Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/176

 success attended the experiment. There is nothing to show that virgin purity was less esteemed in a Japanese maiden of gentle birth than it has ever been esteemed by any nation under any system of ethics. But the recognition extended to concubinage necessarily produced a confusion of principles. From the sovereign down to the artisan, a man's extra-marital relations were limited only by his means and opportunities. The obligation of sexual fidelity rested on the woman alone, and constituted her whole code of morality. She valued virtue, not for virtue's sake, but as part of her duty to some one man either in esse or in posse, and she discharged that duty with remarkable steadfastness whether as a maiden, a mistress, or a wife. But it is easy to see that since society did not scrutinise with any severity her relation to the man claiming her affection, and frowned on her only when she betrayed him, her first concessions to love were often made without much ceremony. The custom of leaving a wife to reside in her parental house had long ceased in practice, but its principle found expression in a rule that when a man married, he must construct special apartments for his bride's accommodation. Another curious canon was that until a girl became betrothed, she must never speak of herself by her family name, and that when lovers parted, the string of the man's under-garment was tied to