er above his wife. The peasant and
his wife work side by side in the field, put their shoulders to the same
wheel, eat together in the same room, at the same time, and whichever of
them happens to be the stronger in character governs the house, without
regard to sex. There is no great gulf fixed between them, and there is
frequently a consideration for the wife shown by husbands of the lower
class, that is not unlike what we see in our own country. I remember the
case of a _jinrikisha_ man employed by a friend of mine in T[=o]ky[=o],
who was much laughed at by his friends because he actually used to spend
some of his leisure moments in drawing the water required for his
household from a well some distance away, and carrying the heavy buckets
to the house, in order to save the strength of his little, delicate
wife. That cases of such devotion are rare is no doubt true, but that
they occur shows that there is here and there a recognition of the
claims that feminine weakness has upon masculine strength.

A frequent sight in the morning, in T[=o]ky[=o], is a cart heavily laden
with wood, charcoal, or some other country produce, creaking slowly
along the streets, propelled by a farmer and his family. Sometimes one
will see an old man, his son, and his son's wife with a baby on her
back, all pushing or pulling with might and main; the woman with
tucked-up skirts and tight-fitting blue trousers, a blue towel
enveloping her head,--only to be distinguished from the men by her
smaller size and the baby tied to her back. But when evening comes, and
the load of produce has been disposed of, the woman and baby are seen
seated upon the cart, while the two men pull it back to their home in
some neighboring village. Here, again, is the recognition of the law
that governs the position of woman in this country,--the theory, not of
inferior position, but of inferior strength; and the sight of the women
riding back in the empty carts at night, drawn by their husbands, is the
thing that strikes a student of Japanese domestic life as nearest to the
customs of our own civilization in regard to the relations of husbands
and wives.

Throughout the country districts, where the women have a large share in
the labor that is directly productive of wealth, where they not only
work in the rice fields, pick the tea crops, gather the harvests, and
help draw them to market, but where they have their own productive
industries, such as caring for the sil