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264 the Japanese visitor than seems to be generally expected. Be he statesman or be he valet, he is apt to return to his native land more patriotic than he left it. (See also Article on Things Japanese/Woman (Status of).)

 Jinrikisha. The origin of the jinrikisha is, to use a grandiloquent phrase, shrouded in obscurity. One native account attributes the spark of invention to a paralytic old gentleman of Kyōto, who, some time before 1868, finding his palanquin uncomfortable, took to a little cart instead. According to another version, one Akiha Daisuke, of Tōkyō, was the inventor, about 1870; but the first official application to be allowed to manufacture jinrikishas was made about the same time by a man called Takayama Kōsaku. The usual foreign version is that an American named Goble, half-cobbler and half-missionary, was the person to suggest the idea of a modified perambulator somewhere about 1867; and this has the support of Mr. Black, the author of Young Japan. In any case, the invention, once made, found wide-spread favour. There are now over 33,000 jinrikishas and 31,600 jinrikisha-men in Tōkyō alone; and the ports of China, the Malay peninsula, and India, as well as Japan, owe to the jinrikisha a fruitful source of employment for their teeming coolie population and of comfort for the well-to-do residents.

The compound word jinrikisha means literally "man-power-vehicle," that is, a vehicle pulled by a man, or, as the late Mr. Baber wittily suggested, a "pull-man-car." Some have imagined sha to be a corruption of the English "car."