cumlocution is needed to express the idea of a chaste man.

Jealousy is a horrible sin, but is always supposed to be a womanish
fault, and so an exhibition of folly and weakness. Therefore, to apply
such a term to God--to say "a jealous God"--outrages the good sense of a
Confucianist,[24] almost as much as the statement that God "cannot lie"
did that of the Pundit, who wondered how God could be Omnipotent if He
could not lie.

How great the need in Japanese social life of some purifying principle
higher than Confucianism can afford, is shown in the little book
entitled "The Japanese Bride,"[25] written by a native, and scarcely
less in the storm of native criticism it called forth. Under the system
which has ruled Japan for a millennium and a half, divorce has been
almost entirely in the hands of the husband, and the document of
separation, entitled in common parlance the "three lines and a half,"
was invariably written by the man. A woman might indeed nominally obtain
a divorce from her husband, but not actually; for the severance of the
marital tie would be the work of the house or relatives, rather than the
act of the wife, who was not "a person" in the case. Indeed, in the
olden time a woman was not a person in the eye of the law, but rather a
chattel. The case is somewhat different under the new codes,[26] but the
looseness of the marriage tie is still a scandal to thinking Japanese.
Since the breaking up of the feudal system and the disarrangement of the
old social and moral standards, the statistics made annually from the
official census show that the ratio of divorce to marriage is very
nearly as one to three.[27]

The Elder and the Younger Brother.

The Fourth Relation is that of Elder Brother and Younger Brother. As we
have said, foreigners in translating some of the Chinese and Japanese
terms used in the system of Confucius are often led into errors by
supposing that the Christian conception of family life prevails also in
Chinese Asia. By many writers this relation is translated "brother to
brother;" but really in the Japanese language there is no term meaning
simply "brother" or "sister,"[28] and a circumlocution is necessary to
express the ideas which we convey by these words. It is always "older
brother" or "younger brother," and "older sister" or "younger
sister"--the male or female "_kiyodai_" as the case may be. With
us--excepting in lands where the law of primogeniture still
prevails--all the