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Legacy 21.2 (2004) 235-243



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The Marriage of Okiku-San

Red Book Magazine June 1910 : 254-63

Miss Kiku Taguchi was not an ordinary young lady. Her father, a pompous, important individual, entertained a distinct contempt for her insignificant sex. His wife was a mere nonentity, a puppet, who vaguely repeated, parrot-like, the paradoxes voiced by her lord. Hence, when this same lord emphatically expressed his opinion concerning the proper education for a female—this within twelve hours after the birth of Okiku-san, Lady Taguchi assented, and promised things. The result was a girl of naturally independent and original disposition, trammeled by the contracted rules common for women in Japan half a century before.

Kiku knew by heart the great rules laid down by Confucius for her miserable sex. Aimlessly and dully, she would repeat them from day to day, while her vapid-faced mother, herself a product of the new Japan, mechanically kept time on the small box desk by which she was wont to squat.

Okiku possessed an uncle who had been educated abroad, and through this medium she had come to know of many attractive things. His opinions were as emphatic as his brother's, but they were entirely different. The emancipation of Japanese women was his pet hobby, and so bitter was his denunciation of the old-time method of repression and education of the weaker sex, that he and his brother met only to argue and oftentimes politely quarrel. Okiku's uncle, however, was a man of real power and great wealth, and while Okiku's father, who was in modest circumstances, might despise and disagree with his opinions, he respected the aforesaid power and also the considerable fortune to which his own daughter would certainly succeed. The uncle was old, had no children of his own, and would have none. A widower, he was devoted, so he claimed, to the memory of his wife, and growled contempt at the notion of marrying again merely in order to have a progeny to pray for his soul after death.

To him went Okiku, fretting under the home chains, and feeling, rather than knowing, the electrical change of thought among her sex in Japan. She wanted an education—a real one, as she expressed it. To her bluff and sympathetic uncle, at least, she dared to breathe her little hidden secret hope—a desire to go abroad, to enter a foreign school and college. This her uncle promised her she should do, and the following day he paid a visit upon his brother. Once alone with him, he went straight to the object of his call, barely giving the more outwardly courteous one a chance to run through [End Page 235] the long gamut of civilities, usually the rule—even with brothers.

"Tomi, your girl is stupid, lazy, sleepy!"

Tomi's lips became a straight line. Perfectly well he knew that the foregoing statement was not true, but he believed in the old-fashioned method of polite conversation, the humble admission of the inferiority of one's self and one's family.

He said, in a tone that fiercely denied the words he uttered:

"It is miserably true. She is a stupid worm!"

"Let us put our heads together then," suggested Gonji solemnly, "and see if we cannot devise some means to rectify her unhappy imbecile condition."

"I listen to your enlightened words of wisdom," said Tomi, grimly sarcastic and still fiercely polite.

"To the point then. What do you say to my niece going abroad—say, to America—for a term of years?"

In spite of himself, the father of Okiku leaped up in his seat.

"What!" he fairly shouted. "Have my daughter sent to the country of barbarians, where civilization is only in its infancy!"

"Quiet!" urged Gonji, pulling at a stubby little imperial he had carefully copied from a French diplomat. "Let us talk over the matter gently, reasonably."

"There is nothing to talk over," said Tomi, controlling himself. "The matter is quite settled."

Gonji arose, shrugging his shoulders slightly—a trick also...

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