The Women of Japan
I
There is an interesting book here. Its title is Japan, and it was published in 1852. The author is one Charles MacFarlane, and though he never came to Japan, he was a man with a deep interest in Japan. At the very least, he was a man with an interest in Japan. Japan is a compilation of articles about Japan that this man collected from books from Latin America, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and so on. Those books collected things from 1560 to 1850, and his taking an interest in this topic, namely, Japan, was apparently thanks to the quartermaster general James Drummond. Regardless, the young Drummond, pursuing business, lived for many years in Japan under a Dutch name, despite being an Englishman. The author MacFarlane met with this Drummond in Brighton and was allowed to see those gathered books concerning Japan. Drummond did not just loan them to the author, he also spoke to him much on the subject of Japan. The author, making use of those talks as well, wrote Japan for us. Furthermore, this Drummond, incidentally, married the grand-niece of the famous author Smollett, and it was said that his wife took great interest in literature.
This book, being a product of these circumstances, is so off the mark it is the traveller’s journal of a tourist who has never set foot in Japan. Its copper illustrations even make Korean customs for Japanese ones. However, this does not mean that this should have no interest for us today. For instance, claiming seriously that the emperor of Japan owns many pipes, and that he smokes with a different one each day must be called charming. Within this book there is a chapter with an introduction to and a discussion of the women of Japan. I thought I would briefly introduce myself to them today.
The issue of what social position women possess, according to the author MacFarlane, is a true measure based on high and low class. The social position of the women of Japan is much higher than in all other Asian countries. The women of Japan, unlike the women of other Asian countries, are not in a sorry place. Not only do they garner significant societal treatment, they can be trusted to entertain in place of their fathers or husbands.
The sense of faithful wives and virgin maids being totally entrusted to them, it can be said that there is hardly such a thing as an unfaithful wife. Although, being that it is a fact that the result of broken fidelity is immediate death, that this is all the more adhered to is also a fact.
In Japan, all receive a formal education, from the highest in society to the lowest. According to what I have heard, the number of schools throughout Japan is higher than any other country in the world. Furthermore, even peasants and the indigent are said to be able to read, if only a little. Therefore, girls’ education as well as boys’ education is the same. So much so that the very famous poets, historians, and other writers of Japan include in their ranks many women.
Among the rich and the nobility, men generally do not guard their faithfulness as closely as women. However, it is an absolute certainty that the women who are their mothers and wives pass through their lives chastely. Though I have searched through the tales of Japan and consulted with many travellers, it must be said that there is no room to doubt this fact.
The women of Japan, above all, are shamed by dishonor. I must say that it is difficult to count the number of stories of women who, injured by disgrace, commit suicide. The below story should be sufficient to prove this fact:
A man of some standing went on a trip. In his absence, a nobleman (i.e. a man of standing) committed illicit acts with the man’s wife. His wife was not only seduced, but even added more severe insults. However, this nobleman, either through violence or through trickery, had broken this woman’s chastity. Then the husband returned. His wife, like always, greeted him with love. However, there was in this attitude something which had been severely violated. The husband, thinking this strange, asked many questions, but his wife, for some reason, gave this reply: “Please, if you could, do not ask me anything until tomorrow. Tomorrow my relatives and the important men of this town will come for us, and, before them, I will tell the whole truth.”
Then, the next day, guests came to the husband’s house one by one. Among these guests was the nobleman who had shamed his wife. The guests all received a great banquet on the balcony of the house. Before long, when the festivities had come to an end, his wife stood and made her disgrace public. Furthermore, she spoke vehemently to her husband: “I have lost any right to be your wife. Please kill me.”
All of the guests, and for the first time her husband, soothed the wife, saying that she had committed no sin, and that she had been the victim of the nobleman. The wife expressed deep words of gratitude to them all. And then, leaning on her husband’s shoulder, she wailed so hard her chest almost split. However, she suddenly kissed her husband and in the next moment she dropped her husband’s hand and rushed for the edge of the balcony. As soon as she reached it she threw herself to the depths below.
Despite that, despite the fact that the wife’s suffering of shame had been made public, who had done the shaming was not. For this reason, the nobleman who had shamed the woman quietly descended from the balcony amidst the clamoring of the husband and guests. Then, beside the body of the woman, he committed hara-kiri in a most samurai-like fashion. This hara-kiri is a method of suicide among the citizens of Japan. One ends one’s life by cutting oneself crosswise above the stomach.
According to the author of Japan, MacFarlane, this was a story found in Randall’s memoirs. I truthfully have no idea whether or not there is such a story in Japan. After thinking about it a little, this same story could be found in perhaps a Tokugawa-era novel or play. Or it might be a story which really happened in some backwater town in Kyūshū. Even so, I find interesting the exceedingly Western-style elements: a party held on a roof balcony; the wife of a warrior of Japan kissing her husband. Though it is simple to laugh and say it is funny, if one thinks of the same sorts of mistakes that of course arise from conceptions of the West by long-ago Japanese, it is true that Westerners are not the only ones being arrogantly laughed at. No, not just the West. Even in ideas of China in neighboring countries, mistakes of this manner are commonplace. In short, try reading the characters and moods which appear in Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s Koxinga. It is a strange item with little to do with either Japan or China.
Besides this story, MacFarlane offers another story to show how great the women of Japan. “The great warrior Chūya, along with his friend Jioshitsu, devised a plot against the emperor. Chūya’s wife was a woman of great intelligence and great beauty. Chūya’s plotting, after fifty years of planning, was at last discovered due to a blunder on Chūya’s part. Then the government issued an order for Chūya’s, as well as Jioshitsu’s, arrest. In accordance with the situation of those times, it was absolutely necessary for the government to have Chūya taken alive. For this reason, they had to take him, by any means, by surprise. Therefore, policemen stood before Chūya’s gates and called out, “A fire! A fire!” So that he could see the fire, Chūya ran outside of the gates. The officers attacked him. However, Chūya fought gallantly and slew two officers. Despite that, he was eventually greatly outnumbered and apprehended by the police. Chūya’s wife, meanwhile, hearing the sounds of fighting, had already realized what was going on and thrown her husband’s important documents into the fire. In those documents were the noblemen and others who were participants in the conspiracy. Chūya’s wife’s presence of mind, even today, has become the target of admiration all over Japan. For that reason when one praises a woman’s judgment or decisiveness, one says they are like the wife of Chūya.”
This Chūya is, of course, Marubashi Chūya, and Jishitsu is Yui Shōsetsu. And this too, going by what MacFarlane says, of course reads like a story from Randall’s memoirs.
The impression Japan’s author MacFarlane has of the women of Japan is extremely idealistic. That even the women of Japan in the 1860s protected their virtue magnificently to that degree is unbelievable. And again, before we laugh so hard at MacFarlane’s foolish naivety, it is a fact that these sorts of comedies are likely to occur even today in regards to ideas about foreigners’ customs. Just the other day in the newspaper some woman was claiming that the lives of American schoolgirls were like those of angels, and if some American in fifty years’ time were to catch wind of this article, I am certain he would give it a good laugh afterwards, just like we do with MacFarlane.
II
Sir Rutherford Alcock’s Three Years in Japan, compared with MacFarlane’s book, is a record of the real Japan.
Both volumes were published in 1863 by Harbor Books of New York. There are many illustrations, and among them are many reproductions of the cartoons of Keizai Kuwabata.
First, the author, Sir Rutherford Alcock, unlike MacFarlane, did not imagine Japan from his desk. As the title says, he lived in Japan for three years.
Second, Sir Alcock, unlike MacFarlane, was not unlearned. He was of fair scholarship, and he was particularly well versed in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill, popular at the time. For that reason, even along with observing various events in Japan, each passes down their own viewpoints. Among those viewpoints, there are those which today we must crack a smile over, but that is not to say that there are none which should be studied closely. This, too, is a feature nowhere to be found in works like MacFarlane’s.
Sir Alcock was the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom who stayed in the final days of the Tokugawa bakufu. In Japan during his stay, Ii Naosuke was even felled by the hands of assassins outside of Saukuradamon. Many Westerners were killed by rogue samurai.
So, as one might expect, as discussed in his account, even the Tōzen Temple in Shinagawa, the city where Sir Alcock lived, was attacked by wild warriors, an incident that left many dead and wounded. On top of that, Sir Alcock climbed Mt. Fuji and bathed in the hot springs of Atami. In this manner, because he lived in Japan in the closing days of the Tokugawa era, when important events were happening both at home and abroad, and because he did not just stay in Edo, but traveled all over, it is no coincidence that Sir Alcock’s memoir is of great interest.
Above all, Sir Alcock’s travel memoir, unlike the works of Loti or Kipling, is not rich with literary color. For example, even in depicting Asakusa, it is a fact that yellowed gingkos and red temples before one’s eyes are not what come to mind, unlike in Loti’s “Japan in Autumn.” However, as I said before, this point of view on this observed incident is considerably interesting.
For example, Sir Alcock, watching an old woman treat a child using mugwort on the porch of a farmhouse, laments: “…I found that man’s ingenuity in torturing himself for some fancied good or evil was not without its example among my friends here, however primitive their habits and low their estimate…” And, on the occasion of climbing some mountain and hearing the cry of the uguisu, he complains: “As we toiled slowly up, leading our horses, we heard some very sweet notes of the unguissu, not unlike the notes of a nightingale, and I think nearly the only bird in Japan that sings. It had one or two very sweet notes. They say the Japanese teach them to sing beautifully, which is the more extraordinary, if true, as they certainly do not teach themselves; and, if I had not lived among the Chinese, I should have said they had the least conception of either harmony or melody of any race yet discovered.”*
These are views that one cannot help but laugh at, but he discusses the Japanese idolization of revenge in connection with the Sakuradamon incident, and his argument on the subject of the influence plays such as the Forty-Seven Ronin have on the populace is an terribly interesting one. But going down that path would delay getting to the point, so I will aim to return to it at a later opportunity.
However, so that I can introduce the main thrust of Three Years in Japan before that, here is Sir Alcock’s impression of going to Nagasaki for the first time, excepted below:
“The 4th of June, of pleasant memory to Etonians, opened the port of Nagasaki to our rain-drenched party. It has often been described by recent travelers, and even under a cloudy sky the entrance was not devoid of beauty. Island after island comes into view as the bay is entered, many very picturesque in form.
“As the ship moves farther up the bay, the town of Nagasaki is seen lying at the farther end, clustering at the foot or a range of hills, and creeping no inconsiderable distance up the wooded sides. Decima, to the right, fixes the eye — a low, fan-shaped strip of land, dammed out from the waters of the bay, the handle being toward the shore, and truncated. One long wide street, with two-storied houses on each side, built in European style, gives an air of great tidiness…
“The first aspect of the bay itself strongly recalls to the European traveler some of the more picturesque fiords of Norway, especially the approach to Christiania, the capital. The hills rise boldly from the water’s edge, and the pine grows plentifully here as there. But the Swiss lakes also produce scenes much more resembling this than one could have anticipated. On landing only, something more tropical appears in the trees and shrubs. The pomegranate and persimmon, the palm and the bamboo are there. But the gardinia and camellia flourish also; and every where our common ferns may be seen, and ivy covering the walls; while by the road-side the thistle is not wanting, to confound all geographical divisions into floral zones.”
Well, so that’s how it is! Now, when you look at his argument about the women of Japan, according to Sir Alcock, what he has to say about the social position of the women of Japan and its connection to men is consistent and eternal praise. However, in truth, I have to wonder whether or not it is truly worthy of praise. I have no intention of getting into Sir Alcock’s issue that Japanese, as a people, are more immoral than those people of other nations. Even so, in Japan fathers sell their daughters to brothels and, even when tasked, the law does nothing to punish them. It approves the act. And furthermore not even their neighbors criticize them. I cannot believe that a sound moral feeling exists in this sort of country.
But of course, Japan has no slave trade. Serfs or slaves are not traded like livestock. (But to say that there is none of that just a half-truth. If you ask why, it is because for the young women of Japan there is something called “within a fixed period, where, according to the law somehow, human trafficking does occur. By this definition men and boys are doubtlessly traded as well.) However, on top of the keeping of concubines, it is a truth easily seen by all that the dignity of a family cannot be protected.
How the poison of this sort of national crime can be alleviated is not something I have discovered at the moment. However, one part of that cure is certainly, just as in China, seems to be the very strong authority of mothers over children.
The women of Japan are treated just as objects; their thoughts and feelings ignored, their rights as women ignored, they are sold to husbands. Furthermore, during their husbands’ lifetimes, they are treated like cattle or even slaves.
However, their absolute authority over children, limited completely to children, alleviates this poison to some small degree, so that the mothers of Japan may be allotted a social standing higher than men. I fear that saying that women can climb even to the level of the empress is an example of this.
In truth, however, since the ancient beginning of that house, there have been precious few empresses. Certainly, the position of the women of Japan regardless of their being sold like cattle or slaves, there is nothing you cannot do with patience, it appears. However, on this point, if you do not look into various sources, you cannot make a clear judgment. Also, the love between parent and child is considerable. At any rate, surely the organ of familial love is developing.
Sir Alcock’s Japanese women, unlike MacFarlane, hit the bulls-eye. The social standing of the women of Japan, since the era in which Sir Alcock stayed (i.e. during the reigns of the Emperors Kaei and Man’ei), appears to have barely progressed.
However, I have doubts whether Westerners’ praise of the women of Japan since Alcock’s time is objectively of the social standing of the women of Japan or of something observational. Rather than that, the result of the women of Japan actually being taken by foreign men, due to honesty and loyalty, may birth thoughts of great gratitude.
This is a tale of the first year of the Tokugawa era, and even when the town of Hirado in Hizen province expelled the British from the town, it is said that their Japanese wives put up a dramatic struggle for the sake of their love. So, if Sir Alcock had also taken a Japanese wife, his disdain of the women of Japan might not have been as he had written. Even so, for that reason, his being able to hold views on the women of Japan that approached justifiable must, at least, be called fortunate for voracious readers in later days.
A few years ago, when I was in China on a boat heading back up the Yangtze, I happened to meet up with a Norwegian. He was indignant about the low social standing of the women of China.
Anyway, according to what he said, at the time of the great famine in Henan in the province of Zhili, the men of China, before they sold their cows, sold their wives. Regardless, this Norwegian placed the women of China or the women of Japan, as wives, above the imperial families. In truth, on that same ship with him was his American wife, and for that reason he had a great argument with her. So, man appears to be an object which, in his innermost thoughts, cannot resist, if I may use the words of Sir Alcock, thoughts of praise for a woman who is like to cattle or a slave. That is to say, besides the women’s movement being carried forward by the arms of each woman, there is little hope of success.
(May 1915)
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*For these excerpts I turned to the various public domain versions of the book available rather than translate them anew.