YOUNG JAPAN 



By Eliza R. Scidmore 



THE children of the streets and the 

 children who play in the homes 

 and gardens of the rich are equally 

 the joy of the Empire, the delight of the 

 stranger in Japan, and the distraction of 

 the amateur photographer. All of them 

 seem happy save the unhappy mites 

 doomed to ugly, clumsy European dresses 

 and shoes and hats by their over-ambi- 

 tious parents. In their own dresses of 

 rainbow crape or blue cotton, they are 

 the drollest, quaintest little images of 

 their grandfathers, and the funny little 

 caps and bibs of the babies make them 

 strange travesties of solemn temple im- 

 ages. 



Five hundred thousand little Japanese 

 arrive each year, according to the census 

 records, and all these small additions to 

 the populace for lO years back seem al- 

 ways to be on view in the streets. 



Despite the fable that Japanese babies 

 never cry, they often do lift their voices 

 in pain or wrath ; but they seem to have 

 less cause for crying than the babies of 

 the Western World, where so much 

 theorizing has been done about them and 

 great conventions of mothers discuss their 

 needs. Babies are petted and played with 

 here almost more than with us, and no 

 learned young mothers ever lay their 

 babies away in dark rooms alone to sleep. 



The little one of the people is never 

 left behind when the mother or the fam- 

 ily go abroad. It sleeps and wakes as it 

 rides around on mother's or elder sister's 

 warm back ; or, in colder weather, en- 

 folded in the one great matted coat that 

 converts the bearer into an astonishing 

 humpback. It goes to the markets, the 

 shops, and the temples, and holds its place 

 securely while the mother draws water, 

 sweeps, or washes, and then participates 

 in games of marbles or hop scotch and 

 turns pin-wheels and somersaults with 

 elder brother. 



The boy or girl big enough to carry a 

 baby on its back usually has one bound 

 there. Several millions of the abundant 

 population are to be classed as the "two- 

 storied," and yet the streets seem crowded 



with children. Sometimes the fat, lob- 

 lolly baby seems too nearly the same size 

 as the small brother or sister carrying it, 

 and once I saw a man, trying to comfort 

 one of these weeping little mothers, 

 mount the two on his back, and the three- 

 story group walked away on two feet. 



Schools begin early in the morning in 

 Japan, as in Switzerland, and as school- 

 houses are well-windowed, draughty and 

 costly to heat, children have their longest 

 vacations in midwinter. In every city 

 one is struck by the numbers of boys in 

 military caps and girls in red hakamas 

 (divided skirts, a school uniform) trudg- 

 ing the streets in the early morning and 

 afternoon, and it impresses one as evi- 

 dence of great thirst for knowledge or 

 the thorough administration of the law 

 for compulsory education. At recess 

 time one easily finds the school play- 

 ground by the shouts of the square acre 

 of frolicking children, and from the 

 streets and country roads one sees lines 

 of children doing drills or calisthenics. 



In the kindergartens boys and girls 

 drill and play much alike, but after that 

 diverting period the small boy blooms 

 into knickerbockers and a peaked cap, and 

 carries his books in a knapsack on his 

 back. Gymnastic drills become military 

 drills, and at the higher middle school, 

 which is preparatory to the university, 

 the boys get training in jiu-jutsu and in 

 fencing with bamboo swords. 



In some schools — notably the Peeress 

 School and others in Tokyo — the girls are 

 also taught the naganata, or fencing with 

 bamboo spears ; and they, too, can march 

 and perform evolutions like little soldiers, 

 and render first-aid services according to 

 Red Cross rules. 



As a people, the Japanese are great 

 walkers, and their sensible foot-gear con- 

 tributes to the enjoyment of such exer- 

 cise. Elatfoot, the great and universal 

 American disease, is unknown in Japan, 

 and army surgeons laugh when asked for 

 their records of fallen arches. As their 

 ancestors walked in the train of the 

 daimios up to Yeddo and back again every 



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