e the Women's One Heart
Society, the Women's Chivalrous Society, the National Backing Society
and the Nursing Place of Young Children of those Serving at the Front.

In the train we talked of the hardiness induced by not being the slave
of clothing. When it rains _kuruma_ men and workmen habitually roll up
their kimonos round their loins, or if they are wearing trousers, take
them off.[213] Of course no Japanese believes in catching cold through
getting his feet wet. This is a condition which is continually
experienced, for the cotton _tabi_ are wet through at every shower.
Some years back it was not uncommon in walking along the sea-beach at
night to find fishermen sleeping out on the sand. An old man told me
that it used to be the custom in his sea-shore hamlet for all members
of a family to sleep on the beach except fathers, mothers and infants.

On my return from the country I found myself in a company of earnest
rural reformers who were discussing a plan of State colonisation for
the inhabitants of some villages where everything had been lost in a
volcanic eruption. Families had been given a tract of forest land, 15
yen for a cottage, 45 yen for tools and implements and the cost of
food for ten months (reckoned at 8 sen per adult and 7 sen per child
per day). During the evening I was shown the figure of a goddess of
farming venerated by the afflicted folk. The deity was represented
standing on bales of rice, with a bowl of rice in her left hand and a
big serving spoon in her right.

The gathering discussed the question of rural morality. As to the
relations of the young men and women of the villages, to which there
has necessarily been frequent references in these pages, the reader
must always bear in mind the way in which the sexes are normally kept
apart under the influence of tradition. In nothing does this Japanese
countryside differ more noticeably from our own than in the fact that
joyous young couples are never seen arming each other along the road
of an evening. Thousands of allusions in our rural songs and poetry,
innumerable scenes in our genre pictures, speak of blissful hours of
which Japan gives no sign. There is no courting; there are in the
public view no "random fits of dallin'." An unmarried young man and
young woman do not walk and talk together. A young man and woman who
were together of an evening would be suspected of immorality. Even
when married they would not think of linking arms on the r