the home.

It is not only for the women of Japan, but for the men as well, that old
age is a time of peace and happiness. When a man reaches the age of
fifty or thereabouts, often while apparently in the height of his vigor,
he gives up his work or business and retires, leaving all the property
and income to the care of his eldest son, upon whom he becomes entirely
dependent for his support.[23] This support is never begrudged him, for
the care of parents by their children is as much a matter of course in
Japan as the care of children by those who give them birth. A man thus
rarely makes provision for the future, and looks with scorn on foreign
customs which seem to betoken a fear lest, in old age, ungrateful
children may neglect their parents and cast them aside. The feeling, so
strong in America, that dependence is of itself irksome and a thing to
be dreaded, is altogether strange to the Japanese mind. The married son
does not care to take his wife to a new and independent home of his own,
and to support her and her children by his own labor or on his own
income, but he takes her to his father's house, and thinks it no shame
that his family live upon his parents. But in return, when the parents
wish to retire from active life, the son takes upon himself ungrudgingly
the burden of their support, and the bread of dependence is never
bitter to the parents' lips, for it is given freely. To the time-honored
European belief, that a young man must be independent and enterprising
in early life in order to lay by for old age, the Japanese will answer
that children in Japan are taught to love their parents rather than ease
and luxury, and that care for the future is not the necessity that it is
in Europe and America, where money is above everything else,--even
filial love. This habit of thought may account for the utter want of
provision for the future, and the disregard for things pertaining to the
accumulation of wealth, which often strikes curiously the foreigner in
Japan. A Japanese considers his provision for the future made when he
has brought up and educated for usefulness a large family of children.
He invests his capital in their support and education, secure of
bountiful returns in their gratitude and care for his old age. It is
hard for the men of old Japan to understand the rush and struggle for
riches in America,--a struggle that too often leaves not a pause for
rest or quiet pleasure until sickness or death overta