In the paddies some men wore only a narrow band of red cotton between their legs joined to a waist string, which, though convenient wear in paddies, was comically conspicuous.  I recall a friend’s story of a little foreign girl of seven who stayed with her mother in a Japanese hamlet and struck up a friendship with a kindly old peasant.  One hot summer day the child came home carrying all her scanty garments over her arm, and covered with mud to the waist.  In answer to her mother’s enquiries the child said, “Well, mother, Ito San has all his clothes off, and I could not go into the paddy to help him with mine on.”

I visited an elementary school which was little more than a shed.  The roofing was of bark and the paper-covered window shutters were of the roughest.  It said much for the stamina of the children that they could sit there in bleak weather.  An attempt had been made to shut off the classes from one another by pieces of thin cotton sheeting fastened to a string.  But such essential furniture, from a hygienic point of view, as benches with backs had been provided, for it is considered by the national educational authorities that kneeling in the Japanese manner is inimical to physical development.  I noticed, also, that when the children sang they had been taught to place their hands on their hips in order that their chests might benefit from the vocal exercise.  The earnestness and kindliness of the men and women teachers were evident.  All the teachers came to school bare-foot on geta.[210]

The sea was not far off and we went to the beach where there was nothing between us and America.  My companion and I were carried over shallows on the backs of fishermen, wonderful bronze-coloured figures.  Above high-water mark heaps of small fish were drying.  They were to be turned into oil and fish-waste manure.  I saw an earthenware vase with a hole in the bottom like a flowerpot and found that it was used, with a rope attached to the rim, for catching octopus.  When the octopus comes across such a vase on the sea bottom he regards it as a shelter constructed on exactly the right principles and takes up his abode therein.  He is easily captured, for he refuses to let go his vase when it is brought to the surface.  Indeed the only way to dislodge him is to pour hot water through the hole in the bottom of his upturned tenement.

FOOTNOTES: 

[203] The Japanese firepot, which is made of wood or porcelain as well as metal, contains pieces of charcoal smouldering in wood ash.

[204] I saw poultry of the table breeds which we call Indian Game or Malay; the Japanese call them Siamese.

[205] See Appendix LVIII.

[206] In 1918 carp was produced to the value of a million and a half yen and eels to the value of nearly a million.

[207] See Appendix LIX.

[208] See Appendix LX.