1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 97 



also the position of woman there to-day. While the 

 supremacy of man is recognized and enjoined, mutual assist- 

 ance and devotion are beautifully portrayed in these myths. 

 In Confucius' " Record of Eights," much revered in Japan, 

 it is written, "The man stands in importance before the 

 woman : it is the right of the strong over the weak." Six 

 centuries later, Paul wrote, "Wives, submit yourselves 

 unto your husbands, for the husband is the head of the 

 wife." The Confucian proverb, "The hen that crows in 

 the morning brings misfortune," suggests a rhyming adage 

 familiar doubtless to most of us. 



Social custom in Japan consigns woman chiefly to her own 

 home. Men meet for considerations common to their sex 

 the world over, and women visit each other for friendship, 

 companionship and for gossip ; yet formal gatherings of both 

 sexes in what we term " society," is hardly known. 



Japan is acknowledged by most travellers, even by those 

 who deplore the condition of their women, to be a heaven of 

 contentment, and the paradise of children. To my mind, it 

 is difficult to conceive of a social state in which conditions 

 so contradictory co-exist with a downtrodden womanhood, 

 or with unhappy motherhood. 



If, as among the peasant class, where poverty compels the 

 labor of all, women labor in the fiehls, it is a lighter portion 

 of the work that they do, which the men requite by assum- 

 ing the heavier drudgery of the house. Here, as elsewhere, 

 woman lives upon the plane which her ability, force of 

 character and quality of mind entitle her to. Eight of the 

 rulers of Japan have been women — one of them her most 

 famous conqueror. 



At two large stores in Sapporo women were the principal 

 owners and the managers. In one the wife furnished the 

 capital, directed from six to ten male clerks, including 

 two sons-in-law, while her husband served as head book- 

 keeper. 



Japanese literature presents many charming pictures of 

 devotion between husband and wife, while the love and 

 respect which children at all ages bear thejr parents is unsur- 

 passed in any country. Although it is lawful for the Mikado 

 to have a dozen deputy wives, or concubines, and for other 



