wife she is a
domestic rather than a helpmeet. The "three obediences," to parents,
to husband, to son, set forth the ideal, although, without doubt, the
strict application of the third, obedience to one's son after he
becomes the head of the household, is relatively rare.

What especially strikes the notice of the Occidental is the slight
amount of social intercourse that prevails to-day between men and
women. Whenever women enter into the social pleasures of men, they do
so as professional singers and dancers, they being mere girls and
unmarried young women; this social intercourse is all but invariably
accompanied with wine-drinking, even if it does not proceed to further
licentiousness. The statement that woman is man's plaything has been
often heard in Japan. Confucian no less than Buddhistic ethics must
bear the responsibility for putting and keeping woman on so low a
level. Concubinage, possibly introduced from China, was certainly
sanctioned by the Chinese classics.

The Lei-ki allows an Emperor to have in addition to the Empress three
consorts, nine maids of high rank, and twenty-seven maids of lower
rank, all of whom rank as wives, and, beside these, eighty-one other
females called concubines. Concubinage and polygamy, being thus
sanctioned by the classics, became an established custom in Japan.

The explanation for this ideal and practice is not far to seek. It
rests in the communal character of the social order. The family was
the social unit of Japan. No individual member was of worth except the
legal head and representative, the father. A striking proof of the
correctness of this explanation is the fact that even the son is
obeyed by the father in case he has become "in kio,"[BL] that is, has
abdicated; the son then becomes the authoritative head. The ideals
regarding woman then were not unique; they were part of the social
order, and were determined by the principle of "communalism"
unregulated by the principle of "individualism." Ideals respecting man
and woman were equally affected. So long as man is not valued as a
human being, but solely according to his accidental position in
society, woman must be regarded in the same way. She is valued first
as a begetter of offspring, second as a domestic. And when such
conceptions prevail as to her nature and function in society,
defective ideals as to morality in the narrower sense of this term,
leading to and justifying concubinage, easy divorce, and gener