Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/341

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MONG the many interesting features that a close acquaintance with Japan and its people reveals to foreigners, the ethics of the Japanese will surely claim the paramount attention of the ethnologist. The people are unlike any other; and we find that this strong national individuality—so fascinating to visitors to Japan—reaches far beyond the quaint homes, graceful costumes, obsequious courtesy of both rich and poor, and the picturesque beauty of the country itself; finding its origin in the very heart of the people, inculcated by the lives and precepts of generation upon generation of warriors, poets, and statesmen.

The moral life of the Japanese has found many exponents in the literature of the Occident, and, on account of the contradictory character of many of the writings on the subject, the ideas gained by the reading public can not be other than confusing and vague. Any just consideration of the ethics of the Japanese admits of no equivocation, and conventional prudery must in all cases be replaced by simple, ungarnished facts. I would neither seek to confirm nor deny the varied statements of other observers, believing that a clearer insight may be gained from a brief portrayal of the various ethical influences—either domestic, social, or religious—that touch the life of the people from early childhood until, after life is done, their mortal remains are packed into a square pine box, not unlike an ordinary dry-goods case, and consigned to the keeping of Mother Earth.

Japan has been frequently referred to as the "Children's Paradise," and with considerable justice, for in no other country is childhood made so much of, and are children surrounded by so many devices for their amusement. In every town there are numbers of street venders and hawkers whose sole customers are children. One class of these venders carry two charcoal stoves, or furnaces, swung in the conventional manner of the country from the ends of a pole which rests across the shoulder. Arriving at a convenient corner, the load is put down, and a group of eager children quickly gather. For the moderate sum of one or two rin the children are each supplied with a tiny cup of sweetened batter and a spoon. Thus equipped, they proceed to bake their own cookies on the smooth iron top of the stoves, fashioning the dainties into whatever shape they please, and when they are crisp and brown, devouring them. The amé vender also devotes his skill to