A Daughter of the Samurai

garden from the godown. They were carrying, reverentially, a whitewood chest shaped like a temple box for sacred books. On the front, very large, was our crest, and around it was tied a straw rope with dangling Shinto papers. Many times I had seen that chest in the godown, standing alone on a whitewood platform. It held family heirlooms, some of them centuries old. The men were on their way to a certain room which Mother had prepared, where the chest would be opened in silence, and the sacred articles carefully examined by men in ceremonial garments.

I sat down listlessly on the edge of the porch, for I knew that Father, dressed in his stately kamishimo garments, would soon go to the room where the heirloom chest had been taken, and I should see him no more that afternoon. On airing days I generally followed him wherever he went, but across the threshold of that room I should not be allowed to step. I did not wonder why. It had always been so.

But as I sat alone on the porch I began to think, and after a while I hunted up Ishi.

“Ishi,” I said, “I go everywhere else with Father. Why cannot I be with him in the room where they are airing the sacred things?”

“Etsu-bo Sama,” she replied in the most matter-of-fact tone, as she shook out the long fringe of an old-fashioned incense ball, “it is because you were born a daughter to your father instead of a son.”

I felt that her words were a personal reproach, and with the age-old, patient submission of the Japanese woman, I walked slowly toward Honourable Grandmother’s room. It was comforting to turn my mind toward my stately, noble grandmother, to whom the entire household, even Father, looked up with reverence. Then, suddenly, like a breath of cold wind, came the thought that even my saintly grandmother would not dare touch the sacred things that were used to honour the Shinto gods. She always attended to the Buddhist shrine, but it was Father’s duty to care for the white Shinto shrine. During his absence, Jiya or another manservant took his place, for no woman was worthy to handle such holy things. And yet the great god of Shinto was a woman⁠—the Sun goddess!

That night I was bold enough to ask my father if his honourable mother was an unworthy woman like all others.

“What do you think, little Daughter?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation.

“It cannot be,” I replied. “You honour her too greatly for it to be true.”

He smiled and tenderly touched my head with his hand.

“Continue to believe so, little Daughter,” he said gently. “And yet do not forget the stern teachings of your childhood. They form the current of a crystal stream that, as it flows through the ages, keeps Japanese women worthy⁠—like your grandmother.”

It was not until long, long afterward, when the knowledge of later years had broadened my mind, that I comprehended his hidden meaning that a woman may quietly harbour independent thought if she does not allow it to destroy her gentle womanhood. The night that this thought came to me I wrote in my diary: “Useless sacrifice leads to⁠—only a sigh. Self-respect leads to⁠—freedom and hope.”

Beyond the wall on one side of our school was a rough path leading past several small villages, with ricefields and patches of clover scattered between. One day, when a teacher was taking a group of us girls for a walk, we came upon a dry ricefield dotted with wild flowers. We were gathering them with merry chattering and laughter when two village farmers passed by, walking slowly and watching us curiously.

“What is the world coming to,” said one, “when workable-age young misses waste time wandering about through bushes and wild grass?”

“They are grasshoppers trying to climb the mountain,” the other replied, “but the sun will scorch them with scorn. There can be only pity for the young man who takes one of those for his bride.”

The men were rough and ignorant, but they were men; and though we all laughed, not one of the girls was far enough from the shackles of her mother’s day not to feel a shadow of discomfort as we walked homeward.

The teacher paused as we came to the moss-covered stone wall of an old shrine and pointed to a nearby cherry tree, young and thrifty, growing out of the hollow of another tree whose fallen trunk was so old and twisted that it looked like a rough-scaled dragon. Beside it was one of the wooden standards so often seen in an artistic or noted spot. On the tablet was inscribed the poem:

“The blossoms of today draw strength from the roots of a thousand years ago.”

“This tree is like you girls,” said the teacher, with a smile. “Japan’s beautiful old civilization has given its strength to you young women of today. Now it is your duty to grow bravely and give to new Japan, in return, a greater strength and beauty than even the old possessed. Do not forget!”

We walked on homeward. Just as we reached our gate in the hedge wall one of the girls, who had been rather quiet, turned to me.

“Nevertheless,” she said, defiantly, “the grasshoppers are climbing the mountain into the sunlight.”

As I learned to value womanhood, I realized more and more that my love of freedom and my belief in my right to grow toward it meant more than freedom to act, to talk, to think. Freedom also claimed a spiritual right to grow.

I do not know exactly how I became a Christian. It was not a sudden thing. It seems to have been a natural spiritual development⁠—so natural that only a few puzzles stand out clearly as I look back along the path. As I read, and thought, and felt, my soul reached out into the unknown; and gradually, easily, almost unconsciously, I drifted out of a faith of philosophy, mysticism, and resignation into one of high