rded in Japan as
it is, or is affected to be, in this and other European countries. In
ancient days the public women of the capital and the large towns were
as famous as in Athens of old, and were regarded as amongst the best
educated and best mannered of their sex. The Japanese have ever looked
upon prostitution as what is termed a necessary evil, and they have
always sought to regulate and supervise it with a view of obviating
those evils, terrible in their consequences, which are frequently the
result of permitting it to go unchecked. And accordingly the Yoshiwara
has long been a recognised institution in every considerable town in
the country, the Yoshiwara being that particular portion of the town
in which prostitutes are alone permitted to reside. There is, so far
as I know, no prostitution outside the Yoshiwara, and the inmates
thereof are subject to a rigorous supervision and inspection, medical
and otherwise, which has produced excellent results. The inmates of
the Yoshiwara are not recruited as are the similar class in the West.
Here the "unfortunate" usually plies her trade as a _dernier ressort_.
In a moment of temptation she has "gone wrong," as the phrase goes,
the fact becomes public, she is too often cold-shouldered and hustled
even by her immediate relations, and her downward progress is swift
and certain. Nor is there for her, except in rare cases, any chance of
rehabilitation. She is too hopeless to exclaim "Resurgam!" and if in
an optimistic frame of mind she did so purpose she would find the
consummation difficult if not impossible. She is, in a word, on the
way to irretrievable ruin and a shameful end, and she knows it.

Such is, as I have said, not the case in Japan. The lot of the
prostitute there has never been regarded with the loathing which it
excites in this country. Houses of ill-fame were, and are still,
recruited not from those whose previous lapse from virtue has rendered
no other mode of livelihood possible than that from immorality, but by
those whom stern necessity has driven to the step as a means either of
supporting themselves or of assisting parents or their near relatives.
Such a sacrifice--a terrible sacrifice, I admit--has in Japan never
been regarded with horror, but as in a sense laudable. The finger of
scorn must not be pointed at a woman who has voluntarily sacrificed
what women hold most dear, not from lust or from the desire of leading
a gay life or pampering or adorning