Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/520

508 female child, to let it lie on the floor for the space of three days. Even in this, may be seen the likening of the man to Heaven and of the woman to Earth; and the custom should teach a woman how necessary it is for her in everything to yield to her husband the first, and to be herself content with the second, place; to avoid pride, even if there be in her actions aught deserving praise; and on the other hand, if she transgress in aught and incur blame, to wend her way through the difficulty and amend the fault, and so conduct herself as not again to lay herself open to censure; to endure without anger and indignation the jeers of others, suffering such things with patience and humility. If a woman act thus, her conjugal relations cannot but be harmonious and lasting, and her household a scene of peace and concord.

"Parents! teach the foregoing maxims to your daughters from their tenderest years! Copy them out from time to time, that they may read and never forget them! Better than the garments and divers vessels which the fathers of the present day so lavishly bestow upon their daughters when giving them away in marriage, were it to teach them thoroughly these precepts which would guard them as a precious jewel throughout their lives. How true is that ancient saying: 'A man knoweth. how to spend a million pieces of money in. marrying off his daughter, but knoweth not how to spend an hundred thousand in bringing up his child!' Such as have daughters must lay this well to heart."

Thus far our old Japanese moralist. For the sake of fairness and completeness, it should be added that the subjection of women has never been carried out in the lower classes of Japanese society to the same extent as in the middle and upper. Poverty makes for equality all the world over. Just as among ourselves woman-worship flourishes among the well-to-do, but is almost, if not entirely, absent among the peasantry, so in Japan the contrary or rather complementary state of things may be observed. The peasant women, the wives of artisans and small traders, have more liberty and a relatively higher position than the great ladies of the land. In these lower classes the wife shares not only her husband's toil, but his counsels; and if she happen to have the better head of the two, she it is who will keep the purse and govern the family.