itude enable her husband to escape the
dishonor that must come to him if he fails to fulfill his feudal duty.
Negotiations are entered into, the contract is made, and an advance
payment is given which will furnish money enough for the pledge required
by the conspirators. All this is done without the knowledge of the
husband, lest his love for his wife and his grief for the sacrifice
prevent him from accepting the only means left to prove his loyalty. The
noble wife even plans to leave her home while he is away on a hunting
expedition, and so spare him the pain of parting. His emotion upon
learning of this venture in business is not of wrath at the disgrace
that has overtaken his family, but simply of grief that his wife and her
parents must make so great a sacrifice to save his honor. It is a
terrible affliction, but it is not a disgrace in any way parallel to the
disgrace of disloyalty to his lord. And the heroic wife, when the men
come to carry her away, is upheld through all the trying farewells by
the consciousness that she is making as noble a sacrifice of herself as
did the wife of Yamato Dake when she leaped into the sea to avert the
wrath of the sea-god from her husband. The Japanese, both men and
women, knowing this story and many others similar in character, can see,
as we cannot from our point of view, that, even if the body be defiled,
there is no defilement of the soul, for the woman is fulfilling her
highest duty in sacrificing all, even her dearest possession, for the
honor of her husband. It is a climax of self-abnegation that brings
nothing but honor to the soul of her who reaches it. Japanese women who
read this story feel profound pity for the poor wife, and a horror of a
sacrifice that binds her to a life which outwardly, to the Japanese mind
even, is the lowest depth a woman ever reaches. But they do not despise
her for the act; nor would they refuse to receive her even were she to
appear in living form to-day in any Japanese home, where, thanks to
happier fortunes, such sacrifices are not demanded. Just at this point
is the difference of moral perspective that foreigners visiting Japan
find so hard to understand, and that leads many, who have lived in the
country the longest, to believe that there is no modesty and purity
among Japanese women. It is this that makes it possible for the vilest
of stories, and those that have the least foundation in fact, to find
easy belief among foreigners, even if th