The system of Japanese manners, being based on that of the Chinese, abounds in punctilios, and the higher the rank of the parties concerned, the more these punctilios are multiplied. This applies to marriages[74] as to other things. The treatise which Titsingh follows relates only to the marriages of what we should call the middle class (including merchants, artisans, etc.), who, though often possessed of considerable wealth, hold in Japan much the same subordinate position held prior to the French revolution by the corresponding class in France. With persons of high rank, marriages are made entirely from family convenience; even with those of the middle class they are also much based on prudential considerations. Formerly, the bridegroom never saw the bride till she entered his house, which she does, preceded by a woman bearing a lantern, which originally served the bridegroom to catch his first glimpse of the bride, and, if he did not like her looks, the match might be broken off, and the bride sent home. “Such cases,” says Titsingh, “formerly occurred; but, at present, beauty is held in much less estimation than fortune and high birth,—advantages to which people would once have been ashamed to attach so much value, and the custom has been by degrees entirely laid aside, on account of the mortification which it must give to the bride. At present, when a young man has any intention of marrying a female, whom he deems likely, from the situation of her parents, to be a suitable match, he first seeks to obtain a sight of her. If he likes her person, a mediator, selected from among his married friends, is sent to negotiate a match. People of quality have neither lantern nor mediator, because the parents affiance the children in infancy, and marriage always follows. Should it so happen that the husband dislikes the wife, he takes as many concubines as he pleases. This is also the case among persons of the inferior classes. The children are adopted by the wife, who is respected in proportion to the number of which she is either the actual or nominal mother.” Formerly the bride was not allowed, in case of the bridegroom’s death before the consummation of the nuptials, to marry again. A moving story is told of a romantic Japanese young lady, who, being urged by her friends to a second betrothal, to avoid such a sacrifice of her delicacy, cut off her hair, and, when that would not answer, her nose also. But this antique constancy has, in these latter depraved times,—depraved in Japan as well as elsewhere,—entirely disappeared, as well among the nobility as the common people.