Throughout the country districts, where the women have a large share in the labor that is directly productive of wealth, where they not only work in the rice fields, pick the tea crops, gather the harvests, and help draw them to market, but where they have their own productive industries, such as caring for the silkworms, and spinning, and weaving both silk and cotton, we find the conventional distance between the sexes much diminished by the important character of feminine labor; but in the cities, and among the classes who are largely either indirect producers or non-producers, the only labor of the women is that personal service which we account as menial. It is for this reason, perhaps, that the gap widens as we go upward in society, and between the same social levels as we go cityward. The wife of the countryman, though she may work harder and grow old earlier, is more free and independent than her city sister; and the wife of the peasant, pushing her produce to market, is in some ways happier and more considered than the wife of the noble, who must spend her life among her ladies-in-waiting, in the seclusion of her great house with its beautiful garden, the plaything of her husband in his leisure hours, but never his equal, or the sharer of his cares or of his thoughts. One of the causes which must be mentioned as contributing to the lowering of the wife's position, among the higher and more wealthy classes, lies in the system of concubinage which custom allows, and the law until quite recently has not discouraged. From the Emperor, who was, by the old Chinese code of morals, allowed twelve supplementary wives, to the _samurai_, who are permitted two, the men of the higher classes are allowed to introduce into their families these _mékaké_, who, while beneath the wife in position, are frequently more beloved by the husband than the wife herself. It must be said, however, to the credit of many husbands, that in spite of this privilege, which custom allows, there are many men of the old school who are faithful to one wife, and never introduce this discordant element into the household. Even should he keep _mékaké_, it is often unknown to the wife, and she is placed in a separate establishment of her own. And in spite of the code of morals requiring submission in any case on the part of the woman, there are many wives of the _samurai_ and lower classes who have enough spirit and wit to prevent their husbands from ever introducing a rival under the same roof. In this way the practice is made better than the theory.