The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1889-03-21
AMONG THE JAPANESE.

.
Some OF tho Pleasant Things to BE Seen
in the Land of the Mlkado.
The first thing that strikes the visitor
to Japan is the exceedingly civility Of
every body, custom-house officers in-
cluded. Cheerfulness, good temper
and politeness are universal. The
mothers smile, the children chatter
without quarreling in the streets. and
it is O pleasure to watch the ordinary
work-people as they meet and go
through the prescribed etiquette OF
bowling and shaking hands with each
other. Differences over the carriage
OF your person and effects--if they
exist-are speedily settled without the
use of bad language and angry oaths,
and in less time than 1t takes 20
write, the traveller and his bag
gage are put into ''jinrilxishas" (or
light carriages drawn by one or
more men scantily dressed, with funny
white hats shaped like mushrooms),
and are trotted off to the Grand Hotel,
famous for its English comfort and
French cuisine. These ''jinrikishas,"
or man-power carriages, deserve a
word or two in passing. or modern
invention, they have been improvised
to supply the want OF horses and hys,
and it is marvellous to see what power
OF endurance and capacity for toll is to
be found amongst the little broad
shouldered coolies who draw them. It
is quite common thing for them to
keep up good steady pace OF six or
seven miles an hour. on a diet OF rice.
fish or tea, FOR as many hours in the
day, and all this for the scanty wage
Of little over two cents q mile.
These are stubborn facts, which,
by comparison, make one tremble
for the future of the English working
classes, unless they make up their
minds to grid themselves up for the
coming struggle. The bitter cry Of
employers at home increases yearly
with the increasing dislike Of the ris-
ing generation to hard manual labor.
Throughout Europe and Asia is the
same story-German and Japanese
beatus with our own weapons, because
they work harder, longer and for less
wages. 1t was not always so: but edu-
cation has softened us, and philan-
thropy. with the best intentions, is
doing all it can to destroy the sturdy
feeling of self-dependence. once the
pride OF the British workman.
In Japan man certainly wants but
little here below" With cotton clothes,
a diet of rice and fish, and a house OF
waffle and daub, domestic bills are not
high. An ordinary coolie or laborer in
the fields is content with half dollar
a week. A clerk in government Of
flee is well paid with $3.50 year, and
a Cabinet Minister with $1,000. The
so-called necessities Of life in all classes
are at least one-third of what they
would be in the United States, or in
Europe.
: The street and roads in and about
the capital are good, clean, fairly
lighted and admirably policed, and the
railroad of eighteen miles to Toxic
built, like all the railroads OF the coun-
try, after the English model-leaves
little to be desired. The capital itself
extends over large area, and is said
to contain million inhabitants. The
area it covers is enormous, embracing
as it does numerous temples surround
ed by groves Of evergreen trees, and
parks laid out in European fashion,
Nineteenth Century.