Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/446

434 and of half that sum on the little 'prentices. Such, at least, are the present rates in Tōkyō. They vary in the provinces.

 Societies. The Japanese of our day have taken kindly to societies and associations of all sorts. They doubtless feel that their nation has to make up now for the long abstinence from such cooperative activity which was enforced during the Tokugawa regime, when it was penal for more than five persons to club together for any purpose.

The six most influential societies at present are the Military Virtues Society, with over 982,000 members; the Red Cross Association, under the immediate patronage of the Empress, with a membership of over 930,000; the Ladies Patriotic Society, with over 140,000; the Agricultural Society, with over 9,000; the Associated Temperance Unions, with some 9,000; and the Sanitary Society, with nearly 7,000. These, and not a few of those next to be mentioned, have branches in the provinces, and most of them publish transactions. The Educational Society, the Geographical Society, the Oriental Society, the Economical Society, the Philosophical, Engineering, Electrical, Medical, Historical, and Philological Societes, and the Gakushi Kwai-in, an association with aims kindred to those of the Educational Society, have done excellent work. We have, furthermore, a Society of Arts, Judicial, Anthropological, and various other scientific and literary Societies, a Colonisation Society, a number of Young Men's Christian Associations and Women's Temperance Societies, an Association of Buddhist Young Men, and others of various hues and complexions, not to mention political clubs, of which the number is very great and continually changing.

Some of the Japanese societies have eccentric rules. Thus, there is one called the Mustache Society, whose members consist of amateur singers,—of the male sex only, for no one without a mustache is eligible. The object of the Growlers' Society is to ventilate discontent and emphasise every public grievance.