[20] It is worth while to mention in this connection the noteworthy efforts made by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Japan in calling the attention of the public to this custom, and in arousing public sentiment in favor of legislation against not only this system, but against the licensed houses of prostitution. Though there has not yet been any practical result, much discussion has ensued in the newspapers and magazines, lectures have been given, and much strong feeling aroused, which may, before long, produce radical change. Upon the 11th day of February, 1889, the day on which the Emperor, by his own act in giving a constitution to the people, limited his own power for the sake of putting his nation upon a level with the most civilized nations of the earth, he at the same time, and for the first time, publicly placed his wife upon his own level. In an imperial progress made through the streets of Tōkyō, the Emperor and Empress, for the first time in the history of Japan, rode together in the imperial coach.[*115] Until then, the Emperor, attended by his chief gentlemen-in-waiting and his guards, had always headed the procession, while the Empress must follow at a distance with her own attendants. That this act on the part of the Emperor signifies the beginning of a new and better era for the women of Japan, we cannot but hope; for until the position of the wife and mother in Japan is improved and made secure, little permanence can be expected in the progress of the nation toward what is best and highest in the Western civilization. Better laws, broader education for the women, a change in public opinion on the subject, caused by the study, by the men educated abroad, of the homes of Europe and America,--these are the forces which alone can bring the women of Japan up to that place in the home which their intellectual and moral qualities fit them to fill. That Japan is infinitely ahead of other Oriental countries in her practices in this matter is greatly to her credit; but that she is far behind the civilized nations of Europe and America, not only in practice but in theory, is a fact that is incontestable, and a fact that, unless changed, must sooner or later be a stumbling-block in the path of her progress toward the highest civilization of which she is capable.[21] The European practice cannot be grafted upon the Asiatic theory, but the change in the home must be a radical one, to secure permanent good results. As long as the wife has no rights which the husband is bound to respect, no great advance can be made, for human nature is too mean and selfish to give in all cases to those who are entirely unprotected by law, and entirely unable to protect themselves, those things which the moral nature declares to be their due. In the old slave times in the South, many of the negroes were better fed, better cared for, and happier than they are to-day; but they were nevertheless at the mercy of men who too often thought only of