produces an actual deformity in the whole
nation. This deformity is less noticeable among the peasants, who stand
and walk so much as to secure proper development of the legs; but among
merchants, literary men, and others of sedentary habits, it is most
plainly to be seen. The introduction of chairs and tables, as a
necessary adjunct of Japanese home life, would doubtless in time alter
the physique of the Japanese as a people.

Among the lower classes, where there are few bathing facilities in the
houses, babies of a few weeks old are often taken to the public bath
house and put into the hot bath. These Japanese baths are usually heated
to a temperature of a hundred to a hundred and twenty Fahrenheit,--a
temperature that most foreigners visiting Japan find almost unbearable.
To a baby's delicate skin, the first bath or two is usually a severe
trial, but it soon becomes accustomed to the high temperature, and takes
its bath, as it does everything else, placidly and in public. Born into
a country where cow's milk is never used, the Japanese baby is wholly
dependent upon its mother for milk,[4] and is not weaned entirely until
it reaches the age of three or four years, and is able to live upon the
ordinary food of the class to which it belongs. There is no intermediate
stage of bread and milk, oatmeal and milk, gruel, or pap of some kind;
for the all-important factor--milk--is absent from the bill of fare, in
a land where there is neither "milk for babes" nor "strong meat for them
that are full of age."

[4] Sometimes, in the old days, rice water was given to babies instead
of milk, but it was nearly impossible to bring up a baby on this alone.
Now both fresh and condensed milk are used, where the mother's milk is
insufficient, but only in those parts of Japan where the foreign
influence is felt.[*11]

In consequence, partly, of the lack of proper nourishment after the
child is too old to live wholly upon its mother's milk, and partly,
perhaps, because of the poor food that the mothers, even of the higher
classes, live upon, many babies in Japan are afflicted with disagreeable
skin troubles, especially of the scalp and face,--troubles which usually
disappear as soon as the child becomes accustomed to the regular food of
the adult. Another consequence, as I imagine, of the lack of proper
food at the teething period, is the early loss of the child's first
teeth, which usually turn black and decay some time before the seco