ABSTRACT
In no regard, perhaps, is the contrast between the East and the West more striking than their respective ideas concerning women and marriage.1
The perception of woman’s status and fate in Japan tended to influence Westerners’ views of the level of civilisation-or barbarity-of Japanese society as a whole. This is the element of reality we shall be dealing with-albeit a reality embellished or sullied according to the eye of the beholder. Secondly, we will need to consider the image, or indeed the ideal, of Japanese women in the West. This image transcended reality; it was a source of dreams, certainly of fiction. In the period we are dealing with, no aspect of Japan captivated the Western male imagination as much as Japanese woman.
