346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



both the Empress Dowager and the present Empress being child- 

 less. Then, besides this, the Emperor's honsehold includes sev- 

 eral mekakes chosen from noble families. 



Regarding divorces, up to the present time the husband has 

 always had the privilege of divorcing his wife at will, and send- 

 ing her back to her parents' home for apparently trivial reasons. 

 But, as easy as it is to sever the nuptial bonds, this privilege is 

 rarely taken advantage of, except in extreme cases, for divorces 

 are looked upon with anything but tolerance by the Japanese. 

 On the other hand, the only thing which warrants a wife in leav- 

 ing her husband is cruel treatment, in which case she may return 

 to her father's house, and the marriage may be annulled. 



There are two other classes of Japanese women that I would 

 make mention of : geisha, or professional entertainers, and joro, 

 or prostitutes. The geisha is a time-honored institution, and may 

 be seen at almost any public dinner or entertainment. They are 

 professional musicians, dancers, and entertainers in general, and 

 are licensed as such. Frequently the geisha will take out a pros- 

 titute's license as well. From this it will be understood that 

 what has been said concerning the reserved nature of social and 

 domestic relationships in Japanese society is entirely absent with 

 geisha. The women of the Japanese household rarely if ever 

 take part in the public social life of their husbands, and there- 

 fore all social or official dinners among men are held at some 

 restaurant or tea-house, and geishas employed to furnish music 

 and entertainment. They frequently are accompanied by two or 

 three dancers (oshakku), girls between twelve and fifteen years of 

 age, who dance while the geishas furnish music and song. The 

 moral instincts of the geisha are crude, to say the least, and many 

 progressive Japanese look eagerly forward to the day when the 

 geisha will not be an inevitable feature of entertainments. 



Prostitution is under strict government control and supervis- 

 ion, and all houses of ill fame relegated to certain portions of the 

 town known as the yoshiivara. A prostitute's license is only for 

 three years, for which period of time she sells herself to the keeper 

 of one of these houses for a lump sum. Not infrequently among 

 the poorer families, one of the daughters of the home is thus 

 practically sold to a life of dishonor by her parents, in order to 

 keep the wolf from the door. I know of many sad cases of this 

 kind; and while this heartless procedure is legal, yet it is re- 

 garded with equal repugnance and abhorrence by the Japanese 

 public as it would be with us, and is as loudly condemned. After 

 the three years' service is over, the daughter may again return to 

 the parental roof. 



Regarding the moral life of women of the poorer classes, it is 

 in the main similar to that of the higher. The maids employed 



