Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan for the Use of Travellers and Others

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K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Company, Limited, 1891 - 503 páginas
 

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Página 453 - But how sweet the Japanese woman is ! — all the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be concentrated in her. It shakes one's faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression, — then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamondhard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the subject.
Página 457 - While thou honourest thine own parents, think not lightly of thy fatherin-law ! Never should a woman fail, night and morning, to pay her respects to her father-in-law and mother-in-law. Never should she be remiss in performing any tasks they may require of her. With all reverence must she carry out, and never rebel against, her father-in-law's commands. On every point must she inquire of her father-in-law and mother-in-law, and abandon herself to their direction. Even if thy father-in-law and mother-in-law...
Página 461 - The five worst maladies that afflict the female mind are : indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy, and silliness. Without any doubt, these five maladies infest seven or eight out of every ten women, and it is from these that arises the inferiority of women to men.
Página 455 - FROM her earliest youth a girl should observe the line of demarkation separating women from men, and never, even for an instant, should she be allowed to see or hear the least impropriety. The customs of antiquity did not allow men and women to sit in the same apartment, to keep their wearing apparel in the same place, to bathe in the same place, or to transmit to each other anything directly from hand to hand.
Página 39 - The floor must have been low down, so that the occupants ;of the building, as they squatted or lay on their mats, were exposed to the stealthy attacks of venomous snakes, which were probably far more numerous in the earliest ages when the country was for the most part uncultivated, than at the present day There seems some reason to think that the yuka, here translated floor...
Página 457 - If ever her husband should inquire of her, she should answer to the point ; — to answer in a careless fashion were a mark of rudeness. Should her husband be roused at any time to anger, she must obey him with fear and trembling, and not set herself up against him in anger and frowardness.
Página 161 - If he shewed any sense of what he was doing, any remorse; if he mingled his tears with hers and asked her not to think too hardly of him because he had obeyed the inevitable destiny of a man to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, she could give him her blessing and accept her bereavement with dignity and without reproach. But the man never dreams of such considerations. To him his mother's feeling in the matter, when she betrays it, is unreasonable, ridiculous, and even odious, as...
Página 377 - Buddhist or rti/oliuShinttj, were, as the phrase went, "purified," that is, stripped of their Buddhist ornaments, and handed over to Shinto keeping. But as Shinto had no root in itself — being a thing too empty and jejune to influence the hearts of men — Buddhism soon rallied. The Council for Spiritual Affairs was reduced to the rank of a department, the department to a bureau, the bureau to a sub-bureau. The whole thing is now a mere shadow, though Shinto is still in so far the official cult...
Página 238 - referred to the high commercial standing of the foreign community. The Chinese are in no way behind us in that respect ; in fact, I know of no people in the world I would sooner trust than the Chinese merchant and banker. I may mention that for the last twenty-five years the bank has been doing a very large business with Chinese at Shanghai, amounting, I should say, to hundreds of millions of taels, and we have never yet met with a defaulting Chinaman.
Página 108 - and then in a strange, dry, cracked voice, the fox would speak, and mock his unfortunate hostess. Thus matters continued for three weeks, till a priest of the Nichiren sect was sent for. The priest upbraided the fox sternly. The fox (always, of course, speaking through the girl's mouth) argued on the other side. At last he said : ' I am tired of her. I ask no better than to leave her. What will you give me for doing so ? ' The priest asked what he would take.

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