St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1904-07-06
Dr. driffls on Japanese Women.

Consider the condition OF native
womanhood-one half of the Japanese
in 1853. From empress to eta, the
status of woman was unspeakably
lower than that of today. To have
suggested then that even the Mikado's
wife was an empress in the Occidental
sense of the term, would have angered
Japanese. An imperial marriage had no
special sanction, being outwardly merely
an item in the government gazette, and
morally of no meaning in the harem. In
the lower ranks the customs in regard to
women were largely those of barbarism,
even as they are SO largely yet-one
divorce to every three marriages, and
conjugal union too often only partner
ship over a tub of rice. Woman's status
and possibilities were summed up in "the
three obediences." Relatively, poor
women were more on an equality with
their lords and masters than their sisters
socially higher. The more wealth and
rank, the more were women treated like
dolls and ba bies. When heirs or more
progeny were desired, and often when
the mans mere within made law, the wife
had few rights which a husband was
bound to respect. Women could be
called in, hired as servants, and after
their duties of motherhood and nursing
were over, were discharged, being al
lowed to know no more OF their offspring
than the forgetful brutes around them.
No wonder the numerical distributive
term "hiki" was employed, as l have
heard it, for oxen. men, and women, or
any and all draught animals and beasts
of burden. The laws governing the
myriads of women shut up from child
hood in the brothel quarters or settle
ments in every large city were, in many
OF the most vital particulars, exactly like
those of actual slavery. The foreign and
Christian notions about love and rever-
ence toward woman we're hooted at as
absurd. To love ones wife ''as Christ
also loved the church," has given many
Japanese Christian, learning to follow
the Master, deep searchipgs of heart,
until he might say to such, winning back
many OF the wavering, Win ye also 60
away?' Happily the victories of the
conquering Christ in this arena of the
heart are many.
Today those who actually saw the old
pagan situation, who know it from
having lived in it, and who can look
through the spectacles Of research, can
hardly believe their own eyes. What
hath God wrought?' was the exclama-
ton, in 1872, OF Townshend Harris. our
first envoy in Japan from 1855 to 1860.
He thought it wonderful that one native
Christian church was organized. Today
there are many hundreds with myriads
of worshipers. I hold in my hands, as
dictate, two slender volumes entitled
1.-The Civil Code Of Japan" containing
the text IN japanese, and translation
into English Of the new laws. which with
the other codes, when passed by the I'm
perial Diet, won Japan's recognition as
equal in the sisterhood of nations. This.
with the constitution, now nearly Is
years old, came only after terrific strug
giles, and both are victories of Him who
leadeth the nations, whose name is the
Word OF God. Both of these great
political instruments cut directly across
the grain of those hoary systems which
made the state all, the individual
cipher, the family everything, the ir-
dividual nothing, against systems which
were what they were, with all the ir
social horrors, because founded on the
idea of impel sonality.
The educated and consecrated woman
hood of Japan is new and"permanent
force. There are no more par1ahs. The
law prevents son of a concubine from
inheriting property, title or rank, and
this from the lowest nobleman up to the
heir to the throne. Only the son of the
true wife can be the legal heir. In the
recent marriage OF the crown prince and
the birth in the home, rot in the herd,
of an heir to the throne we read happy
augury for the future. Hereafter there
are to be no legal concubines, even to an
emperor. Throughout the empire not
together, but eloquent lecturers and