The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-01-14
POVERTY IN JAPAN.

Deeper than ever plummet sounded in the ocean of poverty and human woe have I descended here in the metropolis pof the Far East, and found the worlds poorest poor. Beside these starved subjects Of the Son of Heaven, who cover outside his palace walls, the sub merged tenth of London are bons yiv- ants, and the grovelling Russians of Gorky's night refuges the spoiled cfil- dren of fortune.
 l What have seen doubt if any Occi- dental has seen before me, for the exis- tence of such absolute wretchedness is not revealed to the tourist, and the ordi- nary resident suspects it not at all. If he has heard some whisper of the dolor- ous regions near at hand, 1t is not re- garded as polite to be too inquiring. Not by any possible chance will the guide or friend conduct the visitor to the quarters where joy is life's unknown quantity.
 i Summing in Tokio is for the regula- ton traveller the same as if in London he went to Soho without exploring the East. None but regions of comparative prosperity are shown, because the Japa- nese are proud of their universal repu- tation for cleanliness, for artistic sur- roundings, and for a poverty that is always smiling, well-washed, and safely removed from actual want
 Nevertheless, Tokio and others cities have their social purgatories, their sar- gasso seas of living, breathing wreck and drift. In Tokio not fewer than 200 900 people seldom, if ever, know of a certainty where the necessities of the next day will come from, and through out the land the great majority are too poor to eat rice. The high grade rice grown in islands is exported almost to the last sack, and inferior rice import ed for those who can afford it. Rice is not in every bowl, as the tourists fondly l imagine
 | I have spent days and nights in the midst of this inexpressible residue of Japan in company with brilliant na- 1 tive sociologist who, like scores of his fellow students of men and things be- 1 lieves that Japan has left it's good days of general happiness and general com Sort for ever behind. and is entering upon a sordid and merciless age of in- dustrialism, in which it's people are not 1 fitted by temperament to compete, and whose proletariat is, moreover, far too | intelligent and too proud to be ex- 1 plotted by capital. He is crying out 8 warning to Japan that her seat at the council table of the powers is being paid 1 for in the blood of her citizens, not ex- pended as they would pour it forth cheerfully in war; but in factory and on farm, in shop and in office.
 "Think for moment" he cried last week as we looked at Japanese battle- ship in the offing, what a multitude of our tiny rice fields it takes to support such a monster, and then remember that our people can't afford to eat rice!" | But whether the last state of Japan be worse than her first, let us proceed to 1 Darkest Tokio. We will visit the Shitaya quarter, which is close by the beautiful Uyeno Park
 Tokio is so vast; it is such an immense sea of sheds, that from the highest point on the clearest day one can see but a l fraction of it's area-but here are fifteen districts of reap streets. The crazy structures called houses, which are in reality sheds, are strung along in a series of dilapidated and filthy com partments. To folk as poor as those who live here, cleanliness, so dear to the i average Japanese that it is godiness, is out of the question.
 ! The walls are decayed and full of tcrevices and cracks, the roof, and there