Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/218

200 institutions in numbers as well as in other things. Indeed they are numerous beyond belief. Collectively they are said to comprise eighty per cent. of the entire population of the empire, a statement I accept only at a popular discount. Their individual membership consists on the average of from one hundred to five hundred persons apiece. Some clubs are smaller than this, and of some the membership mounts into the thousands. The Tomeye kō, the largest I know of, has about twelve thousand men enrolled in it. That these are drawn chiefly from the small tradesman and artisan class speaks for the hold the habit has on the people.

Ladies are quite eligible for election and even for office in these clubs. The wife of a tobacconist with whom I am acquainted is actually the head of a sub-sect, which comprises several clubs; and the husband is an enthusiastic club-man in one of them.

The constitution of the clubs is delightfully simple. The club charter is obtained from the head of the sect by some energetic individual of the society-founding propensity, who collects about him a few friends and incidentally appoints himself to the club