Japanese Girls and Women: Revised and Enlarged EditionBacon, Alice Mabel
History
Japanese Girls and Women: Revised and Enlarged Edition
Bacon, Alice Mabel
Japan -- Social life and customs -- 1868-1912; Women -- Japan -- Social conditions; Women -- Japan -- Social life and customs
all Japanese women are unchaste and impure? In many cases this sacrifice
is the noblest that she believes possible, and she goes to it, as she
would go to death in any dreadful form, for those whom she loves, and to
whom she owes the duty of obedience. The Japanese maiden grows to
womanhood no less pure and modest than our own girls, but our girls are
never called upon to sacrifice their modesty for the sake of those whom
they love best; nor is it expected of any woman in this country that she
exist solely for the good of some one else, in whatever way he chooses
to use her, during all the years of her life. Let us take this
difference into our thought in forming our judgment, and let us rather
seek the causes that underlie the actions than pass judgment upon the
actions themselves. From a close study of the characters of many
Japanese women and girls, I am quite convinced that few women in any
country do their duty, as they see it, more nobly, more single-mindedly,
and more satisfactorily to those about them, than the women of Japan.
Many argue that the purity of Japanese women, as compared with the men,
the ready obedience which they yield, their sweet characters and
unselfish devotion as wives and mothers, are merely the results of the
restraint under which they live, and that they are too weak to be
allowed to enjoy freedom of thought and action. Whether this be true or
no is a point which we leave for others to take up, as time shall have
provided new data for reasoning on the subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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