Revision and improvement of the Second Relation will make filial piety something more real than that unto which China has attained, or Japan has yet seen, or which is yet universally known in Christendom.  The tyranny of the father and of the older brother, and the sale of daughters to shame, will pass away; and there will arise in the Japanese house, the Christian home.

It would be hard to say what Confucianism has done for woman.  It is probable that all civilizations, and systems of philosophy, ethics and religion, can be well tested by this criterion—­the position of woman.  Confucianism virtually admits two standards of morality, one for man, another for woman.[21] In Chinese Asia adultery is indeed branded as one of the vilest of crimes, but in common idea and parlance it is a woman’s crime, not man’s.  So, on the other hand, chastity is a female virtue, it is part of womanly duty, it has little or no relation to man personally.  Right revision and improvement of the Third Relation will abolish concubinage.  It will reform divorce.  It will make love the basis of marriage.  It will change the state of things truthfully pictured in such books as the Genji Monogatari, or Romance of Prince Genji, with its examples of horrible lust and incests; the Kojiki or Ethnic scripture, with its naive accounts of filthiness among the gods; the Onna Dai Gaku, Woman’s Great Study, with its amazing subordination and moral slavery of wife and daughter; and The Japanese Bride, of yesterday—­all truthful pictures of Japanese life, for the epoch in which each was written.  These books will become the forgotten curiosities of literature, known only to the archaeologist.

Improvement and revision of the Fourth Relation, will bring into the Japanese home more justice, righteousness, love and enjoyment of life.  It will make possible, also, the cheerful acceptance and glad practice of those codes of law common in Christendom, which are based upon the rights of the individual and upon the idea of the greatest good to the greatest number.  It will help to abolish the evils which come from primogeniture and to release the clutch of the dead hand upon the living.  It will decrease the power of the graveyard, and make thought and care for the living the rule of life.  It will abolish sham and fiction, and promote the cause of truth.  It will hasten the reign of righteousness and love, and beneath propriety and etiquette lay the basis of “charity toward all, malice toward none.”

Revision with improvement of the Fifth Relation hastens the reign of universal brotherhood.  It lifts up the fallen, the down-trodden and the outcast.  It says to the slave “be free,” and after having said “be free,” educates, trains, and lifts up the brother once in servitude, and helps him to forget his old estate and to know his rights as well as his duties, and develops in him the image of God.  It says to the hinin or not-human, “be a man, be a citizen, accept the protection of the law.”