her 90 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan through a number of preliminary struggles. Her faith has now stood many a later test successfully—even radiantly. How One College Girl Became a Christian “After all the blinds of the dormitory had been shut up and all the lights were put out, in a room of the teacher’s build¬ ing, a gloomy-faced girl and her dear friend were talking quietly. Those days she looked so gay and joyful that every¬ one who saw her was surprised by such wonderful change, but that night her old gloomy self came back. . . . She was down¬ cast and was ready to give up her hope. Her friend, with all her heart, encouraged her and told her to hold on until next summer. She told how Miss S. prayed for the girl almost every night, and how many other kind persons were thinking of her and trying to make her happy. The long continued prayer of Miss S. of which she was told for the first time that night gave light to her darkened heart. All through the night she worried, and thought and thought without sleeping. Next morning she looked bright and cheerful, for she came to think that the only way to return the kindness and love of those persons was to try to be happy herself and to be a source of joy to them all. . . . “The tenth of January she called on her friend who asked her to make a nice Christmas present (of deciding to be a Christian) to Miss S. who was coming back. “‘NO/ she cried, ‘I won’t/ The spirit of obstinacy and in¬ subordination rose up suddenly and that night she came home saying all the words she could think of, to refuse her friend’s request. All the way home and all through the night she re¬ peated to herself, ‘No, I won’t, I can’t, no, I will never do as long as I live/ .... She thought as if the sentence, ‘I will never do/ were the only protection that she had against a great unknown power which seemed for her to have begun to conquer her. She folded her arms tightly upon her bosom as if to refuse to open her heart to God. “That night while she was taking her bath, still repeating The Life of a Girl in Modern Japan 91 the same words, the water reminded her of the words which the greatest English poet, Shakespeare, said: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.’ “All had been prepared for her by that time to accept God and her soul cried, ‘Is it not the best chance that has come now? If I lose this opportunity when shall I have an¬ other?’ Miss S.’s letter which she received that very day seemed to whisper to her not to lose the tide that came. Still she heard the cry of her bad impression, ‘I will not,’ which was the greatest hindrance that she ever had. As I have stated, when she was a little girl she heard most of her friends talk scornfully of Christianity, and knew that they did not like even to walk along before the houses where the Christian families lived. It had deeply impressed her little heart and feeling against the religion was so intense that it was the hardest thing for her to surrender herself to Him whom she hated and despised. (The next morning she found two of her teachers) . . . . “All three were seated but she could find no word to express her determination and was silent until the two guessed what she had to say. I don’t understand fully why she said to them, ‘I am not happy.’ “She had two weeks before she received baptism. During these weeks she had the feeling which she herself could not express, not happy, yet not unhappy. She felt to have been conquered, but she also heard the cry of triumph within her¬ self. Her heart became restless and could not study quietly; She tried to pray, but she failed. She could not feel the pres¬ ence of God whom she knew and believed that He is in this universe, yet He seems to her far distant. “Finally, the last critical time came when her worst self tried to restore her. In the Friday night the minister told her to profess that she would believe in God with feeling as 92 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan well as reason. She was convinced that Christianity was the final and highest religion, but she did not like to believe in Him emotionally. She was disappointed and she looked as if the whole world were against her. “The day came that she will never forget through all her life; the day when she was to express publicly that she ac¬ cepted Christ as her Friend and she would become a child of One Father. It was a rainy day and her heart was dreary as the day, yet in the depth of her heart she rejoiced that she came to receive baptism before those who loved her. Thus she was born into the Christian world. A few days later she succeeded in prayer. She became able to talk with her Father freely and often. The strong power came into her heart. She enjoys being with her Father and talking with Him.” ! I :| : a » "d 5 o3 o O ' o t; .g S'« *.3 o3 ^ flT3 'So § C o o t, 2 M fi 1) 32 (O G 3 G OS oS d a> >. J 2 o> -G o3 a « '-C H £"7 <1^ (1) -cjs o 3 k. o o V C t 03 S a,' -C O ^ +■> +J 05 03 K* ^ 6 03 C ca o g 03 03 r—■ 03 03 *-. , <1« ^ o: i>i a £ £ - CO CO H Cm O 03 Pi W w o HH W > ►—t Eg W W H i ■ ''/Vv-’m V' . v. . .. ' . , ' ' a ' ■ ' *vo\ v.\rv-,:; :.'V' .v:-..;.' • . ■■ 1 ■. \ - j-• . \W!c\ '* ■ ' •: ;■ *>Vv. :■ ' ■ ' > . OUTLINE OF CHAPTER FOUR Women's Colleges in Japan 1. Opposition to Higher Education for Women. 2 . Five Girl Pioneers of 1871 . 3. Japanese Colleges Defined and Classified. 4. Seven Non-government College-grade Schools for Girls. 5. Christianising the Student Body. CHAPTER FOUR Women's Colleges in Japan The Japanese girls are capable, have good minds, and some of them are very talented. But as the result of the old training they lack self-confidence and initiative and, above all, strength of will. Yet to encourage these, as some would do, without the basis of religion and specially Christianity, and without the development of mind and the reasoning powers, brings in the greatest elements of danger. What is needed is the growth of the spiritual life, a real training of the understanding, moral teachings that fit the new condi¬ tions of life in modern Japan, and which would develop a realization of the possibilities that come with freedom—in a word, Christian education on higher lines. —Miss Ume Tsuda When it is remembered that not until 1873 the re¬ moval of the anti-Christian posters, which studded Japan from one end to the other, was ordered by the Japanese government, we may well marvel at the pres¬ ent advance of essentially Christian ideals among the people. One famous article of these posters reads as fol¬ lows : “So long as the sun shall continue to warm the earth let no Christian he so hold as to come to Japan, and let all know that the King of Spain himself, or the Christian s God, or the great God himself, if he dare violate this command, shall pay for it with his head.” 95 96 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan 1. Opposition to Higher Education for Women Up to the time when Japan's closed doors were opened to Christian civilization a truly Oriental con¬ tempt for and enslavement of women characterized the nation at large. And it has been no easy thing to open the Japanese mind to the conception of social and intellectual equality of women with men. Hence, ac¬ ceptance of a demand for higher education of Jap¬ anese girls has won its way somewhat gradually. Even today there are deprecating voices raised against col¬ lege work for women, especially when anything like a fund campaign draws special attention to a higher in¬ stitution. A mission school, laying its early founda¬ tions for woman’s education, was warned: “With your English work you are merely training up concubines for unprincipled foreigners in the port cities. ” “Your girls walk like men,” was one very serious criticism brought against pupils of one pioneer girls’ school. At a commencement in the early eighties it was decided that it was altogether too forward for a student to read a graduating essay facing the audience; to read it herself was almost too much; but a compromise was found in her reading it with her back to her listeners. Those days are long since flown. The still relative¬ ly early marriage age is now the main hindrance to a capable student’s higher course. Many more enter than graduate, and the chief reason for this large stu¬ dent mortality—with the exception of ill health— is that even a very successful student may be taken out of college within a few months of graduation because THE BUCKET CEREMONY AT KWASSUI COLLEGE The name Kwassui means “Living Water,” and the ceremony on Class Day symbolizes the passing on of the spiritual “Living Water” from the out¬ going senior class to the incoming one. Holding the special “Bucket,” to whose handle are tied the school colors and those of each graduating class which has participated in a similar occasion, the representative senior makes a speech, charging the junior class to cherish the Kwassui spirit—all the high ideals of womanhood and Chris¬ tianity with which they have been im¬ bued—to keep the “water” pure, and to give to all their sisters to drink at every opportunity. Then the Senior passes the bucket to the Junior, who in receiving it, replies in like vein, promising for her classmates al that has been required of them. The “Bucket” is then put away in a safe place until the succeeding com¬ mencement GROUP OF MARRIED WOMEN COLLEGE STUDENTS Women's Colleges in Japan 97 just the right match has been found for her and her fiance’s family cannot wait. “Do your college graduates really find husbands?” asked a reporter at a dinner given to newspaper men by a Christian college on a publicity campaign. “There are two kinds of young men in Japan today,” replied a Japanese Christian professor. “One kind still wants the former style of child-wife whom he can mould to his own tastes and will. The other kind wants a wife who will be an intellectual companion. That is the kind who tries for our graduates.” Two Normal Schools The Woman’s Higher Normal School in which both Baroness Uryu and Miss Tsuda taught in those early years is still the highest type of educational institution that the government has established for girls. There are two of these schools, the older one in Tokyo, es¬ tablished in 1874, and that in Nara, started in 1907. They are sometimes called “normal colleges.” From these go out the majority of women teachers* in the girls’ high schools over the land. The regular course is four years above the four-year high school, and trains teachers for all the ordinary branches of a girls’ high school. Until recently, it did not give enough training in English to license its graduates for that branch; but it is a sign of the growing demands for that language that in 1922 the Department of Educa¬ tion gave to the Tokyo Higher Normal School its first •There are over 3000 more women than men. 98 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan English licenses, for graduates of a special English course. This government provision for one type of women’s higher education has been of inestimable value to woman’s progress. It has developed her powers and helped her to a large place in one of her most appro¬ priate vocations. But it has been left to private, mainly Christian, enterprise to pioneer the real col¬ lege work for Japan. 2. Five Girl Pioneers of i8yi It was a great and new thing when one day in 1871 a little group of Japanese girls left their native land to get an education in America. Japan’s school system had not yet been inaugurated, her foreign intercourse was still young, and Christian¬ ity was still a forbidden religion. But Count Kuroda, minister of colonization in the government of that day, had a vision that educated women were going to be needed in the building of New Japan; and with his far-seeing wisdom five promising girls of good connec¬ tions were selected to be sent abroad. It was recog¬ nized as of sufficient moment to have the Empress her¬ self before their departure grant them an audience from behind a screen, whence she presented them with gifts of red crepe and cakes. They were given minute instructions as to the principles of their conduct in America and were under contract to promote the cause of women’s education on their return. The five, ranging from seven to fifteen years of age, 99 Women's Colleges in Japan were taken to Washington and placed in charge of the Japanese Legation. They knew no English and were for a while quite by themselves, cared for by hired at¬ tendants. Those first months were indeed a homesick time. One for health and one for family reasons re¬ turned to Japan before the year was out, and one of these died young. The three others found resting- places in happy homes and schools in Washington, New York, and New Haven. They remained long enough to accomplish the purpose of their going, be¬ coming Christians, and returning to give rich service to their countrywomen. Number One Marries Prince Oyama, Japanese Commander- in-Chief Sutematsu Yamakawa, who was eleven years of age when she went to America, graduated with laurels from Vassar College in 1882 and returned to Japan. Those who had hoped that she would specialize as a leader of new women in Japan were disappointed when she was married the next year to General Oyama, later Field Marshal, Commander-in-Chief in the Rus¬ so-Japanese War, and Prince by imperial appointment. But her place of influence in one of the leading homes of the nation, bringing up her two sons and four daughters; managing the family property with unusual skill, even to the reform of certain agricultural lands that greatly increased in productivity under her method; carrying with grace the heavy social respon¬ sibilities—sometimes of an international nature—that her position brought her:—this place of influence could 100 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan not have been adequately filled by one of lesser capa¬ city and training. She died in 1920 at the age of sixty, leaving a fragrant memory behind her. Number Two Marries Baron Uryu, Naval Commander Shige Nagai, a year her junior, specialized for three years at Vassar, in modern languages and music, graduated from its music course in 1881, and returned to Japan a year sooner than Miss Yamakawa. At once the Department of Education engaged her services for the promotion of musical education. For fifteen years before and after her marriage she taught music in both the Woman’s Higher Normal School and Tokyo Music School. Her husband, Admiral (later Baron) Uryu, is a graduate of Annapolis and as commander of the Second Squadron in the Russian War achieved a brilliant success at Chemulpo. Baroness Uryu, like Princess Oyama, fills an important social position; and with this she combines an active interest in educational affairs. Number Three, Ume Tsuda, Becomes Famous Educator The third and youngest of the group, Ume Tsuda, spent eleven years at school in Washington, D. C., in studying English literature in addition to high school graduation, and, returning to Japan, was at once em¬ ployed by the Imperial Household Department in the home of Prince Ito as interpreter to his wife. When the Peeresses’ School for the daughters of the nobil¬ ity was founded in 1885, she was engaged as teacher there, and in 1889, while keeping her position, was sent abroad for three years of further study, this time at 101 Women's Colleges in Japan Bryn Mawr College. On her return she accepted an additional post of teacher in the Woman's Higher Normal School. A later vacation trip led her to the Convention of the International Federation of Wom¬ en’s Clubs in Denver, and then to England for the study of education there. In 1899 she resigned from her teaching positions and in 1900 founded the Eigaku- juku, a school of English for girls, which has steadily prospered and is one of the strongest educational in¬ fluences for women in Japan. In 1913 Miss Tsuda was delegate to the World’s Christian Student Federa¬ tion Convention in America. She has prepared many books for the use of students of English and through both her personal Christian character and her teach¬ ing and administrative ability she has left a permanent imprint for good upon not only the hundreds of stu¬ dents who have passed under her care, but upon the whole progress of woman’s education in Japan. She is now living in retirement on account of ill health. The fifth of these pioneer girls was, after her return to Japan, long lost to the knowledge of the rest. By an interesting accident one of them found her a few years ago, living in obscurity in a humble part of Tokyo. After her discovery the group held a memora¬ ble reunion discussing their early and later experiences. But whether distinguished or obscure in her career, each of these pioneers helped to blaze the way for the woman of New Japan. When they crossed the Pacific in the side-wheeler with the Iwakura Embassy they 102 The Woman and the Leaven in Japan were crossing a bigger barrier than a mere ocean in going out for a higher education. 3. Japanese Colleges Defined and Classified We must now answer the mooted question, What is a “real college ?”—or rather, define the sense in which the term “college” will be used in this presentation of colleges in Japan. For convenience we will assume that content of courses and methods of study suit the ma¬ turity of the student’s age, and will use here the purely mechanical standard of measurement represented by the total number of years of schooling presupposed for graduation. If an average American college girl has taken eight years in the grammar school, and four in the high school, she graduates from college at twenty-two after sixteen years of formal training. A Japanese girl has six years in the elementary school, four or five (there are many schools of each type) in the girls’ high school, and three or two in the higher course that was incorpo¬ rated in 1920 in the national education system. This higher course, completed after a minimum of thirteen years of schooling, marks the end of the government provision for general education. The natural sequence will be, on the analogy of the system for men, a three- year daigaku, “university,” course, for more special¬ ized study. As this grade of work has not yet been standardized by the government, private institutions have worked out their own courses and developed their specialties as they liked, and there is consequently 103 Women's Colleges in Japan a great variety in their requirements and offerings. In this chapter we will designate as “junior college” those courses above the girls' high school that are completed after thirteen years of schooling; as “intermediate college” those that require fourteen; and “senior col¬ lege” those that require fifteen or sixteen. This classi¬ fication does not prevent some overlapping, but is the most practicable for our present purposes. The ac¬ companying chart will show relations of courses. The Japanese term daigaku, generally translated “univer¬ sity,” indicates grade of courses rather than number of departments, and for undergraduate work is of the grade here referred to as sixteen-year senior college.* Two further facts should be borne in mind with reference to the Japanese colleges as compared with American. The first is that the teaching in the secondary schools is largely on the lecture or exposi¬ tion principle, giving the students predigested material to absorb, rather than having them dig out material themselves from their textbooks; hence there is less development of the student’s own thinking power. •It may be noted here that there are no educational institutions in Japan having American charters and granting American degrees. The degrees conferred in Japan are all under the authorization of the government’s Department of Education. The only woman’s insti¬ tutions in Japan that give degrees are the Woman’s Medical College and the Meikwa Dental College. EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR GIRLS TN JAPAN O '•N W © fS -a— w 3 3 » bate 1 > <«-» o o rC O t* S fa rt 3 •fa C /5 o •3 o p a 2 bo Vi o C /3 o g o a u — 4 >-Q- c o *2 T^ l w w i 8 bO nj u 3 •O -|- 4 >- ' o i o rir» CL) bo u CL, w ”E G a o US >> O -fc. ex 4 / U CL, " 3 T CA O O * a •- E ~ tfi