I have not troubled my readers with many stories of the jostling of past and present, but I noticed in an electric street car at Matsuyama a peasant trying to light his pipe with flint and tinder.  As he did not succeed a fellow-passenger offered him a match.  He was so inexpert with it that he still failed to get a light and he had to be handed a cigarette stump.

In riding down to the port in the street car I borrowed for a few moments a schoolboy’s English reader.  It seemed rather mawkish.  A book of Japanese history which I was also allowed to look at was full of reproductions of autographs of distinguished men.  “They make the impression very strong,” I was told.

FOOTNOTES: 

[182] See Appendix XXXVIII.

[183] That is, not only his household but his relatives.

[184] Adding to the 17 days’ labour for the rice crop, 13 days’ labour for the succeeding barley crop, the total was 30 days’ labour per tan against the general Japan average of 39 days per tan.

THE SOUTH-WEST OF JAPAN

CHAPTER XXVII

UP-COUNTRY ORATORY

(YAMAGUCHI)

I have confidence, which began with hope and strengthens with experience, that humanity is gaining in the stores of mind.—­MEREDITH

The main street of an Inland Sea island we visited was 4 ft. wide.  Because it was the eve of a festival the old folk were at home “observing their taboo.”  The islander who had been the first among the inhabitants to visit a foreign country was only fifty.  The local policeman made us a gift of pears when we left.

At another primitive island querns were in use and “ordinary families” were “only beginning to indulge in tombstones.”  In contrast with this, the constable told us that a small condensed-milk factory had been started. (This constable was a fine, dignified-looking fellow, but so poor that his toes were showing through his blue cloth tabi.) The condensed-milk factory must have been responsible for some surprises to the cows when they were first milked in its interests.  I heard a tale of the first milking of an elderly cow.  She had ploughed paddies, carried hay and other things and had drawn a cart.  But it took five men and a woman to persuade her that to be milked into a clay pot was a reasonable thing.

The third island we explored lies in such a situation in the Inland Sea that sailing ships used to be glad to shelter under it while waiting for a favourable wind.  Someone had the evil thought of providing it with prostitutes, and, until steam began to take the place of sails, the number of these women established in the island was large.  Even now, although the whole population numbers only a hundred families, there are thirty women of bad character.  These poor creatures were conspicuous because of their bright clothing and dewomanised look.  A scrutiny of the islanders old and young yielded the impression that the whole place was suffering from its peculiar traffic.  There were two houses, one for registering the women and the other for investigating their state of health, and the purpose of the buildings was bluntly proclaimed on the nameboards at their doors.