So, on the other hand, chastity is a female virtue, it
is part of womanly duty, it has little or no relation to man personally.
Right revision and improvement of the Third Relation will abolish
concubinage. It will reform divorce. It will make love the basis of
marriage. It will change the state of things truthfully pictured in such
books as the Genji Monogatari, or Romance of Prince Genji, with its
examples of horrible lust and incests; the Kojiki or Ethnic scripture,
with its naive accounts of filthiness among the gods; the Onna Dai Gaku,
Woman's Great Study, with its amazing subordination and moral slavery of
wife and daughter; and The Japanese Bride, of yesterday--all truthful
pictures of Japanese life, for the epoch in which each was written.
These books will become the forgotten curiosities of literature, known
only to the archaeologist.
Improvement and revision of the Fourth Relation, will bring into the
Japanese home more justice, righteousness, love and enjoyment of life.
It will make possible, also, the cheerful acceptance and glad practice
of those codes of law common in Christendom, which are based upon the
rights of the individual and upon the idea of the greatest good to the
greatest number. It will help to abolish the evils which come from
primogeniture and to release the clutch of the dead hand upon the
living.
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