T EDITION.

It seems necessary for a new author to give some excuse for her boldness
in offering to the public another volume upon a subject already so well
written up as Japan. In a field occupied by Griffis, Morse, Greey,
Lowell, and Rein, what unexplored corner can a woman hope to enter? This
is the question that will be asked, and that accordingly the author must
answer.

While Japan as a whole has been closely studied, and while much and
varied information has been gathered about the country and its people,
one half of the population has been left entirely unnoticed, passed over
with brief mention, or altogether misunderstood. It is of this neglected
half that I have written, in the hope that the whole fabric of Japanese
social life will be better comprehended when the women of the country,
and so the homes that they make, are better known and understood.

The reason why Japanese home-life is so little understood by foreigners,
even by those who have lived long in Japan, is that the Japanese, under
an appearance of frankness and candor, hides an impenetrable reserve in
regard to all those personal concerns which he believes are not in the
remotest degree the concerns of his foreign guest. Only life in the home
itself can show what a Japanese home may be; and only by intimate
association--such as no foreign man can ever hope to gain--with the
Japanese ladies themselves can much be learned of the thoughts and daily
lives of the best Japanese women.

I have been peculiarly fortunate in having enjoyed the privilege of long
and intimate friendship with a number of Japanese ladies, who have
spoken with me as freely, and shown the details of their lives to me as
openly, as if bound by closest ties of kindred. Through them, and only
through them, I have been enabled to study life from the point of view
of the refined and intelligent Japanese women, and have found the study
so interesting and instructive that I have felt impelled to offer to
others some part of what I have received through the aid of these
friends. I have, moreover, been encouraged in my work by reading, when
it was already more than half completed, the following words from
Griffis's "Mikado's Empire:"--

"The whole question of the position of Japanese women--in history,
social life, education, employments, authorship, art, marriage,
concubinage, prostitution, benevolent labor, the ideals of literature,
popular superstitions, etc.--discloses such a w