with the outlook and knowledge of even the most progressive
and learned of those of ancient times, how contracted do their lives
appear!

A third feature of former times is the condition of women during those
ages. Eulogizers of Old Japan not only seem to forget that working
classes existed then, but also that women, constituting half the
population, were essential to the existence of the nation. Though
allowing more freedom than was given to women in other Oriental
nations, Japan did not grant such liberty as is essential to the full
development of her powers. "Woman is a man's plaything" expresses a
view still held in Japan. "Woman's sole duty is the bearing and
rearing of children for her husband" is the dominant idea that has
determined her place in the family and in the state for hundreds of
years. That she has any independent interest or value as a human being
has not entered into national conception. "The way in which they are
treated by the men has hitherto been such as might cause a pang to any
generous European heart.... A woman's lot is summed up in what is
termed 'the three obediences,' obedience, while yet unmarried, to a
father; obedience, when married, to a husband; obedience, when
widowed, to a son. At the present moment the greatest duchess or
marchioness in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and
carries for him, bows down humbly in the hall when my lord sallies
forth on his good pleasure."[C] "The Greater Learning for Women," by
Ekken Kaibara (1630-1714), an eminent Japanese moralist, is the name
of a treatise on woman's duties which sums up the ideas common in
Japan upon this subject. For two hundred years or more it has been
used as a text-book in the training of girls. It enjoins such abject
submission of the wife to her husband, to her parents-in-law, and to
her other kindred by marriage, as no self-respecting woman of Western
lands could for a moment endure. Let me prove this through a few
quotations.

"A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself and
never weary of thinking how she may yield to her husband, and thus
escape celestial castigation." "Woman must form no friendships and no
intimacy, except when ordered to do so by her parents or by the
middleman. Even at the peril of her life, must she harden her heart
like a rock or metal, and observe the rules of propriety." "A woman
has no particular lord. She must look to her husband as her lord and
must serv