Читать книгу Japanese are Like That - Ichiro Kawasaki - Страница 10

3 The Japanese Woman in

Kimono

THERE is a popular saying in my country that living in an American-style house with a Japanese wife and eating Chinese food constitutes an ideal living arrangement. An American home, with its labor-saving devices and efficient plumbing and heating, is no doubt the best dwelling in the world and the envy, I believe, of many less fortunate peoples, including the Japanese.

The Japanese are particularly impressed by the modern American kitchen with its refrigerator, electric stove, and sink with garbage disposer. No doubt they should be impressed, for a Japanese kitchen is usually very gloomy. It has practically no modern conveniences, save perhaps a gas burner, and the sink is usually an affair of tin and wood.

One of the members of our inspection group to the United States recently held a very high government position. He lived a reasonably comfortable life at home. When he visited an American home and was shown the kitchen, he remarked that he was glad his wife did not accompany him to America. She would have held up her hands in despair and refused to work in her own kitchen, once she had seen an American one.

In spite of the material superiority of American kitchens, it is the Chinese cuisine which is world famous for its variety and for those of its dishes which enjoy universal gastronomic appeal. Though French cooking may be considered more palatable to the Occidental, there is no doubt that the Chinese are excellent cooks who can concoct many delectable dishes.

On the other hand, it is the Japanese wife who is most faithful and devoted to her husband and to the household, even to the point of servility. The Japanese wife considers that her mission is to bear and rear children, and to perpetuate the tradition of the family into which she has wed.

Living in an antiquated house with no modern conveniences worthy of the name, the Japanese wife usually spends most of her time drudging away in her house. Even with domestic help, the Japanese wife in a middle- or upper-class home is confined to the house almost all day, and it is rare that her husband takes her out to dinner or to a show.

The Japanese husband seeks his own pleasure in his own way—in a geisha house or at a restaurant. The Japanese seldom entertain at home, for to do so has long been considered a lack of respectability. Only a mean or poor person is said to resort to such informal entertaining. Parties, if they have to be given at all, must be given in a restaurant or a teahouse, and since Japanese parties are essentially men's affairs, usually waited upon by geisha hostesses, the Japanese wife has practically no chance of attending such functions and so has to stay at home most of the time.

Concubinage is an institution still somewhat prevalent in my country, although not half as widespread as in China. I am told that the institution of mistresses can still be found in the Americas and in Europe. Originally the concubine system of Asia grew out of the Oriental custom of having to perpetuate family tradition through the male lineage. Therefore, if a wife failed to give birth to a son, the husband was permitted to keep a concubine or two in order to secure a son. The average husband today, however, finds it difficult to provide only for his wife and children. So the system here is rapidly disappearing.

Therefore, to keep a concubine is looked upon as a sign of prosperity. The system in Japan is a product of our family life in which the wife, to all intents and purposes, occupies a position of servant or even virtual slave. The Japanese male, moreover, has no opportunity to meet women socially, such as at cocktail or dinner parties. The parties they attend are, almost without exception, stag affairs, waited upon by professional hostesses. Besides, divorce is a thing not lightly resorted to in my country, as we are very critical of divorces, and to be divorced usually lowers one's prestige and reputation in the eyes of others. Such being the case, once married to a woman, a man has to continue with her, irrespective of what happens, even if there is little love or affection between them. As he becomes more wealthy, the Japanese man has more occasion to frequent teahouses and restaurants. If he is a businessman or a politician, a great deal of business is transacted at such places. Geisha hostesses at the teahouses are usually beautiful, more beautiful than his wife, who ages rather quickly because of domestic drudgery and frequent childbirth. Geisha compete with each other to obtain a patron, so as to secure for themselves a means of living when they grow old. The rich client, on his part, tries to keep one favorite girl in order to put up a show of prosperity, with its consequent enhancement of his social prestige.

I know one business executive who is opposed to the very idea of concubinage and who therefore has never shown any liking for these professional girls. He once told me in confidence that he was distinctly at a handicap in his business dealings, for his prestige suffered a great deal on account of his not keeping a concubine!

Concubinage is naturally a source of serious family disputes, but the Japanese wife usually has to submit finally to this intolerable situation. She usually makes up for her misery and unhappiness in the loving care of her children.

Although since the war our young women have come to mix more freely with young men, they are still backward in their ideas and manners, and do not know how to behave properly in a mixed gathering. In Shanghai, where there was a large Japanese colony before the war, American or European consuls used to hold large receptions. Many leading officials and businessmen of my country were invited to these functions with their wives. The Japanese guests, after passing the reception line, lost no time in separating according to sex: the men left their wives and engaged in conversation and drinking with other men; the wives themselves congregated in a group. Thus there was complete segregation until the time came for the couples to leave.

Japanese women usually make good wives when they marry Westerners. On the other hand marriages between Japanese men and foreign girls have often proved to be failures. Nowhere is Kipling's adage that "East is East and West is West" truer than in the case of a Japanese man's marriage to an Occidental woman, for Japanese men have not learned chivalry in the Western sense of the word. This shortcoming results in an attitude toward women often unnatural and uncouth. Moreover, Japanese men, however Westernized in their youth, become more Japanese as they grow older and tend to revert more and more to typical Japanese ways.

A rather prominent Japanese businessman, when he was in the London office of his firm, married an English girl, and the couple lived a happy married life for more than twenty years in various parts of Europe and America. They reared two lovely Eurasian children and were a popular couple wherever they went. His firm, a business company of international renown, paid him liberally, so he and his family lived a life of comparative luxury. When the Pacific War broke out, the couple were repatriated to Japan, this being the English wife's first visit to her husband's country. Things started to go wrong with the couple as soon as they arrived in Japan. The wife, who was used to a good living and was somewhat spoiled, found the wartime austerity and privation in Japan too much to bear. When near the end of the war a large-scale American bombing set fire to the city in which they lived, the husband quit the house in a hurry to seek refuge, leaving his wife and children in the house, which was in serious danger. The British wife was so disgusted by this act and others that she finally made up her mind to leave her husband once and for all and as soon as transportation was available went back to England with her children.

The late Dr. Nitobe, an internationally-famed publicist, who worked for years in the secretariat of the now defunct League of Nations in Geneva, had an American wife. Theirs was generally conceded to be one of the most successful East-West marriages. In spite of this, Dr. Nitobe in his late years was said to have been miserable as far as his meals were concerned. He was starving for chazuke, a Japanese meal consisting of hot tea poured over boiled rice and eaten with pickles. His wife, however, insisted on Western food, and there were disagreements. Many a time Dr. Nitobe used to slip into the kitchen in the middle of the night and prepare the Japanese meal himself.

While such cases of unfortunate East and West marriages have been all too numerous, Japanese women who have married Westerners generally make exemplary wives.

In the early Meiji era, that is, around the 'nineties of the last century, not long after Japan was opened for foreign intercourse, the Austro-Hungarian Empire maintained a legation in Tokyo. Count Coudenhove was stationed in Tokyo as military attache to the legation. This youthful Austrian, who came from a very distinguished family, used to go horseback riding every morning. While riding one day this nobleman met and fell in love with a Japanese woman, by the name of Mitsuko, whom he eventually married. Upon their return to Austria the Coudenhoves led a very happy life, and Countess Coudenhove, despite many handicaps, was duly accepted in Viennese high society, which in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was exceedingly glamorous. Dainty little Mitsuko was not only a popular social figure in Vienna, but true to her Japanese tradition, a good wife who bore and reared eight children. The Coudenhove children were brought up in the Japanese tradition of filial piety and paternalism, and they all became useful citizens of the empire. The eldest son, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, was the author of a celebrated book on Pan-Europe, and he, together with Aristide Briand, long-time foreign minister of France, was largely instrumental in the creation of the League of Nations after the first World War.

I knew another son of Count and Countess Coudenhove who was adviser to the Japanese Legation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where I served in prewar years. This Mr. Coudenhove was an exceedingly affable man and a popular figure in diplomatic circles in Prague. He did much to interpret Japan to European peoples, and I remember his paying frequent visits to his mother, Countess Coudenhove, who had already reached an advanced age and was living in seclusion in a castle near Vienna. The Coudenhove children were the embodiment of all that is best in the Japanese tradition of family life.

Mention must also be made of Lady Arnold of London. Her deceased husband was an eminent British educator, who was knighted by the king many years ago. Lady Arnold is a Japanese woman of considerable charm and intelligence and has been a popular figure in London social circles. She has done much to further the cause of Anglo-Japanese friendship and has lived up to the best traditions of Japanese womanhood.

Another Japanese woman of international fame is Oyuki Morgan, a Kyoto-born girl who married George D. Morgan, a nephew of J. P. Morgan of the fabulous Morgan family. She lived in pomp and luxury and in her later years resided in Nice on the French Riviera. Some years ago, Oyuki, then a widow, was so homesick that she decided to come back to her native Kyoto to live in retirement. When she returned to her native country, however, she was besieged day and night by numerous people, from canvassers who tried to sell her life insurance policies to those unscrupulous people who attempted to extort money by various dishonest means, knowing that she still enjoyed a chunk of the fabulous Morgan fortune. Realizing that everyone had an eye on her fortune, Oyuki was visibly annoyed and did not find her seclusion in Kyoto at all secure. She has kept to herself and is not at home to anyone except the priest of the Xavier Church to which she belongs. Oyuki still lives in Kyoto, shunning all publicity.

Dr. Hideki Yukawa, who lectured for some years at Columbia University and who was awarded the much-coveted Nobel Prize for his studies in atomic theory a few years ago, is one of the few people postwar Japan can be proud of. He is the only physicist who has been able to explain the forces that hold the earth together. When he came back to Japan recently, Dr. Yukawa was given a big welcome, but at the same time was said to have been annoyed by experiences similar to Oyuki Morgan's. The Japanese are poor and therefore restless. They are very inquisitive and like to pry into other people's affairs. It is hard to make a living, and if anyone is known to be wealthy or famous, they resort to all conceivable means to exploit his reputation or extort his riches.

The Japanese woman is exceedingly patient. She has to put up with all kinds of hardship and to bear even her husband's unkind acts, such as his keeping a concubine. By Japanese custom, she is wedded into her husband's family, not just to the husband himself, and once in the family it is her duty and mission to uphold the tradition of the family. Therefore, divorce is unthinkable and is considered something dishonorable, even if all the wrongs are on the side of the husband. If, however, the situation becomes utterly intolerable and she really wants a divorce, she usually finds herself with half a dozen children. For the sake of the childen she is often dissuaded from taking such a drastic step. Also, she would be unable to support herself. Thus, poverty and too many children make her subservient to her husband, however tyrannical he may be.

In the Japanese home the husband is omnipotent. Middle- and upper-class families usually have a private bath in their house. The bath is a usual Japanese one, with hot water kept in the tub for soaking and warming one's body and not changed more than once a day. The privilege of taking the first bath is invariably accorded to the master of the house, and after him come the children, then his wife, and finally the servants of the household.

At dinner the husband usually gets an extra dish of the best delicacy. For instance, raw fish is considered a very dainty food in my country, but it is rather expensive. In most households, even when there is not enough raw fish to go around, the husband either monopolizes the dish or gets the largest helping of it. It is thought in Japan that the husband is the mainstay of the family, and since the entire family subsists by his earnings anyway, due respect should be paid to him and he should be fed better than other members of the family.

The fortitude and self-denial with which the Japanese woman tolerates all kinds of discomfort and difficulties have become second nature. Japanese women giving birth in an American or European maternity hospital have often been the subject of considerable admiration on the part of hospital nurses and doctors. I remember once visiting a London hospital in which a Japanese friend of my wife's was giving birth. Quite a few Japanese residents used to send their wives to this particular hospital for childbirth. A doctor there told me that he had never heard any Japanese lady cry in the throes of delivery, while all the British patients groaned fiercely and in some cases even swore. The doctor said that he sometimes even wondered if Japanese women felt pain at all during delivery! The Japanese woman thinks it extremely disgraceful to howl and groan in such cases and would try to suppress all her agonies with the fortitude and patience characteristic of the women of her race.

For a variety of reasons, the Japanese wife's housekeeping is extremely onerous. For one thing, her kitchen is so primitive that she has to spend hours on end preparing meals. Except in major urban areas, gas is not generally used for cooking. She has to get up early in the morning to make a charcoal fire in the brazier. Rice has to be washed and cooked for each meal, for the family-members like to eat rice hot, even when other dishes may be served cold. Moreover, washing dishes afterward is a tedious process, so many more bowls and plates being used than in Western cooking. Each vegetable, and even the pickles, have to be served in separate bowls and plates. The wife cannot enlist the help of her husband in dish-washing as in American homes. The Japanese husband thinks it beneath his dignity to condescend to work in the kitchen and leaves everything to his wife, even when domestic help is not available. The average Japanese wife spends at least two hours in preparing breakfast alone.

The Japanese way of making the bed at night and tucking the bedding away into the closet again in the morning calls for considerably more time and labor than making the bed in Western homes.

The Japanese house has to be dusted and cleaned thoroughly every day, for it is very dusty in most cities, since most streets and sidewalks are either not paved at all or are imperfectly paved. The house is usually wide open and has many cracks, so that sweeping the house is a task which requires the constant attention and vigilance of the housewife.

The Japanese, both men and women, generally dress in native kimono at home, although they wear foreign dress while at work. This dual living adds another headache to the Japanese housewife, for a kimono has to be tailored at home by the women. Thus, the Japanese wife lives in a dreary routine of housekeeping day in and day out, and if she has children, her work is made doubly onerous.

Loyalty of the Japanese wife to her husband is a virtue excelled in by few other peoples, I believe. To counteract the stress which modern conditions have imposed on this institution of loyalty, we Japanese have a story which we like to repeat to our families. This story of the wife of Kazutoyo Yama-nouchi, a feudal warrior, is proverbial:

Yamanouchi was a low-ranking warrior in the service of Lord Nobunaga Oda, a celebrated feudal chieftain in the sixteenth century. One day a horse dealer came from a northern province with a splendid mount. Yamanouchi, being ambitious, was very tempted to buy the horse, as the possession of a good steed was a sure step to promotion among the warrior class of those days. However, he could not afford it. He appeared so despondent that his wife insisted on knowing the nature of his worry. Though in feudal days a warrior considered it shameful and beneath his dignity to consult his wife on any matter pertaining to his duties, Yamanouchi confided in his wife. Upon hearing the story, she produced ten pieces of gold, which she had long kept stored in secret in the drawer of her mirror stand. Yamanouchi was surprised to find his wife with so much money, but she explained that it was her dowry and that her mother had enjoined her not to spend it except in the case of urgent need by her husband. Even though the couple were poverty-stricken for a long time, she had never thought of using this money, for her mother's words always rang in her ears and restrained her. Now she was glad she had not waited in vain! Yamanouchi bought the fine horse with the money, and his lord was very pleased with him. From then on Yamanouchi distinguished himself in the domain and was finally made a local baron.

We have always liked this story as an illustration of our ancestral virtues. In modern times, too, we have striking and dramatic accounts of the loyalty of Japanese wives.

In February, 1936 a number of disgruntled young officers of the Japanese Army, with some of their loyal enlisted men, staged a large-scale insurrection in Tokyo. They seized the principal government offices and assassinated a host of prominent statesmen known to be opposed to the radical expansionist policy of the military. The twenty-sixth of February, 1936 has gone down in the Japanese history as a dreadful day.

A group of these rebels took machine guns and other weapons from their garrison and broke into the home of Viscount Saito, former Prime Minister, to kill him. For a few terrible moments, Viscountess Saito placed herself in front of her husband and said to the brigands: "Kill me instead—my husband cannot be spared by the country." She actually put her hand on the mouth of the roaring machine gun until her wounds forced her aside. Several other bloodthirsty rebels forced their way into the house of General Watanabe, Inspector General of Military Education. In the frightful tragedy there, Mrs. Watanabe lay down with her husband in her arms, so that the assassins had to force the gun underneath her body to complete their dastardly act.

Japanese history is full of examples of such heroism and loyalty of woman to their husbands.

The Japanese women's lot, however unenviable, cannot be branded as altogether miserable. There is one redeeming feature at least. When she becomes old and her children are all grown and earning their own living, the elderly mother is usually well taken care of by them, and also by her grandchildren. Most mothers live under the same roof with their children, who consider it their duty to see that their father and mother are properly looked after in their old age. It is then that the Japanese mother can look back over her years of almost incessant toil and know that her self-sacrifice has not been in vain.

I have seen many American widows far along in years living in hotels alone. I suppose that in most such cases they are left with a certain amount of money, either from old age insurance or in some form of savings. However, we in Japan would believe that as such women grow older they would inevitably become lonesome, restless, and even hysterical. Their unhappiness would be further aggravated by the need to be careful in spending money. Since the keynote of Western society is individualism, such situations as this are no doubt taken for granted. To me, however, a Japanese widow looks infinitely happier, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She is usually beaming with contentment and happiness, secure in the knowledge that none of her offspring will desert her, even until the very day she breathes her last.

Six years of Allied Occupation had a salutary effect on the relationship between the sexes in Japan. I believe that millions are grateful for the change. Coeducation has been encouraged, and young women are mixing more freely and naturally with men. More and more young men are finding their wives among their own circle of girl friends, and such marriages, as far as can be judged thus far, have been largely successful. No longer are a couple walking arm in arm down the street frowned upon, nor does their act evoke the curious stares and disapproving grimaces of passers-by, as in prewar years.

Women's suffrage was finally put into practice after the war. Women before took little interest in their own government; in some cases, none at all. When women voted in the general election for the first time in 1946, there was a certain misunderstanding: many voters, particularly in rural areas, had the mistaken idea that women had to vote for women candidates and that men voted for men. Such laughable misconceptions, however, no longer exist, and the turn-out of women voters in recent elections has been as good as that of men.

There has been a marked increase in the number of women working in governmental offices and in the professions, in competition with men. This is a result mainly of the economic difficulties experienced by many households in postwar years. However, there is a definite and encouraging sign that women are demanding and obtaining equal rights with men. It now appears that emancipation of women is well on the way to achievement.