has
not the same power, either to injure a rival or to punish her
faithless husband. Furthermore, licentiousness in women has a much
more visibly disastrous effect on her procreative functions than equal
licentiousness in man. This, too, would serve to beget and maintain
different ethical standards for the two sexes. Finally, and perhaps no
less effective than the two preceding, is the fact that the general
social consciousness held different conceptions in regard to the
social positions of man and woman. The one was the owner of the
family, the lord and master; to him belonged the freedom to do as he
chose. The other was a variety of property, not free in any sense to
please herself, but to do only as her lord and master required.

An illustration of the first reason given above came to my knowledge
not long since. Rev. John T. Gulick saw in Kanagawa, in 1862, a man
going through the streets carrying the bloody heads of a man and a
woman which he declared to be those of his wife and her seducer, whom
he had caught and killed in the act of adultery. This act of the
husband's was in perfect accord with the practices and ideals of the
time, and not seldom figures in the romances of Old Japan.

The new Civil Code adopted in 1898 furnishes an authoritative
statement of many of the moral ideals of New Japan. For the following
summary I am indebted to the _Japan Mail_.[BP] In regard to marriage
it is noteworthy that the "prohibited degrees of relationship are the
same as those in England"--including the deceased wife's sister. "The
minimum age for legal marriage is seventeen in the case of a man and
fifteen in the case of a woman, and marriage takes effect on
notification to the registrar, being thus a purely civil contract. As
to divorce, it is provided that the husband and wife may effect it by
mutual consent, and its legal recognition takes the form of an entry
by the registrar, no reference being necessary to the judicial
authorities. Where mutual consent is not obtained, however, an action
for divorce must be brought, and here it appears that the rights of
the woman do not receive the same recognition as those of the man.
Thus, although adultery committed by the wife constitutes a valid
ground of divorce, we do not find that adultery on the husband's part
furnishes a plea to the wife. Ill-treatment or gross insult, such as
renders living together impracticable, or desertion, constitutes a
reason for divorce from the w