Common Sense Teachings for Japanese
Children and Greater Learning for Women
Kaibara and Token Ekiken
Common Sense Teachings for Japanese Children
In January when children reach the age of six, teach them numbers one
through ten, and the names given to designate 100, 1,000, 10,000 and
100,000,000. Let them know the four directions, East, West, North and
South. Assess their native intelligence and differentiate between quick and
slow learners. Teach them Japanese pronunciation from the age of six or
seven, and let them learn how to write.... From this time on, teach them
to respect their elders, and let them know the distinctions between the
upper and lower classes and between the young and old. Let them learn to
use the correct expressions.
When the children reach the age of seven, do not let the boys and girls sit
together, nor must you allow them to dine together....
For the eighth year. This is the age when the ancients began studying the
book Little Learning.[1] Beginning at this time, teach the youngsters
etiquette befitting their age, and caution them not to commit an act of
impoliteness. Among those which must be taught are: daily deportment,
the manners set for appearing before one's senior and withdrawing from
his presence, how to speak or respond to one's senior or guest, how to
place a serving tray or replace it for one's senior, how to present a wine
cup and pour rice wine and to serve side dishes to accompany it, and how
to serve tea. Children must also learn how to behave while taking their
meals.
Children must be taught by those who are close to them the virtues of
filial piety and obedience. To serve the parents well is called filial piety,
and to serve one's seniors well is called obedience. The one who lives
close to the children and who is able to teach must instruct the children in
the early years of their life that the first obligation of a human being is to
revere the parents and serve them well. Then comes the next lesson
which includes respect for one's seniors, listening to their commands and
not holding them in contempt. One's seniors include elder brothers, elder
sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins who are older and worthy of respect....
As the children grow older, teach them to love their younger brothers and
to be compassionate to the employees and servants. Teach them also the
respect due the teachers and the behavior codes governing friends. The
etiquette governing each movement toward important guests-such as
standing, sitting, advancing forward, and retiring from their presence-and
the language to be employed must be taught. Teach them how to pay
respect to others according to the social positions held by them.
Gradually the ways of filial piety and obedience, loyalty and
trustworthiness, right deportment and decorum, and sense of shame must
be inculcated in the children's minds and they must know how to
implement them. Caution them not to desire the possessions of others, or
to stoop below one's dignity in consuming excessive amounts of food and
drink....
Once reaching the age of eight, children must follow and never lead their
elders when entering a gate, sitting, or eating and drinking. From this time
on they must be taught how to become humble and yield to others. Do
not permit the children to behave as they please. It is important to caution
them against "doing their own things."
At the age of ten, let the children be placed under the guidance of a
teacher, and tell them about the general meaning of the five constant
virtues and let them understand the way of the five human
relationships.[2] Let them read books by the Sage[3] and the wise men of
old and cultivate the desire for learning.... When not engaged in reading,
teach them the literary and military arts....
Fifteen is the age when the ancients began the study of the Great
Learning.[4] From this time on, concentrate on the learning of a sense of
justice and duty. The students must also learn to cultivate their
personalities and investigate the way of governing people....
Those who are born in the high-ranking families have the heavy
obligations of becoming leaders of the people, of having people entrusted
to their care, and of governing them. Therefore, without fail, a teacher
must be selected for them when they are still young. They must be taught
how to read and be informed of the ways of old, of cultivating their
personalities, and of the way of governing people. If they do not learn the
way of governing people, they may injure the many people who are
entrusted to their care by the Way of Heaven. That will be a serious
disaster....
Greater Learning for Women
Seeing that it is a girl's destiny, on reaching womanhood, to go to a new
home, and live in submission to her father-in-law, it is even more
incumbent upon her than it is on a boy to receive with all reverence her
parents' instructions. Should her parents, through their tenderness, allow
her to grow up self-willed, she will infallibly show herself capricious in her
husband's house, and thus alienate his affection; while, if her father-in-law
be a man of correct principles, the girl will find the yoke of these
principles intolerable. She will hate and decry her father-in-law, and the
end of those domestic dissensions will be her dismissal from her
husband's house and the covering of herself with ignominy. Her parents,
forgetting the faulty education they gave her, may indeed lay all the blame
on the father-in-law. But they will be in error; for the whole disaster
should rightly be attributed to the faulty education the girl received from
her parents.
***
More precious in a woman is a virtuous heart than a face of beauty. The
vicious woman's heart is ever excited; she glares wildly around her, she
vents her anger on others, her words are harsh and her accent vulgar.
When she speaks, it is to set herself above others, to upbraid others, to
envy others, to be puffed up with individual pride, to jeer at others, to
outdo others-all things at variance with the way in which a woman should
walk. The only qualities that befit a woman are gentle obedience, chastity,
mercy, and quietness.
From her earliest youth a girl should observe the line of demarcation
separating women from men. 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. A woman...must observe a certain
distance in her relations even with her husband and with her brothers. In
our days the women of lower classes, ignoring all rules of this nature,
behave disorderly; they contaminate their reputations, bring down
reproach upon the head of their parents and brothers, and spend their
whole lives in an unprofitable manner. Is not this truly lamentable?
***
It is the chief duty of a girl living in the parental house to practice filial
piety towards her father and mother. But after marriage her duty is to
honor her father-in-law and mother-in-law, to honor them beyond her
father and mother, to love and reverence them with all ardor, and to tend
them with practice of every filial piety.... Even if your father-in-law and
mother-in-law are inclined to hate and vilify you, do not be angry with
them, and murmur not. If you carry piety towards them to its utmost
limits, and minister to them in all sincerity, it cannot be but that they will
end by becoming friendly to you.
***
The great lifelong duty of a woman is obedience.... When the husband
issues his instructions, the wife must never disobey them. In a doubtful
case, she should inquire of her husband and obediently follow his
commands....
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
forwardness. A woman should look upon her husband as if he were
Heaven itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to her
husband and thus escape celestial castigation.
Her treatment of her servant girls will require circumspection. Those lowborn girls have had no proper education; they are stupid, obstinate, and
vulgar in their speech.... Again, in her dealings with those lowly people, a
woman will find many things to disapprove of. But if she be always
reproving and scolding, and spend her time in hustle and anger, her
household will be in a continual state of disturbance. When there is real
wrongdoing, she should occasionally notice it, and point out the path of
amendment, while lesser faults should be quietly endured without anger....
[1] The Little Learning was written in 1187 by the Song scholar Liu Zucheng, a disciple of
Zhu Xi. A book of instruction for young children, it contains rules of behavior and
excerpts from the Classics and other works.
[2] The five virtues are human heartedness, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and good
faith. The five relationships are ruler-subject, father-son, husband-wife, older brotheryounger brother, and friend-friend.
[3] The term Sage refers to Confucius.
[4] The Great Learning, a chapter taken from the Record of Rituals, is one of the four
relatively short works that came to be known within the Confucian Classics as the Four
Credits: David J. Lu, Japan: A Documentary History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997),
pp. 258-261. Reprinted by permission of the author.