Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/176

 pay the debts of her betrothed." In Japan, houses of prostitution are a national institution; the law regulates the costume of the women who inhabit them, and the duration of their stay. On this point Europe has little to envy Japan. But what is special to Japan is that the tikakie, the inmates of these houses, are placed there by their parents themselves, and for a price that is debated beforehand. These inmates of the tea-houses generally enter them from the age of fourteen or fifteen years, to live there till they are twenty-five years old. They are taught to dance, to sing, to play the guitar, and to write letters. They are lodged in handsome apartments, where men go to see them openly and without any mystery.

They are in no way dishonoured by their trade; many of them marry very well afterwards; it even happens that respectable citizens go to seek an agreeable wife in these houses of pleasure. The most beautiful among them are celebrated. After their death their portraits are placed in the temples. "In the temple of Asaxa," says M. Bousquet, "is found a painting representing several Japanese ladies in full dress; they are, my guides tell me, the portraits of the most celebrated courtesans of Yeddo, which are annually placed here in their honour." So also Dr. Schliemann reports that he has seen statues of deified courtesans in the Japanese temples. Their celestial intervention was implored in an original manner. The suppliants first wrote a prayer on a paper, then masticated the request and rolled it into a bullet, which they shot with an air-gun at the statues of these strange divinities.

It is clear that the Japanese differ very much from us in their idea of feminine virtue. They have an idea, however, and do not in the least permit the women to love as they please. Thus the girl who gives herself to a lover without paternal authorisation is legally punished by sixty lashes with a whip, and the Japanese public would not endure in a play the personage of a young girl in love.

It is not the chastity of woman, as we understand it, but her subjection, that Japanese morality requires. The