But It Was Growing Dark, There Was No Transport
Office, And For The First Time The People Were Very Slightly
Extortionate, And Drove Ito Nearly To His Wits' End.
The peasants
do not like to be out after dark, for they are afraid of ghosts and
all sorts of devilments, and it was difficult to induce them to
start so late in the evening.
There was not a house clean enough to rest in, so I sat on a stone
and thought about the people for over an hour. Children with
scald-head, scabies, and sore eyes swarmed. Every woman carried a
baby on her back, and every child who could stagger under one
carried one too. Not one woman wore anything but cotton trousers.
One woman reeled about "drunk and disorderly." Ito sat on a stone
hiding his face in his hands, and when I asked him if he were ill,
he replied in a most lamentable voice, "I don't know what I am to
do, I'm so ashamed for you to see such things!" The boy is only
eighteen, and I pitied him. I asked him if women were often drunk,
and he said they were in Yokohama, but they usually kept in their
houses. He says that when their husbands give them money to pay
bills at the end of a month, they often spend it in sake, and that
they sometimes get sake in shops and have it put down as rice or
tea. "The old, old story!" I looked at the dirt and barbarism,
and asked if this were the Japan of which I had read.
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