barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (08/09/85)
"Rabu" (Japanese transliteration of "love") implies respectable romantic love, a new concept in Japanese culture, impoted from the West. Traditional Japanese culture viewed the affection existing between husband and wife as quite different from the romantic love a man felt for a geisha/courtesan/bar girl. AS recently as the 40s, an American woman married to a Japanese reported that her husband felt quite embarrassed at being caught by colleagues spending a quiet evening with his wife (instead of out at a bar) and explained to her that it was disrespectful to love one's wife BECAUSE it was treating her like a whore. There's an old Japanese proverb that a man who loves his wife is spoiling his mother's servant. When we were there in the mid-70s, one of my husband's fellow programmers had made a love marriage--and was much teased for it around the office. (For instance, every time he was even a minute late to work, people laughed that his wife had delayed him, kissing him. He'd been married for several years, so this wans't just teasing a newlywed.) --Lee Gold