Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-01-12
POVERTY IN JAPAN.
Wrctchedness Tn Darkest Tokyo as Seen by an Englishman.
MAJORITY TOO POOR TO EAT RICE.

Algh Grade Product Exported AL
 most to the Last sack-Nntives Live I'm Tam bIedovvn Sheds With De-
 cnyed Walls Full of CracI<s-sev-
 eral Families Live Together For
 Economy and Warrnth = Payvnbro-
 I<ers ana Guilt Renters PIunder the
 Pcor.
 Deeper than ever plummet sounded fn the ocean of poverty and human woe have descended here in the metropo- lis of the far east and found the worlds poorest poor, writes the Tokyo correspondent of the London Mail in Japan. Beside these starved subjects of the Son of Heaven, who cover out eide his palace walls, the submerged tenth of London are bons vivants and the grovehng Russians of Gorky's night refuges the spoiled children of fortune
 What have seen doubt if any oc- cidental has seen before me, for the existence of such absolute wretched- ness is not revealed to the tourist, and the ordinary resident suspects it not at all. If he has heard some whisper of the dolorous regions near at hand it is not regarded as polite to be too in nuiring. Not by any possible chance will the guide or friend conduct the visitor 10 the quarters where joy is gifess unknown quantity
 Summing In Tokyo is for the regu- aafion traveller the same as if in Lon don he went to Soho without exploring the east. None but regions of compar. alive prosperity are shown, because the JaDanese are proud of their uni Weraal reputation for cleanliness, for artistic surroundings and for poverty that is always smiling, we'll washed and safely removed from actual want.
 Nevertheless, Tokyo and other cities have their social purgatories, their sargasso seas of living, breathing wreck and drift. Tn Tokyo not fewer than 100000 people seldom, if ever, know of certainty where the neces- 6ities of the next day will come from, and throughout the land the great ma jority are too poor to eat rice The high grade rice grown in the islands is exported almost to the last sack and inferior rice imported for those who can afford it. Rice is not in every bowl, as the tourists fond1y imagine
 have spent days and nights in the midst of this inexpressible residue of Japan in company with brilliant na- tive sociologists who, like scores of his fellow students of men and things, be- iieves that Japan has left it's good days Of general happiness and general comfort forever behind and is entering upon sordid and merciless age of in- dustrialigrn, in which it's people are not fitted by temperament to compete and whose proletariat is, moreover, far too intelligent and too proud to be ex- plotted by capital. He is crying out a warning to Japan that her seat at the council table of the powers is being paid for in the blood of her citizens, not expended as they would pour it forth cheerfully in war, but in factory and on farm, in shop and in office.
 .'Tbink for a moment he cried re- gently as we looked at a Japanese bat tleship in the offing, what multi tude of our tiny rice fields it takes to support such a monster and then re- member that our people cannot afford 10 eat rice.''
 But, whether the last state of Japan be worse than her first, let US proceed t0 darkest Tokyo. We will visit the Ehitaya quarter, which is close by the beautiful Uyeno park. Tokyo is so vast, 1t is such an immense sea of sheds, that from the highest point on the dearest day one can see but frac- ton of it's area, but here are fifteen districts of mean streets. The crazy structures called houses, which are in reality sheds, are strung along in se- E5es of diIapidated and filthy compart-