arising out of the relations of the sexes are essentially the same in Japan as in Europe. Chastity, both in men and women, is a virtue, as it is with ourselves. But in the Yedo period it was thrust into the background by the more urgent claims of loyalty and filial duty. In theory a man should have but one wife. In the case of the heads of great houses, one or even more concubines were allowed, but only with the bonâ fide object of having children. Vulgar licentiousness was condemned, and in the case of officials was visited with severe punishment.
The position of the wife, as of women generally, was very different in the Yedo period from what it had been in earlier times. Chinese notions of the absolute subjection and the seclusion, as far as possible, of the sex, made great progress. Women were now rarely heard of in public life, and disappear completely from the world of literature—a significant fact when we remember the feminine masterpieces of the Heian period. A woman's first duty was to be faithful and obedient to her husband. Second marriages of widows were not absolutely forbidden, but women who refused to contract such unions were highly commended, and when we meet with the word "chastity" in a Japanese book, it is generally this form of the virtue which is meant. A wife was bound to revenge her husband's murder, and in fiction at least was permitted to sacrifice her own honour with this praiseworthy object. Some European travellers and novelists speak as if an unmarried woman's maiden fame were a thing of no account in Japan. This is simple nonsense. But it can hardly be denied that more particularly in their case chastity holds a lower place in the scale of virtues than in Christian countries. According to the code of morality of novelists and dramatists, it is
