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.
Well-to-do fathers are willing to spend more money on the education of
their daughters, to send them abroad, if possible, to complete their
studies, or to postpone the time of marriage so that plans for higher
education may be carried through. Where, ten years ago, the number of
women who had been abroad for study might be counted on the fingers of
one hand, there are now three or four times that number in T[=o]ky[=o]
alone. Another sign of the times is the fact that husbands going abroad
on business or for pleasure are more inclined to take their wives with
them, even if it be only for a few months. There are now to be found, in
all the larger cities, women who have spent a longer or shorter time in
some foreign country, whose minds have been opened and whose horizons
have been enlarged by contact with new ideas. All this cannot fail to
have its effect, sooner or later, upon the country at large.

The efforts for the improvement of women in general may be grouped into
four classes: by legislation, by education, through the press, and by
means of societies for mutual improvement.

Of the recent legislation concerning marriage and divorce and its
effect on the family, I have spoken in a preceding chapter. The latest
statistics show that, while before the new laws were enacted divorces
were one to every three marriages, they have now been reduced to one in
five. It must be said, however, that the law is still somewhat in
advance of public opinion. While the chance of permanence in marriage is
better now than it was before the new code came into force, custom is
still stronger than the law, and marriage is too often a temporary
arrangement. In many cases the wife knows little or nothing of her new
rights, and even when she does know, she has seldom the self-assertion
to make a stand for them, but meekly submits to the dictates of those
whom she is bound by custom, if not by law, to respect and obey without
question. But the fact that the laws have actually been improved means,
in a country like Japan, in which the government is the moulder of
public opinion, that the custom will some day conform to the law.

In the matter of property owning, women, under the new c