results, mutual dislike and severance of the engagement at mature age,
or love and happy marriage, or marriage, mutual dislike and subsequent
divorce, happen, as the case may be. In general, when the parents make
the betrothal of grown-up children, it is not probable that the feelings
of son or daughter are outraged, or that marriages are forced against
the consent of either, though this does sometimes take place. In Asiatic
countries, where obedience to parents is the first and last duty, and in
which no higher religion than filial obedience exists, the betrothal and
marriage of children is not looked upon as anything strange. The
prevalence of concubinage as a recognized institution in Japan makes it
of no serious importance whether the husband loves his wife or not.

To tell an ordinary Japanese that in America people often marry against
their parents' consent is to puzzle him, and make him believe Carlyle's
saying about Americans without having heard it. If a man who marries
against his parents' wish is not a triple-dyed ingrate, he must be a
downright fool. Beyond this idea the normal Japanese cannot go; and you
might as well try to make a blind man understand that "celestial rosy
red" was "Love's proper hue" as to convince him that a good man ever
marries against his parents' wishes. Such ideas and practices are
convincing evidences to him of the vast moral inferiority of Western
nations when compared with that of the people descended from the gods.

Resuming our narrative, we must mention that Kiku's father had once had
an offer from one Matsui, a wealthy retainer of the Wakasa clan, through
that young nobleman's middleman or agent, which he refused, to the
disgust of both middleman and suitor. The latter had seen Kiku walking
with her mother while going to the temple at Shiba, and, being struck
with her beauty, inquired who she was. Having come of age and wishing a
wife, he had sued for Kiku to her father, who, for reasons of his own,