Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/175

 classes were authorised to abandon themselves to whomsoever they pleased.

In the great societies founded by the Mongoloid races, or the Mongols of Asia, prostitution displays itself in the open day. In China, tea-houses abound, although the ancient morality of the Celestial Empire makes chastity a moral duty for unmarried girls and women. In Cochin-China and Japan, on the contrary, practice and theory are in accord. No moral brand of shame attaches to the prostitute. In Cochin-China, says Finlayson, a father has the right to give his daughter, for a small sum of money, to a visitor or even a stranger, without the reputation of the young girl suffering any harm, and without any hindrance to her finding a suitable husband afterwards. In Japan the tea-houses (tsiaya) are more numerous still than in China; in the large towns they form vast quarters, and some of them are very luxurious. The mode of recruiting for inmates seems at first improbable to a European, and this alone suffices to show the relativity of morality.

Everywhere "the right of the father of a family" over his children has begun by being unlimited. In Japan it is still excessive, even over married daughters. Thus M. Bousquet, who was travelling in Japan a few years ago, relates that as he was lodging one day in the house of a young married couple, the father of the wife offered her to him, and the husband did not dream of protesting.

A daughter represents a certain amount of capital, belonging first to the father and then to the husband; to alienate it without the consent of the proprietor is a theft, but with his authorisation the action becomes lawful, and therefore parents who are in difficulties negotiate their daughter without any intervention by the Japanese law. A young girl is even admired when she prostitutes herself from devotion. "The Japanese romances repeat to satiety the story of the virtuous virgin who voluntarily submits to this servitude in order to save her father from misery, or to