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Carrying the Male. But there remains one enormous roadblock on the path of female emancipation: the Japanese man. Few husbands will take their wives out for an evening. Their usual excuse is that their employers, for business reasons, insist that they attend numerous geisha parties, where much of the nation's business is still transacted. In the geisha houses, the jokes and sake drinking have not changed in a thousand years. Tipsy politicians and businessmen play such children's games as "scissors, paper, rock" or the passing of lighted tapers until they go out, to determine who must drink penalty cups of sake. When not being pinched or fondled by male guests, the modern geisha sings, plays the samisen or unexpectedly breaks into a rumba, spins a Hula Hoop or blows a saxophone.
Even the men unable to afford the geisha house often will not go home to their wives, but stay downtown in all-male sake bars, lingering over a single drink, or in pachinko parlors playing pinball machines. "Why do they do this?" asks a girl indignantly. "Because they want their wives to think they are big shots. They want the world to believe they are out chasing women. An average Japanese wife is ashamed if her husband comes home at 6 or 7 at night. The neighbors will then say he must be only a humble clerk."
Japanese businessmen are slow to hire educated girls for decent positions. A girl college graduate says bitterly: "Yes, I can get a job in business, all right: serving tea to the office help." The Japanese male is proving skittish about marrying the emancipated female. He wants an old-fashioned girl just like the girl who married dear old Dad: thrifty, a good cook, plain rather than pretty, cheerful, obedient, and with "just enough spunk to make life interesting."
Despite the new freedom, the Japanese girl has a terrible time meeting a man socially; and when she does, etiquette forbids her probing his family background and prospects. Even among the most emancipated there is a gradual drift back to the miai, or formal meeting preparatory to an arranged marriage. But there is a big difference: instead of parents' having the final say, the young men and women have obtained a reasonable veto power, and, after a miai, will often see each other for several months before making a decision. Says an observer: "A lot of things are changing in Japan, but if I were asked to predict which institution will prove more durable, the go-between or the geisha, I would say the go-between."
Private Wedding. It was for this reason that the imperial family felt compelled, in face of the facts, to insist that the marriage of the crown prince and Mi-chiko-san had been arranged. Last week, as that marriage drew near, Michiko Shoda appeared to be approaching her nuptials with the supreme poise of a young woman confident of her worth. On April 10 Michiko and the crown prince, alone except for a Shinto priest, will be married in an "inner sanctuary" of the blue-moated Imperial Palace. There will be no spectators, no witnesses. The priest will wave a sacred branch above their heads to purify them. The crown prince and Michiko will each take nine tiny sips of sake, three sips at a time, exchanging cups thrice, in the ceremony called sansan-kudo (three-three-nine).