Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/43

Rh delegates to an international conference at Berne, held with a view to prohibiting night work by women, on the grounds that the state of the industries in the country did not admit of such interference.

True, the women and children may smile over their work as the casual visitor passes to and fro among the whirring creels or the crashing looms; but then the Japanese smile is an enigmatical thing, and, as has been written, "the Japanese can smile in the teeth of death, and usually does." One must know something of the possibilities of the Japanese smile if one is to appraise it at its true value. "At first it only charms, and it is only at a later day when one has observed the same smile under extraordinary circumstances—in moments of pain, shame, disappointment—that one becomes suspicious of it." Some day the workers of Japan will rise and will demand for themselves the same rights and privileges already conceded to their fellow-workers of the West—but the day is not yet. Before that time comes Japan will have dispelled once and for all the illusion that she is