g island with varying climates there is never general
scarcity.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] For statistics of railways, see Appendix XXXV.

[115] The percentage of children "attending" school for the whole of
Japan is officially reported in 1918 as: cities, 98.18 per cent.;
villages, 99.23 per cent.; but this does not mean daily attendance.

[116] Since 1919 the salaries of elementary school teachers have been
raised to 26, 16 and 15 yen per month, according to grade.

[117] Only last year (1921) another schoolmaster lost his life in an
endeavour to save the Emperor's portrait from his burning school.

[118] See Appendix XXXVI.

[119] A hot bath is ordinarily obtainable only in the afternoon and
evening in most Japanese hotels. In the morning people are content
merely with rinsing their hands and face.

[120] In addressing a superior, many Japanese still draw in their
breath from time to time audibly.

[121] That is, persons who might be considered not to have failed in
their filial duties.

[122] After the failure of the 1918-19 crop in India, 600,000 persons
were in receipt of famine relief.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS
(FUKUSHIMA)

I didn't visit this place in the hope of seeing fine prospects--my study
is man.--BORROW

Before I left the town I had a chat with a landowner who turned his
tenants' rent rice into _sake_. He was of the fifth generation of
brewers. He said that in his childhood drunken men often lay about the
street; now, he said, drunken men were only to be seen on festival
days.

There had been a remarkable development in the trade in flavoured
aerated waters, "lemonade" and "cider champagne" chiefly. I found
these beverages on sale in the remotest places, for the Japanese have
the knack of tying a number of bottles together with rope, which makes
them easily transportable. The new lager beers, which are advertised
everywhere, have also affected the consumption of _sake_.[123] _Sake_
is usually compared with sherry. It is drunk mulled. At a banquet,
lasting five or six hours or longer, a man "strong in _sake_" may
conceivably drink ten _go_ (a _go_ is about one-third of a pint)
before achieving drunkenness, but most people would be affected by
three _go_. Some of the topers who boast of the quantity of _sake_
they can consume--I have heard of men declaring that they could drink
twenty _go_--are cheated late in the evening by the waiting-maids. The
little _sake_ bottles a