THE GEOGRAPHY OF JAPAN 



49 



from the mountains, 

 and not any are really 

 distant from the sea. 

 In each case the 

 configuration of the 

 country conduced to 

 the formation o f 

 small communities, 

 and to kindle the 

 spirit of independ- 

 ence; for just as 

 Greece was, in a po- 

 litical sense, not one 

 country, but a multi- 

 tude of independent 

 states, often exceed 

 ingly small and al- 

 ways jealous of their 

 individuality, so, until 

 the immense changes 

 wrought by the trans- 

 formation during the 

 last fifty or sixty 

 years, of intercom- 

 munication between 

 the inland provinces 

 of feudal Japan and 

 those on the coast, 

 many of those prov- 

 inces had their own 

 types of people, with 

 numerous distinguish- 

 ing differences of ap 

 pearance, dialect, cus- 

 toms, and character- 

 istics. 



JAPANESE PARALLELS 

 IN ANCIENT GREECE 



Satsuma, in the 

 extreme south of 

 Japan, in many ways resembled Sparta, 

 with its Lacedaemonians, both in inacces- 

 sibility of geographical position and in the 

 character of its inhabitants. Both were 

 stern, dour, unliterary, and somewhat 

 harsh to strangers. 



The dullness of the Boeotians finds its 

 counterpart in that of some of the remoter 

 peoples of the northern provinces of 

 Japan; while Athens, intensely social, 

 literary, and comparatively liberal in its 

 intercourse with the outer world, has its 

 own parallel in Kyoto, the old Japanese 

 capital of the feudal days. 



In the case of each country, the land 

 was on all sides well protected, and yet 



Photograph from Walter Weston 



HAVING A HOT BATH AT THE SHIRAHONE SPRINGS, AMONG 

 THE JAPANESE ALPS 



Japan is rich in the possession of more than a thousand hot springs, 

 to which the peasantry resort in multitudes (see text, page 51). 



also open to the sea; and in each case 

 there was free access for commerce and 

 civilization from early times, while the 

 art of navigation was cultivated to an ex- 

 tent that bred a race of hardy and capable 

 seafaring folk. 



In each case the soil of the country, 

 generally speaking, is only moderately 

 fertile — a fact conducing to the industry 

 and comparative frugality of the majority 

 of its inhabitants. 



It is as true of the Japanese today as 

 of the Greeks of old, that a study of their 

 natural surroundings affords a clue to 

 their history. 



When, as Mr. Freshfield writes in 



