Oyuki still lives in Kyoto, shunning all publicity.
Dr. Hideki Yukawa, who lectured for some years at Columbia University and who was awarded the much-coveted Nobel Prize for his studies in atomic theory a few years ago, is one of the few people postwar Japan can be proud of. He is the only physicist who has been able to explain the forces that hold the earth together. When he came back to Japan recently, Dr. Yukawa was given a big welcome, but at the same time was said to have been annoyed by experiences similar to Oyuki Morgan's. The Japanese are poor and therefore restless. They are very inquisitive and like to pry into other people's affairs. It is hard to make a living, and if anyone is known to be wealthy or famous, they resort to all conceivable means to exploit his reputation or extort his riches.
The Japanese woman is exceedingly patient. She has to put up with all kinds of hardship and to bear even her husband's unkind acts, such as his keeping a concubine. By Japanese custom, she is wedded into her husband's family, not just to the husband himself, and once in the family it is her duty and mission to uphold the tradition of the family. Therefore, divorce is unthinkable and is considered something dishonorable, even if all the wrongs are on the side of the husband. If, however, the situation becomes utterly intolerable and she really wants a divorce, she usually finds herself with half a dozen children. For the sake of the childen she is often dissuaded from taking such a drastic step. Also, she would be unable to support herself. Thus, poverty and too many children make her subservient to her husband, however tyrannical he may be.
In the Japanese home the husband is omnipotent. Middle- and upper-class families usually have a private bath in their house. The bath is a usual Japanese one, with hot water kept in the tub for soaking and warming one's body and not changed more than once a day. The privilege of taking the first bath is invariably accorded to the master of the house, and after him come the children, then his wife, and finally the servants of the household.
At dinner the husband usually gets an extra dish of the best delicacy. For instance, raw fish is considered a very dainty food in my country, but it is rather expensive. In most households, even when there is not enough raw fish to go around, the husband either monopolizes the dish or gets the largest helping of it. It is thought in Japan that the husband is the mainstay of the family, and since the entire family subsists by his earnings anyway, due respect should be paid to him and he should be fed better than other members of the family.
The fortitude and self-denial with which the Japanese woman tolerates all kinds of discomfort and difficulties have become second nature. Japanese women giving birth in an American or European maternity hospital have often been the subject of considerable admiration on the part of hospital nurses and doctors. I remember once visiting a London hospital in which a Japanese friend of my wife's was giving birth. Quite a few Japanese residents used to send their wives to this particular hospital for childbirth. A doctor there told me that he had never heard any Japanese lady cry in the throes of delivery, while all the British patients groaned fiercely and in some cases even swore. The doctor said that he sometimes even wondered if Japanese women felt pain at all during delivery! The Japanese woman thinks it extremely disgraceful to howl and groan in such cases and would try to suppress all her agonies with the fortitude and patience characteristic of the women of her race.
For a variety of reasons, the Japanese wife's housekeeping is extremely onerous. For one thing, her kitchen is so primitive that she has to spend hours on end preparing meals. Except in major urban areas, gas is not generally used for cooking. She has to get up early in the morning to make a charcoal fire in the brazier. Rice has to be washed and cooked for each meal, for the family-members like to eat rice hot, even when other dishes may be served cold. Moreover, washing dishes afterward is a tedious process, so many more bowls and plates being used than in Western cooking. Each vegetable, and even the pickles, have to be served in separate bowls and plates. The wife cannot enlist the help of her husband in dish-washing as in American homes. The Japanese husband thinks it beneath his dignity to condescend to work in the kitchen and leaves everything to his wife, even when domestic help is not available. The average Japanese wife spends at least two hours in preparing breakfast alone.
The Japanese way of making the bed at night and tucking the bedding away into the closet again in the morning calls for considerably more time and labor than making the bed in Western homes.
The Japanese house has to be dusted and cleaned thoroughly every day, for it is very dusty in most cities, since most streets and sidewalks are either not paved at all or are imperfectly paved. The house is usually wide open and has many cracks, so that sweeping the house is a task which requires the constant attention and vigilance of the housewife.
The Japanese, both men and women, generally dress in native kimono at home, although they wear foreign dress while at work. This dual living adds another headache to the Japanese housewife, for a kimono has to be tailored at home by the women. Thus, the Japanese wife lives in a dreary routine of housekeeping day in and day out, and if she has children, her work is made doubly onerous.
Loyalty of the Japanese wife to her husband is a virtue excelled in by few other peoples, I believe. To counteract the stress which modern conditions have imposed on this institution of loyalty, we Japanese have a story which we like to repeat to our families. This story of the wife of Kazutoyo Yama-nouchi, a feudal warrior, is proverbial:
Yamanouchi was a low-ranking warrior in the service of Lord Nobunaga Oda, a celebrated feudal chieftain in the sixteenth century. One day a horse dealer came from a northern province with a splendid mount. Yamanouchi, being ambitious, was very tempted to buy the horse, as the possession of a good steed was a sure step to promotion among the warrior class of those days. However, he could not afford it. He appeared so despondent that his wife insisted on knowing the nature of his worry. Though in feudal days a warrior considered it shameful and beneath his dignity to consult his wife on any matter pertaining to his duties, Yamanouchi confided in his wife. Upon hearing the story, she produced ten pieces of gold, which she had long kept stored in secret in the drawer of her mirror stand. Yamanouchi was surprised to find his wife with so much money, but she explained that it was her dowry and that her mother had enjoined her not to spend it except in the case of urgent need by her husband. Even though the couple were poverty-stricken for a long time, she had never thought of using this money, for her mother's words always rang in her ears and restrained her. Now she was glad she had not waited in vain! Yamanouchi bought the fine horse with the money, and his lord was very pleased with him. From then on Yamanouchi distinguished himself in the domain and was finally made a local baron.
We have always liked this story as an illustration of our ancestral virtues. In modern times, too, we have striking and dramatic accounts of the loyalty of Japanese wives.
In February, 1936 a number of disgruntled young officers of the Japanese Army, with some of their loyal enlisted men, staged a large-scale insurrection in Tokyo. They seized the principal government offices and assassinated a host of prominent statesmen known to be opposed to the radical expansionist policy of the military. The twenty-sixth of February, 1936 has gone down in the Japanese history as a dreadful day.
A group of these rebels took machine guns and other weapons from their garrison and broke into the home of Viscount Saito, former Prime Minister, to kill him. For a few terrible moments, Viscountess Saito placed herself in front of her husband and said to the brigands: "Kill me instead—my husband cannot be spared by the country." She actually put her hand on the mouth of the roaring machine gun until her wounds forced her aside. Several other bloodthirsty rebels forced their way into the house of General Watanabe, Inspector General of Military Education. In the frightful tragedy there, Mrs. Watanabe lay down with her husband in her arms, so that the assassins had to force the gun underneath her body to complete their dastardly act.
Japanese history is full of examples of such heroism and loyalty of woman to their husbands.
The Japanese women's lot, however unenviable, cannot be branded as altogether miserable. There is one redeeming feature at least. When she becomes old and her children are all grown and earning their own living, the elderly mother is usually well taken care of by them, and also by her grandchildren. Most mothers live under the same roof with their children, who consider it their duty to see that their father and mother are properly looked after in their old age. It is then that the Japanese