Peeps at Many Lands: Japan | Page 5

male in Japan arises from the religious customs
of the country. The chief of the latter is ancestor-worship. The
ancestors of a family form its household gods; but only the male
ancestors are worshipped: no offerings are ever laid on the shelf of the
household gods before an ancestress. Property, too, passes chiefly in
the male line, and every Japanese father is eager to have a son who
shall continue the worship of his ancestors, and to whom his property
may descend.
Thus, the birth of a son is received with great joy in a Japanese
household; though, on the other hand, we must not think that a girl is
ill-treated, or even destroyed, as sometimes happens in China. Not at all;
she is loved and petted just as much as her brother, but she is not
regarded as so important to the family line.
At the age of three the Japanese boy is taken to the temple to give
thanks to the gods. Again, at the age of five, he goes to the temple,
once more to return thanks. Now he is wearing the hakama, the manly
garment, and begins to feel himself quite a man. From this age onwards
the Japanese boy among the wealthier classes is kept busily at work in
school until he is ready to go to the University, but among the poorer
classes he often begins to work for his living.
The clever work executed by most tiny children is a matter of wonder

and surprise to all European travellers. Little boys are found binding
books, making paper lanterns and painting them, making porcelain
cups, winding grass ropes which are hung along the house-fronts for
the first week of the year to prevent evil spirits from entering, weaving
mats to spread over the floors, and at a hundred other occupations. It is
very amusing to watch the practice of the little boys who are going to
be dentists. In Japan the dentist of the people fetches out an aching
tooth with thumb and finger, and will pluck it out as surely as any tool
can do the work, so his pupils learn their trade by trying to pull nails
out of a board. They begin with tin-tacks, and go on until they can, with
thumb and finger, pluck out a nail firmly driven into the wood.
Luckily for them, they often get a holiday. The Japanese have many
festivals, when parents and children drop their work to go to some
famous garden or temple for a day's pleasure. Then there is the great
boys' festival, the Feast of Flags, held on the fifth day of the fifth month.
Of this festival we shall speak again.
Every Japanese boy is taught that he owes the strictest duty to his
parents and to his Emperor. These duties come before all others in
Japanese eyes. Whatever else he may neglect, he never forgets these
obligations. From infancy he is familiar with stories in which children
are represented as doing the most extraordinary things and undergoing
the greatest hardships in order to serve their parents. There is one
famous old book called "Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Virtue." It
gives instances of the doings of good sons, and is very popular in every
Japanese household.
Professor Chamberlain, the great authority on Japan, quotes some of
these instances, and they seem to us rather absurd. He says: "One of the
paragons had a cruel stepmother who was very fond of fish. Never
grumbling at her harsh treatment of him, he lay down naked on the
frozen surface of the lake. The warmth of his body melted a hole in the
ice, at which two carp came up to breathe. These he caught and set
before his stepmother. Another paragon, though of tender years and
having a delicate skin, insisted on sleeping uncovered at night, in order
that the mosquitoes should fasten on him alone, and allow his parents

to slumber undisturbed.
"A third, who was very poor, determined to bury his own child alive in
order to have more food wherewith to support his aged mother, but was
rewarded by Heaven with the discovery of a vessel filled with gold, off
which the whole family lived happily ever after. But the drollest of all
is the story of Roraishi. This paragon, though seventy years old, used to
dress in baby's clothes and sprawl about upon the floor. His object was
to delude his parents, who were really over ninety years of age, into the
idea that they could not be so very old, after all, seeing that they still
had such a childlike son."
His duty to his Emperor the Japanese takes very seriously, for it
includes his duty to his country. He considers that his life belongs to his
country, and