Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/42

 family seldom and the servants never slept in the second storey, where air might have been admitted without giving access to thieves. Thus, for some at any rate of its inmates, a Japanese residence is always essentially unwholesome in summer owing to defective ventilation. Further, it promotes immodesty and therefore immorality; for in its stifling atmosphere all covering at night becomes unendurable, while, at the same time, paper sliding doors are quite ineffective to segregate one room from another. Yet another grave defect of the Japanese house in the form it finally took during the Tokugawa epoch is that it acts like a cupping machine to draw up noxious vapours from the soil. For the floors being loosely constructed so as to prevent the overlaid mats from decaying, and the ground underneath being left in its natural state, its miasmal exhalations find ready access to the chambers above. Neither can it be truly said that a Japanese house is remarkable for cleanliness. It certainly looks clean, because the neat mats, the well-polished verandahs, the knotless timbers, and the white paper give an impression of purity and careful preservation. But these very mats which contribute so greatly to the general effect of tidiness are incomparable dirt-traps. They are not removed for cleaning purposes more than twice a year, in many houses not more than once, and an almost incredible quantity of dust and dirt is thus found to have accumulated beneath them and in their