ermine that
system of ethics which permitted the sale of the daughter to shame, the
introduction of the concubine into the family and the reduction of
woman, even though wife and mother, to nearly a cipher. It is not only
the foreigner who assaults that philosophy which glorified the vendetta,
kept alive private war, made revenge in murder the sweetest joy of the
Samurai and suicide the gate to honor and fame, subordinated the family
to the house, and suppressed individuality and personality. It is the
native Japanese, no longer a hermit, a "frog in the well, that knows not
the great ocean" but a student, an inquirer, and a critic, who assaults
the old ethical and philosophical system, and calls for a new way
between heaven and earth, and a new kind of Heaven in which shall be a
Creator, a Father and a Saviour. The brain and pen of New Japan, as well
as its heart, demand that the family shall be more than the house and
that the living members shall have greater rights as well as duties,
than the dead ancestors. They claim that the wife shall share
responsibility with the husband, and that the relation of husband and
wife shall take precedence of that of the father and son; that the
mother shall possess equal authority with the father; that the wife,
whether she be mother or not, shall not be compelled to share her home
with the concubine; and that the child in Japan shall be born in the
home and not in the herd. The sudden introduction of the Christian ideas
of personality and individuality has undoubtedly wrought peril to the
framework of a society which is built according to the Confucian
principles; but faith in God, love in the home, and absolute equality
before the law will bring about a reign of righteousness such as Japan
has never known, but toward the realization of which Christian nations
are ever advancing.

Even the old ideal of the Samurai embodied in the formula Yamato
Damashii will be enlarged and improved from its narrow limits and
ferocious aspects, when the tap-root of all progress is allowed to
strike into deeper truth, and the Sixth Relation, or rather the first
relation of all, is taught, namely, that of God to Man, and of Man to
God. That this relation is understood, and that the Samurai ideal,
purified and enlarged, is held by increasing numbers of Japan's
brightest men and noblest women, is shown in that superb Christian
literature which pours from the pens of the native men and women in the
Jap