318 



DISCOVERY 



£20 per thousand cubic feet. Now the envelope of 

 a kite balloon has a capacity of about 25,000 cubic feet. 

 A single plant could thus fill two of them a day at a 

 cost of £500 each. An airship like the R38, with a 

 capacity of 2,750.000 cubic feet, would need 55 

 days' output, and the cost of the gas would be about 

 £55,000 ! These figures seem very pessimistic, yet 

 really they indicate a great advance. Until the war 

 helium w;is regarded as being of scientific interest only, 

 and the idea of filling a balloon with it would have been 

 regarded as being as fantastic, it has been said, as 

 paving the Strand with diamonds. 



The practical man knows that much has to be done 

 before helium will be cheap, but we may safely trust 

 the men whose enterprise is directed at effecting this 

 in the future. Needs must. . . . Helium is scientifi- 

 cally the safest gas for balloons and airships ; man 

 must therefore have it. 



REFERENXES 



J. R. Partington, Textbook of Inorganic Chemistry (Macmillan), 



p. 603 and ch. li. 

 H. F. V. Briscoe, Textbook of Inorganic Chemistry, eA. hy yH. 



Friend (Crosby Lockwood), vol. i, pt. ii, ch. ii. 

 Nature, vol. 102 (1919), p. 487. 



Some Social Survivals 

 of Rural Japan 



By the Rev. Walter Weston, M.A,, 

 F.R.G.S. 



Late Britisti Cttaplain at Yokohama 



A STRIKING feature of the activities of agricultural 

 Japan is the part played in them by women. In the 

 planting, transplanting, and harvesting of the rice, 

 they are always to the fore, and they tend the silk- 

 worm and conduct nearly all the operations connected 

 with it ; they pick and later on fire the tea. In fact, 

 no labour comes amiss to them. So it is not surprising 

 to find that, in a country notorious above all others for 

 its large percentage of divorces, the proportion of 

 these is lowest among the rural population. It is also 

 not surprising that these useful and inexpensive helpers 

 have relatively more liberty and a higher position 

 than the wives of the " upper " classes. The wife of 

 the peasant shares not only her husband's labours but 

 also his counsels, and it is often she who keeps the 



purse and really governs the family. At one hamlet 

 in the Southern Japanese Alps, I found the heads of 

 households were all women, and was informed that for 

 any male outsider, rash enough to intermarry there, 

 life was apt to be both bitter and brief. The place was 

 known as Onna-taka — " Woman's Hill " — and, thanks 

 to the rule of a bitter tongue and a heavy hand, that 

 fact was not suffered to be overlooked. Sometimes 

 one was told of a village that it was notorious as kaka- 

 denka — " woman's throne " — which, too, denoted a 

 similar relation of the se.xes. 



In the secluded hamlet of Narada, in the Southern 

 Alps, all the inhabitants bear the same name, 

 Fukazawa, and it is perhaps due to the traditional 

 pre-eminence of women in bygone days that the 

 "Seven Wonders of Narada" are proudly pointed 

 out to the traveller as the gifts of a beautiful 

 and gracious lady, who once visited the valley and 

 endowed it with these treasures. The chief of them 

 have a specially domestic value ; there is the pool 

 whose waters, used for laundry purposes, have magical 

 properties ; there is the " Betel-nut Pond," in which 

 articles of clothing embedded in the bottommost mud 

 assume the deep purple-black hue which is highly 

 prized ; and there is the " Salt Pool " — until the 

 visit of the Fairy Godmother of Narada. salt was 

 unknown to the Fukazawa families, but the waters of 

 this pool, saline and exceedingly hot, made it possible 

 for them both to season and cook their vegetables in 

 a single process. 



Domestic institutions of an extraordinarily primitive 

 character exist in some of the remoter valleys, as, for 

 instance, in that of the River Shirakawa. This lies 

 in the province of Hida, in the centre of the main 

 island, popularly called the " Island Province " on 

 account of its isolated and inaccessible character, for 

 it is cut off from the rest of the island by a cordon 

 of lofty mountain ranges. It is also singular as the 

 one province which, in feudal times, knew no samtirai* 

 and acknowledged the rule of no Daimyo (feudal lord). 

 In this valley one finds whole families dwelling under 

 one roof of gigantic size, for the family includes not 

 merely parents and children, but also uncles, aunts, 

 nephews, nieces, grandchildren, and other relations to 

 the number of fifty or more. The heads of such 



^ Samurai, from samtirati — " to <»iiard." or " be in atten- 

 dance on " — -was originally used of the soldiers stationed at the 

 palaces of the Mikado ( = " Sublime Porte "). but later on was 

 also applied to the retainers of the Daimyo of the feudal ages. 

 Its equivalent in English connotes the " warriors." " Militarj' 

 class." or " gentry." Feudal Japan expected all gentlemen 

 to be soldiers, and all soldiers to be gentlemen. The mental 

 outlook of the samurai greatly resembled that of the nobility 

 and gentry of our own Middle Ages. Birth and breeding alone 

 counted, and not money, while unquestioning obedience was 

 expected and cheerfully rendered. 



