THE GEOGRAPHY OF JAPAN 



Photograph by Graham Romeyn Taylor 



A BILL-BOARD ADVERTISING WAKANAURA, A POPULAR SEASIDE RESORT NEAR OSAKA 



Xot only are the Japanese railways clever advertisers, but neat bill-boards at most of the 

 stations show the direction and distance of all places of interest from the local station. 



Of one of the most noted sulphur 

 springs it is maintained that all ailments 

 are curable there with the exception of 

 the disease of love ! 



While in some places one now finds 

 separate compartments reserved for those 

 who prefer to bathe more privately, it is 

 usual in the more primitive places for 

 both sexes to do so together promiscu- 

 ously. There is here no longer found the 

 dividing cord stretched across the big 

 tank to denote "This side for ladies, that 

 for gentlemen," which at one time, in 

 some of the larger towns, was employed 

 out of consideration for the .feelings of 

 "foreigners" on the subject. All is con- 

 ducted with complete decorum and pro- 

 priety. 



HALF THE VARIETIES OP THE WORLD'S 

 FLORA FOUND IN JAPAN 



It is the abundant supply of moisture 

 in every form that is largely responsible 

 for some of the most striking and impor- 

 tant features of the Japanese landscape — 

 for a flora that includes half the known 

 varieties of the earth's vegetation in an 



area only a little larger than that of the 

 British Isles. 



We have also to note the countless 

 deeply cleft valleys, whose torrents find 

 their way from high mountain ranges to 

 the sea by narrow channels. After a storm 

 or the melting of the snows of winter, 

 these streams are swollen into broad, re- 

 sistless floods, whose deltas open out into 

 the ocean half a mile or more in width. 



Large tracts of land are thus held in 

 perpetual desolation, though the skill and 

 energy of native engineers are develop- 

 ing methods and resources of riparian 

 progress of growing value. Their efforts 

 are gradually superseding the ancient 

 ways. 



Formerly the River God was honored 

 with a handsome shrine, to which the 

 peasantry resorted in the springtime for 

 services of supplication in order to avert 

 the likely destruction of their unprotected 

 rice fields and mulberry plantations by 

 the dreaded storms of early autumn, 

 when the rice harvest was ripening. To- 

 day, one of the chief festivals of such a 

 shrine is that observed in Kofu, capital 



