“Her mother!” he scoffed.  “Madam, if her mother had been blest with the backbone of a jellyfish she would never have married a man whose people were not her people, whose customs are as far removed from hers as the East is from the West.  My daughter was young.  Had she married one of her own country, all would have been well.  Her will would have been directed by her mother-in-law.  She was trained to obedience.  See what the teachings of your country do to our women!  In a letter she wrote telling me she had gone, she thanked me for teaching her the laws of submission.  It helped her to bow to the commands of this man when he bade her marry him, and she loved him!  Love! as if that had anything to do with marriage.  Now comes the result of this accursed union—­a troublesome girl who is neither one thing nor the other, who laughs at the customs of my country and upsets the peace of my house, who boldly declares she is an American.  She need not herald it.  In dress and manners she wears the marks of her training.”

I offered no comment, but every moment served to deepen my interest in this girl who could defy a will which had ruled a whole island for half a century.

My silence seemed to irritate him.  He turned fiercely upon me.

“Tell me, what kind of girls does America produce?  What is your boasted freedom for women but license?  Is their place never taught them?  Have they no understanding of the one great law for women?”

I had been absent from my country many long years, and while neither the best nor the worst had come my way, America was my country, her people my people, and they stood to me for all that was great and honorable and righteous.  The implication of Kishimoto’s question annoyed me all the more, because I knew him to be a keen observer and not hasty in his conclusions.

“Softly, Kishimoto San.  You answered your own question a few moments ago.  The customs of the two countries are as wide apart as the East is from the West.  Tastes differ in manners as well as religion.  If there are things in America that do not please you, so there are many laws in Japan that are repugnant to Americans.  You are unjust to hold my country responsible for your woes.”

“But I do hold it responsible.  My granddaughter comes of its teaching.  I meditate what kind of religion it is that permits a girl to question her elder’s authority and to defy the greatest of laws, filial piety.  What manner of a country is it where custom grants liberty to a girl that she may roam the streets and sit in a public garden alone with a man!”

This last was indeed serious.  In my day and in my town it could be done if the girl were so fortunate as to have something that stood for a male cousin.  But neither then nor now was it permissible in a land of man-made laws for men.  Unless it was between husband and wife, private conversation, or a promenade just for two branded the participants as bold, possibly evil.