and criminals.  The situation as the foreigner discovers it is that all over Japan there are hamlets of what are called “special tribes.”  In 1876, when distinctions between them and Japanese generally were officially abolished, the total number was given as about a million.  Most of these peculiar people, perhaps three-quarters of them, are known as Eta.  But whether they are known as Eta or Shuku, or by some other name, ordinary Japanese do not care to eat with them, marry with them or even talk with them.  In the past Eta have often been prosperous, and many are prosperous to-day, but a large number are still restricted to earning a living as butchers and skin and leather workers, and grave diggers.  The members of these “special tribes,” believing themselves to be despised without cause, usually make some effort to hide the fact that they are Eta.

Shuku seem to be living principally in hamlets of a score or so of houses in the vicinity of Osaka, Kyoto and Nara, and are often travelling players, or, like some Eta, skilled in making tools and musical instruments.  There seems to be a half Shuku or intermarried class.  Many prostitutes are said to be Shuku or Eta.  I was told that most of the girls in the prostitutes’ houses of Shimane prefecture are from “special tribes,” and that they are “preferred by the proprietors” because, as I was gravely informed, “they do not weary of their profession and are therefore more acceptable to customers.”  As prostitutes are frequently married by their patrons, it is believed that not a few women from “special villages” are taken to wife without their origin being known.  Unwitting marriage with an Eta woman has long been a common motif in fiction and folk story.  Many members of the “special tribes” go to Hokkaido and there pass into the general body of the population.  The folk of this class are “despised,” I was told by a responsible Japanese, “not so much for themselves as for what their fathers and grandfathers did.”  The country people undoubtedly treat them more harshly than the townspeople, but a man of the “special tribes” is often employed as a watchman of fields or forests.  I was warned that it was judicious to avoid using the word Eta or Shuku in the presence of common people lest one might be addressing by chance a member of the “special tribes.”

Except that the houses of the village we were visiting looked possibly a trifle more primitive than those of the non-Eta population outside the oaza, I did not discern anything different from what I saw elsewhere.  The people were of the Shinshu sect; there was no Shinto shrine.  At the public room I noticed the gymnastic apparatus of the “fire defenders.”  The hamlet was traditionally 300 years old and one family was still recognised as chief.  According to the constable, who eagerly imparted the information, the crops were larger than those of neighbouring villages “because the people, male and female, are always diligent.”