Note 265 — Chapter VIII · THE INDUSTRIAL DISADVANTAGES OF DOMESTIC SERVICE

A description of domestic service in Japan is of value on this point. “From the steward of your household, to your jinrikisha man or groom, every servant in your establishment does what is right in his own eyes, and after the manner he thinks best. Mere blind obedience to orders is not regarded as a virtue in a Japanese servant; he must do his own thinking, and, if he cannot grasp the reason for your order, that order will not be carried out.” “Even in the treaty ports [Japanese attendants] have not resigned their right of private judgment, but, if faithful and honest, seek the best good of their employer, even if his best good involves disobedience of his orders.”—Alice M. Bacon, Japanese Girls and Women, pp. 299, 301.

F. R. Feudge, in How I Kept House by Proxy, quotes from her Chinese cook, who said that he could boast of forty years “of study and practice in his profession.” “I am always willing to be told what to do, but never how to execute the order—especially when in that department I happen to know far more than my teachers.”—Scribner’s Monthly, September, 1881.