yen
House 519 Food and drink (18 sen each per day for members of
family; 13 sen each for servants) 1,102
Fuel 156 Light 36 Clothing 770 Education (3 middle-school boys at 20 yen per month;
3 primary-school boys and girls at 2 yen) 312
Social intercourse 120 Amusements (journey, 100 yen; summer trip, 231;
others, 50) 381
Miscellaneous (servants, 480 yen; medicine, 150; other
things, 150) 780
Donations 300 Taxes 3,976
______
8,451
======

THE “BENJO” [IV].  I never noticed a case in which earth was thrown into the domestic closet tub according to Dr. Poore’s system.  I have come across attempts to use deodorisers, but the application of a germicide is inhibited because of the injury which would be caused to the crops.  Farmers are chary about removing night soil which has been treated even with a deodoriser.  I ventured to suggest more than once that Japanese science should be equal to evolving a deodoriser to which the farmer, who in Japan seems to be so easily directed, could have no objection.  The drawback to using Dr. Poore’s system is that the added earth would greatly increase the weight of the substance to be removed.  There would be the same objection to the use of hibachi ash (charcoal ash), but there is not enough produced to have any sensible effect.  The truth is that there is no lively interest in the question of getting rid of the stink for everyone has become accustomed to it.  The odour from the benjo—­the politer word is habakari—­which is always indoors, though at the end of the engawa (verandah), often penetrates the house. (Engawa [edge or border] is the passage which faces to the open; roka is a passage inside a house between two rooms or sometimes a bridgelike passage in the open, connecting two separate buildings or parts of a house.) Emptying day is particularly trying.  This much must be said, however, that the farmers’ tubs are washed, scrubbed and sunned after every journey and have close-fitting lids.  And primitive though the benjo is, it is scrupulously clean.  Also, if it is always more or less smelly, it is contrived on sound hygienic principles.  There is no seat requiring an unnatural position.  The user squats over an opening in the floor about 2 ft. long by 6 ins. wide.  This opening is encased by a simple porcelain fitting with a hood at the end facing the user.  The top of the tub is some distance below the floor.  In peasants’ houses there is