Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/344

 328 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

that the death-rate of children under five years of age runs no higher than that among older people. The simple food and drink of the masses, with their moderation in smoking and liquor- drinking, further promote health; while the daily use of a very hot bath protects them from rheumatism, and this in turn from organic heart disease, of which it is the chief cause. Japanese men are as entirely free from the opium-smoking of their Chinese neighbors as Japanese women are from their foot-binding; nor do the women lace their waists as westerners persist in doing, in spite of all warning to the contrary. What little waist there is to the Japanese figure is filled by the obi, or broad sash, and free- dom from restrictive coverings results in a faultless shape and marvelous flexibility of both hands and feet. The daily bath makes the Japanese crowd the sweetest-smelling one in the world, and the Japanese skin elastic and velvety. Athletics had fallen into disuse since the revolution in 1868; but a unique national sport called jujutsu, or the " soft art," in which a wrestler throws his assailant by skilfully diverting the onset, has of late been enthusiastically revived, along with other sports, throughout Japan, so that the Japanese Athletic Association now numbers nearly a million active members.

The skill and industry of the Japanese in agriculture may readily be judged from the fact that nearly fifty million people subsist mostly on foods raised upon the rim and crevices of a long but narrow chain of volcanic islands, over most of which will grow only a bambu scrub that not even goats will eat. As grass is scanty, cattle are few; and meat, milk, and butter practically unknown until recently. Fish of fine quality in great abundance has supplied the place of meat, though fowls and eggs are eaten, as indeed they are eaten the world around, being the only generally diffused food of man. Under these conditions, agriculture must be intensive, and it is. Rice, now the staple grain, is sown thickly, and subsequently transplanted by hand and a blade at a time; but the crop never fails, and its quality is the best in the world. In face of the impossibility of raising more food in Japan, and an annual net increase of 600,000 in the population, emigration to Hawaii, the Philippines, Formosa, and Korea has