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THE GIANT AVENUE OF CRYPTOMERIAS AT NIKKO.

This magnificent avenue, twenty-five miles in length, consists of trees planted by daimyos, or small lords, as a memorial to the great Japanese warrior and statesman, Iyeyasu. A spirit of simplicity and love of nature has produced a nobler monument than extravagance could possibly have done.

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TYPICAL JAPANESE COSTUMES.


TYPICAL TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE.

In the temple picture notice also how the limbs of the trees have been trained. Many fantastic effects are often produced in this way.

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They are trained in politeness from their youth up, are these Japanese; and it is perhaps the greatest charm of both young and old. I must have seen a full hundred thousand Japanese {15} by this time, and I do not recall one in the attitude of scolding or abuse, while authorities tell me that the Japanese language simply has no words to enable one to swear or curse. I was also interested to have the American Ambassador here tell me that in all his three years' stay in Japan, and with all the freedom with which a million children run about the streets and stores, he has never seen a man impatient with a child. At the Imperial University yesterday morning I noticed two college boys part with the same deep courtesy used by the older men, and the little five-year-old girl near Chuzenji the other day thanked me for my gift with the most graceful of Eastern salaams.

I shall not say that the excessive ceremoniousness of the men does not at times seem ludicrous, but when you come to your hotel dining-room, and the inexpressibly dainty little Japanese girls, moving almost noiselessly on their sandaled feet (no getas indoors) welcome each guest with smiling bows, happy, refined and graceful, a very different impression of Japanese courtesy comes over you. In America, unfortunately, the like courteous attention under such circumstances might be misinterpreted, but here you are only reminded of how a thousand years of courtesy and gentle manners have given the women of Japan--pretty though they are not, judged by our Western standards--an unsurpassed grace of manner and happiness of disposition together with Shakespeare's well-praised "voice, soft and low, an excellent thing in woman."

And here and everywhere, as in the old fable of the man with the overcoat, must not such sun-like gentleness be more powerful in compelling deference than all the stormy strength of the "new woman"?

Which reminds me that however much the social, political, and economic revolution of the last forty years may have changed the national character (and upon this point I shall not speak till later), it is certain that Old Japan and the Old South were distinguished for not a few characteristics {16} in common. For example, we are reminded of the South's ante-bellum civilization when we learn that in old Japan "the business of money-making was held in contempt by the superior classes," and of all forms of business, agriculture was held in highest esteem. Next to the nobility stood the Samurai, or soldier class, the social rank of all other persons then being as follows: (1) farmers, (2) artisans, (3) merchants. And farming was thus not only regarded as the most honorable of all occupations, but farmers in the early ages were privileged to wear swords, the emblem of rank next to the nobility. Below the farmers ranked the mechanic element, while as Lafcadio Hearn tells us:

"The commercial class (A kindo), including bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, and traders of all kinds, was the lowest officially recognized. The business of money-making was held in contempt by the superior classes; and all methods of profiting by the purchase and resale of the produce of labor were regarded as dishonorable. . . . There is a generally, in militant society, small respect for the common forms of labor. But in old Japan the occupation of the farmer and artisan were not despised; trade alone appears to have been considered degrading, and the distinction may have been partly a moral one."

I wonder if there is not really a great deal more than we have realized in what Hearn here suggests as to the soundness and essential "morality" of the Japanese plan of ranking farming and manufacturing above trade as occupations? Morally and economically considered, it is the men who actually produce wealth rather than those men who trade or barter in the products of other men's labor who deserve most honor. They serve the world best: The barterers are, in limited numbers, necessary and useful servants of those who do produce, but the strength of a state manifestly lies in the classes who are really creators of values.

Tokyo, Japan.


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III

JAPANESE FARMING AND FARMER FOLK

I went yesterday to the Agricultural College of the Imperial University of Japan, situated at Komaba, near Tokyo, where I had an appointment with Director Matsui. My purpose was to get further information concerning the general condition of Japanese farmers and Japanese farming, but the biggest fact my researches brought out was not in regard to rice or barley or potatoes or taro, or any other field product of the Mikado's empire.

Rather it was a fact with regard to what is in every land the most important of all crops--the crop of boys and girls. And the big fact I discovered was simply this:

These brown Mongolian farm children, whose land we opened to civilization but fifty years ago, and whom we thought of but yesterday as backward "heathen"--they are getting, as a general proposition, just twice as much schooling as is furnished pupils in many of our American rural districts: their parents are providing, in their zeal for their children's welfare, just twice as good educational facilities as we are giving many of our white farm boys and girls--boys and girls who have in their veins the blood of a race which has carried the flag of human progress for a thousand years, and whom we are expecting to continue leaders in civilization and enlightenment.

In other words, so Doctor Matsui told me (and I went to-day to the Japanese National Department of Education to verify the fact), the Japanese farm boys and girls are getting ten months' schooling a year, while the farm boy or girl {18} in my own state is getting only five or six months--and when I was in a country school fifteen years ago, not nearly so much as that! Do you wonder that I avoided telling the Japanese educational officer just how our provision for farm boys and girls compared with Japan's? Also that I neglected to tell him how we compare in the matter of utilizing school advantages, when he showed me that of all the children between six and fourteen in all the empire of Japan the school attendance is 98 per cent.--98 out of every 100 children of "school age" attending school, and in several provinces 99 out of every 100! Thirty-five years ago the average school attendance in Japan was only 28, and in 1893 only 59, but by the time of the war with Russia it had passed 90, and since then has been climbing straight and steadily toward the amazing maximum itself, the official figures showing a gain of 1 per cent, a year--94 per cent., then 95, then 96, then 97, and now 98, and the leaders are now ambitious for 99 or 100, as they told me to-day.

When this officer of an "inferior race" showed me, furthermore, that Japan is so intent upon educating every boy and girl in her borders that she compels attendance on the public schools for eight years, I didn't tell him that in civilized America, in the