Originally, as their language bears witness, the Japanese showed a childish reluctance to recognizing sex at all.

Usually a single sexless term was held sufficient for a given species, and did duty collectively for both sexes.

Only where a consideration of sex thrust itself upon them, beyond the possibility of evasion, did they employ for the male and the female distinctive expressions.

The more intimate the relation of the object to man, the more imperative the discriminating name.

Hence human beings possessed a fair number of such special appellatives; for a man is a palpably different sort of person from his grandmother, and a mother-in-law from a wife.