to
hold her own against injustice and wrong. That when the people have
become used to these changes, other and more binding laws will be
enacted, we can feel pretty sure, for the drift of enlightened public
opinion seems to be in favor of securing better and more firmly
established homes just as fast as "the hardness of their hearts" will
permit.

_Page 84._

It is difficult for us in America, who live under customs and laws in
which the individual is the social unit and the family a union of
individuals, to understand a system of society in which the individual
is little or nothing and the family the social unit recognized both by
law and custom. In Japan, a man is simply a member of some family, and
his daily affairs, his marrying and giving in marriage, are more or less
under the control of the head of his family, or of the family council.
Only in case he is the head of the family is he able to marry without
securing some one's consent, and then his responsibilities in regard to
the headship may in themselves hamper him. If this is the case with the
more independent man, it may be imagined how completely the woman is
submerged under family influence. She may, under exceptional
circumstances, become the head of a family, but this is usually only a
temporary expedient, and even then she must subordinate herself more
completely to the family and its interests than when she occupies a
lowlier place.

The headship of an unmarried woman lasts only until a husband has been
selected for her, and the headship of a widow lasts during her
guardianship of the rightful heir to the position. By Japanese law a
widow is always the guardian of her minor children.

The only way in which individuality before the law can be obtained by
man or woman in Japan is through cutting the tie that binds to the
family, and starting out in life afresh as the head of a new family.
This new family must always be _heimin_, or plebeian, no matter how high
in rank may have been the family from which the founder has gone out,
but there is a continually increasing number of young men and women who
prefer the freedom that comes from the headship of a small and new
family, even if of low rank, to the state of tutelage or of hampering
responsibility which must accompany connection with a larger and older
social group. It seems likely that through this means an evolution from
the family to the individual system will be effected, as the nation
grows