Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/138

 the event of a husband's incurring pecuniary ruin in a distant place, and failing to come home for five years if he had left a child, and for three if there was no child. But against this exceedingly brief list of a wife's rights, there is a long catalogue of the husband's. He was entitled to divorce his wife if she did not bear him a male child, if her habits were licentious, if she failed in her duty to her parents-in-law, if she indulged a love of gossip, if she committed a theft, if she betrayed a jealous disposition, or if she suffered from an obnoxious disease. The more important a man's social position, the greater his obligation to secure the assent of his own parents and his wife's before putting her away, but in the lowest classes scarcely any impediment offered to separation. Sentiment, however, interposed a curious veto. If a wife had contributed money for the funeral of a parent-in-law, or if a husband occupying a low social grade at the time of his marriage had subsequently risen to a higher, or if a wife had no home to which she could retire after separation, then divorce was held to be inadmissible. The one redeeming feature of the wife's position was that all the property, whether in money, chattels, or serfs, brought with her at the time of her marriage, had to be returned on divorce. Her enforced subservience to her parents-in-law, and her obligation to patiently endure the presence of one or more concubines, if her husband so willed it, were often cruel bur