the theory of Japanese “impersonality.”  For it is not a fact that the Japanese do not fall in love; it is a well-known experience to them.  It is inconceivable how anyone at all acquainted with either Japanese life or literature could make such an assertion.  The passionate love of a man and a woman for each other, so strong that in multitudes of cases the two prefer a common death to a life apart, is a not uncommon event in Japan.  Frequently we read in the daily papers of a case of mutual suicide for love.  This is sufficiently common to have received a specific name “joshi."[CN]

So far as the argument for “impersonality” is concerned this illustration from the asserted lack of love is useless, for it is one of those manufactured for the occasion by imaginative and resourceful advocates of “impersonality.”

But I do not mean to say that “falling in love” plays the same important part in the life and development of the youth in Japan that it does in the West.  It is usually utterly ignored, so far as parental planning for marriage is concerned.  Love is not recognized as a proper basis for the contraction of marriage, and is accordingly frowned upon.  It is deemed a sign of mental and moral weakness for a man to fall in love.  Under these conditions it is not at all strange that “falling in love” is not so common an experience as in the West.  Furthermore, this profound experience is not utilized as it is in the West as a refining and elevating influence in the life of a young man or woman.  In a land where “falling in love” is regarded as an immoral thing, a breaking out of uncontrollable animal passion, it is not strange that it should not be glorified by moralists or sanctified by religion.  There are few experiences in the West so ennobling as the love that a young man and a young woman bear to each other during the days of their engagement and lasting onward throughout the years of their lengthening married life.  The West has found the secret of making use of this period in the lives of the young to elevate and purify them of which the East knows little.

But there are still other and sadder consequences following from the attitude of the Japanese to the question of “falling in love.”  It can hardly be doubted that the vast number of divorces is due to the defective method of betrothal, a method which disregards the free choice of the parties most concerned.  The system of divorce is, we may say, the device of society for remedying the inherent defects of the betrothal system.  It treats both the man and the woman as though they were not persons but unfeeling machines.  Personality, for a while submissive, soon asserts its liberty, in case the married parties prove uncongenial, and demands the right of divorce.  Divorce is thus the device of thwarted personality.  But in addition to this evil, there is that of concubinage or virtual polygamy, which is often the result of “falling in love.”  And then, there is the resort of hopelessly thwarted