Читать книгу The Child in Human Progress - George Henry Payne - Страница 12

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DEATH BY NEGLECT AND SACRIFICE IN JAPAN—THE NEW-BORN TABOO—MYTH OF THE EXPOSURE OF THE CHILD OF THE GODS—GROWTH OF THE MARRIAGE CUSTOM—THE ARRIVAL OF THE CHINESE—MODERN CANNIBALISM—MODERN LAWS ON THE SALE OF CHILDREN.

THE first inhabitants of Japan were a numerous people named Koropok-guru, who lived in conelike huts built over holes dug in the earth and who were exterminated by the Ainu people. The latter were in turn conquered by the race that we speak of today as the Japanese; these last settlers coming to the islands of Japan from somewhere in the north of Central Asia, while a second stream of South Asian immigrants were drifted to Japan by the Japan current.

In the Kojiki, or “Records of Ancient Matters,” dictated by Hide-no-are and completed in A. D. 711 or 712, we have a record of the mythology, manners, language, and the traditional history of Japan; this “history” purports to give the actual story of Japan from the year 660 B. C., when the first Emperor Jimmu, “having subdued and pacified the savage deities and extirpated the unsubmissive people, dwelt at the palace of Kashiwabara.” Modern Japanese scholars as well as Western scholars are inclined to say that there is really no authentic history before A. D. 461 but as a picture of the customs of early Japan, the Kojiki is still the only authentic document that we have.

Inazo Nitobe, in dividing the history of his country into periods, groups the legendary age and all that went before the political reforms of the seventh century as the first period, under the name of the “ancient period.”

These ancient people, the mythical people of the Kojiki, had passed through a genuine Bronze Age and had in general attained a high level of barbaric skill. Of their many curious customs, both in the Kojiki and in the equally important Nihongi or “Chronicles of Japan,” prominent notice is made of the “parturition house”—“one-roomed but without windows, which a woman was supposed to build and retire into for the purpose of being delivered unseen.” Here is evidence that the infant was “taboo” until it had been received by the head of the house.

Even up to recent times in the island of Hachijo the custom survived according to Ernest Satow, who visited this island in 1878.

“In Hachijo,” wrote Mr. Satow, “women, when about to become mothers, were formerly driven out to the huts on the mountainside, and according to the accounts of native writers, left to shift for themselves, the result not unfrequently being the death of the new-born infant, or if it survived the rude circumstances under which it first saw the light, the seeds of disease were sown which clung to it throughout its after life. The rule of non-intercourse was so strictly enforced that the woman was not allowed to leave the hut even to visit her own parents at the point of death, and besides the injurious effects that this solitary confinement must have had on the wives themselves, their prolonged absence was a serious loss to households where there were elder children and large establishments to be superintended. The rigour of the custom was so far relaxed in modern times that the huts were no longer built on the hills, but were constructed inside the homestead. It was a subject of wonder to people from other parts of Japan that the senseless practice should still be kept up, and its abolition was often recommended, but the administration of the Shoguns was not animated by a reforming spirit, and it remained for the government of the Mikado to exhort the islanders to abandon this and the previously mentioned custom. They are therefore no longer sanctioned by official authority and the force of social opinion against them is increasing, so that before long these relics of ancient ceremonial religion will in all probability have disappeared from the group of islands.”

As with most early histories there is little description of custom or manners in either the Kojiki or the Nihongi, but we gather what the general attitude was toward children from the fact that the conception of marriage was probably limited to cohabitation, this condition lasting until well on into the Middle Ages,100 cohabitation being often secret at first, but afterward acknowledged. When the latter conditions had come to prevail, the young man, instead of going to his mistress under the cover of the night, brought her back publicly to his parents’ home, and that was the beginning of his own home.

Little is there in the Kojiki about the care of children but the harshness toward women about to have children, as shown in the frequent reference to the parturition houses, shows that unless they were children of royalty they were left to whatever care their mothers might be able to bestow on them.

In the account of the making of Japan by the two Heavenly Deities, known as the Izani-gi-no-kami and Izana-mi-no-kami, the Man Who Invites and the Female Who Invites, it is stated that their first child was not retained.

“This child,” says the legend,101 after retailing the events that led up to its birth, “they placed in a boat of reeds and let it float away. Next they gave birth to the island of Aha. This is not reckoned among their children.”

Among the gods, therefore, children were rejected or accepted without ceremony, and with such an attitude of rejection or acceptance depicted as the normal condition among the deities, it may easily be imagined what was the attitude of the ordinary beings who modelled their conduct on that of the deities.

It is told of the first Emperor Jimmu, that, meeting a group of seven maidens, he invited one of them to become a wife of his, and on her acceptance the sovereign passed the night at her house. This constituted the only marriage ceremony that the times knew. As far as the woman was concerned, all that the new condition meant was that she was liable to receive a visit at any time from her new lord and master, but on his side there was no obligation, no duty of fidelity, and he was free to form as many similar unions as fancy dictated.

The children were brought up by the mother and one household of a man might be in absolute ignorance of another.102 Mistress, wife, and concubine were on the same footing and could be discarded at any moment. When the Deity of Eight Thousand Spears, attired in his favourite courting costume, is about to go forth and search for a “better wife” he boldly announces that: