The young

and is the mother of two healthy sons. couple are said to live a happy and congenial life. In conclusion, we make one more quotation, from Miss Bacon's "Japanese Girls and Women," follows:

"The woman question in Japan is at the present moment a matter of much consideration. There seems to be an uneasy feeling in the minds of even the more conservative men that some change in the status of women is inevitable, if the nation wishes to keep the pace it has set for itself. The Japanese women of the past and of the present are exactly suited to the position accorded them in society, and any attempt to alter them without changing their status only results in making square pegs for round holes. If the pegs hereafter are to be cut square, the holes must be enlarged and squared to fit them. The Japanese woman stands in no need of alteration unless her place in life is somehow enlarged, nor, on the other hand, can she fill a larger place without additional training. The men of new Japan, to whom the opinions and customs of the western world are becoming daily more familiar, while they shrink aghast, in many cases, at the thought that their women may ever become like the forward, self-assertive, half-masculine women of the West, show a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with the smallness and narrowness of the lives of their wives and daughters a growing belief that better-educated women would make better homes, and that the ideal home of Europe and America is the product of a more advanced civilization than that of Japan. Reluctantly in many cases, but still almost universally, it is admitted that in the interest of the homes, and for the sake of future generations, something must be done to carry the women

forward into a position more in harmony with what the nation is reaching for in other directions. This desire shows itself in individual efforts to improve by more advanced education daughters of exceptional promise, and in general efforts for the improvement of the condition of women."

Miss Bacon, in her book, traces very clearly the progress that has been made in the condition of woman, and shows how "better laws, broader education for the women, [and] a change in public opinion are still necessary. And she affirms that "we can feel pretty sure that, when the people have become used to these [recent] changes [of the new Civil Code], other and more binding laws will be enacted, for the drift of enlightened public opinion seems to be in favor of securing better and more firmly established homes."

The following is also worthy of quotation: "It is not possible to understand the actual progress made in Japan in improving the condition of women, without some consideration of the effect that Christian thought and Christian lives have had on the thought and lives of the modern Japanese."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

"The Real Japan," chap. viii.; "Out of the Far East" (Hearn), pp. 85-125; "The Yankees of the East," chaps. ix., xix.; "An American Missionary in Japan" (Gordon), chap. xv.; Japan and her People," vol. i. pp. 178-191; "A Japanese Interior (Miss Bacon); and, last and best, Miss Bacon's "Japanese Girls and Women," revised edition, illustrated.

CHAPTER XIV

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

OUTLINE OF TOPICS: Japanese syllabary; i-ro-ha arrangement; arrangement of fifty-sounds; modern inventions. - Chinese ideographs; Kata-kana; Hira-gana; Kana-majiri and Kana-tsuki; variety in pronunciation. - Japanese elocution. - Japanese syntax; logic in linguistics; a sample sentence; kind of language; topsyturvy practices. - Ancient literature; poetry; naga-uta and tanka; hokku; a poem a picture. - Characteristics of Japanese poetry. Modern literature: newspapers; press laws; English journals; Japanese journals; magazines and periodicals; books; what the Japanese read; their literary taste; foreign books; linguistic reforms, theory and practice. - Bibliography.

HE Japanese language belongs, philologi

T

cally, to the Altaic family, and is of the agglutinative type. Practically, it is musical and easy to pronounce, but, on account of its long and involved sentences, difficult to learn. Its alphabet is not phonetic, but syllabic, and very simple and regular. It comprises 73 characters, of which 5 are duplicates of the same sounds, so that there are really only 68 distinct sounds. As many of the sounds, moreover, are only slight modifications of other sounds, they are represented by the same characters, with certain diacritical signs attached (as in the case of ha, ba, and pa). There are, consequently, in common use only 48 distinct characters, which are

arranged in such an order as to form a stanza of poetry as follows:

Iro wa nioedo

Chirinuru wo

Waga yo tare zo
Tsune naran?

Ui no oku-yama

Kyō koete,

Asaki yume miji,
Ei mo sezu.

Which means, being interpreted by Professor B. H. Chamberlain :

"Though gay in hue, [the blossoms] flutter down, Alas! Who then, in this world of ours, may continue forever? Crossing to-day the uttermost limits of phenomenal existence, I shall see no more fleeting dreams, neither be any longer intoxicated." In other words, "all is transitory in this fleeting world. Let us escape from its illusions and vanities."

Another arrangement, based on the five vowels and their combination with certain consonants, gives fifty sounds, of which, however, two or three are really duplicates. This table of fifty sounds (goju-on) is as follows:

2

a ka

i

sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa ki shi chi ni hi mi (y)i ri (w)i u ku su tsu nu

fu

mu yu ru (w)u he me (y)e re (w)e

ho mo yo ro WO

1 Arranged by the famous Buddhist priest, Kōbō Daishi.
2 Read from top to bottom and from left to right.

Those in italics are duplicates; and (w)i and (w)e, though written with different characters from i and e, have practically the same pronunciation.

It will be seen that both of these arrangements are more or less artificial; at least, they appear to be mnemonic contrivances, and are certainly very convenient, because they are flexible. For instance, the demands of modern times and European languages for a v sound has led the Japanese to represent it by the simple device of attaching the common diacritical mark to the w series. By a similar device they might utilize the r series for l and the s series for th!

The Japanese characters, not difficult or complex in formation, are modifications and simplifications of Chinese ideographs. There had been in Japan no written language until after the introduction of Chinese civilization in the sixth century A. D., when Chinese words and characters were absorbed by the wholesale. Later, two systems of contracting the complex and cumbersome Chinese ideographs were invented, and are still used to some extent, indeed almost entirely by the uneducated class.

The oldest and simplest modification is called Kata-kana (side-letters), and consisted merely in taking part of a Chinese ideograph. But, as these characters were separate, and did not easily run together, they have not been used much, "except in dictionaries, books intended for the learned, or to spell foreign names.”