until
late at night. A fine dinner is served, and music and dancing, by
professional performers, or some other entertainment, serve to make the
time pass pleasantly. The bride appears as hostess with her mother,
entertaining the company, and receiving their congratulations, and must
remain to speed the last departing guest, before leaving the paternal
roof.

Within the course of two or three months, the newly married couple are
expected to give an entertainment, or series of entertainments, to their
friends, as an announcement of the marriage. As the wedding ceremony is
private, and no notice is given, nor are cards sent out, this is
sometimes the first intimation that is received of the marriage by many
of the acquaintances, though the news of a wedding usually travels
quickly. The entertainment may be a dinner party, given at home, or at
some tea-house, similar in many ways to the one given at the bride's
home by her parents. Sometimes it is a garden party, and very lately it
has become the fashion for officials and people of high rank to give a
ball in foreign style.

Besides the entertainment, presents of red rice, or _mochi_, are sent as
a token of thanks to all who have remembered the young couple. These are
arranged even more elaborately than the ones sent after the birth of an
heir.

The young people are not, as in this country, expected to set up
housekeeping by themselves, and establish a new home. Marriages often
take place early in life, even before the husband has any means of
supporting a family; and as a matter of course, a son with his wife
makes his abode with his parents, and forms simply a new branch of the
household.

The only act required to make the marriage legal is the withdrawal of
the bride's name from the list of her father's family as registered by
the government, and its entry upon the register of her husband's family.
From that time forward she severs all ties with her father's house, save
those of affection, and is more closely related by law and custom to
her husband's relatives than to her own. Even this legal recognition of
her marriage is a comparatively new thing in Japan, as is any limitation
of the right of divorce on the part of the husband, or extension of that
right to the wife.[14]

[14] "As early as 1870 an edict was published by which official notice
and approbation were made necessary preliminaries to every matrimonial
contract. In the following year the class-limitat