I visited several factories the girls working at which did not live in dormitories but outside.  At a winding and hanking factory which was airy and well lighted the hours were from 6 to 6.  At a factory where the hours were from 4:30 to 7 some reelers had been fined.  Japanese Christian pastors sometimes came to see the girls, and on the wall of the recreation room there were paper gohei hung up by a Shinto priest.

I got the impression that the girls in the factories at Kofu in Yamanashi prefecture were not driven so hard as those at the factories in the Suwas in Nagano.  Someone said:  “However the Suwa people may exploit their girls, we are able, working shorter hours and giving more entertainments, to produce better silk, for the simple reason that the girls are in better condition.  We can get from 5 to 10 per cent. more for our silk.”  A factory manager said that it would be better if the girls had a regular holiday once a week, but one firm could not act alone. (The factories are working seven days a week, except for festival days and public holidays.)

With regard to the kemban, I was told in Yamanashi that many girls went to the factories “unwillingly by the instructions of their parents.”  It was also stated that the money paid to girls or their parents on their engagement was not properly a gratuity but an advance.  I heard that the police keep a special watch on kemban.  They would not do this without good reason.

FOOTNOTES: 

[141] The times stated are those given to me in the factories.  The question of overtime is referred to later in the Chapter.

[142] Again the reader must be reminded of the rise in wages and prices (estimated on p. xxv).  During the recent period of inflation, silk rose to 3,000 yen per picul and fell to 1,300 or 1,400 yen.  There have been great fluctuations in the wages of factory girls.  At the most flourishing period as much as 25 yen per head was paid to recruiters of girls.  In this Chapter, however, it is best to record exactly what I saw and heard.

[143] On the day on which I re-read this for the printers, I notice in an American paper that one of the largest employers of labour in the United States has just stated that he did not see his way to abolish the twelve-hours’ day.

CHAPTER XIX

“FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY’S” GRIM TALE

The psychology of behaviour teaches us that [a country’s] failures and semi-failures are likely to continue until there is a far more widespread appreciation of the importance of studying the forces which govern behaviour.—­SAXBY

I