An illustration of the first reason given above came to my knowledge not long since.  Rev. John T. Gulick saw in Kanagawa, in 1862, a man going through the streets carrying the bloody heads of a man and a woman which he declared to be those of his wife and her seducer, whom he had caught and killed in the act of adultery.  This act of the husband’s was in perfect accord with the practices and ideals of the time, and not seldom figures in the romances of Old Japan.

The new Civil Code adopted in 1898 furnishes an authoritative statement of many of the moral ideals of New Japan.  For the following summary I am indebted to the Japan Mail.[BP] In regard to marriage it is noteworthy that the “prohibited degrees of relationship are the same as those in England”—­including the deceased wife’s sister.  “The minimum age for legal marriage is seventeen in the case of a man and fifteen in the case of a woman, and marriage takes effect on notification to the registrar, being thus a purely civil contract.  As to divorce, it is provided that the husband and wife may effect it by mutual consent, and its legal recognition takes the form of an entry by the registrar, no reference being necessary to the judicial authorities.  Where mutual consent is not obtained, however, an action for divorce must be brought, and here it appears that the rights of the woman do not receive the same recognition as those of the man.  Thus, although adultery committed by the wife constitutes a valid ground of divorce, we do not find that adultery on the husband’s part furnishes a plea to the wife.  Ill-treatment or gross insult, such as renders living together impracticable, or desertion, constitutes a reason for divorce from the wife’s point of view.”  The English reviewer here adds that “since no treatment can be worse nor any insult grosser than open inconstancy on the part of a husband, it is conceivable that a judge might consider that such conduct renders living together impracticable.  But in the presence of an explicit provision with regard to the wife’s adultery and in the absence of any such provision with regard to the husband’s, we doubt whether any court of law would exercise discretion in favor of the woman.”  The gross “insult of inconstancy” on the part of the husband is a plea that has never yet been recognized by Japanese society.  The reviewer goes on to say:  “One cannot help wishing that the peculiar code of morality observed by husbands in this country had received some condemnation at the hands of the framers of the new Code.  It is further laid down that a ’person who is judicially divorced or punished because of adultery cannot contract a marriage with the other party to the adultery.’  If that extended to the husband it would be an excellent provision, well calculated to correct one of the worst social abuses of this country.  Unfortunately, as we have seen, it applies apparently to the case of the wife only.”  The provision for divorce by “mutual