ABSTRACT
What would the Japanese do without the bamboo? Indeed so extensive is the part played by the bamboo, not only in the beautifying of the land, but in her domestic economy, that the question is rather, what does it not do? The number of species of bamboo in Japan at present is stated to be fifty, not including numerous other varieties and sports; among them thirty-nine are indigenous, and the others have been imported at various times from Korea, China, or the Lu-chu Islands. From time immemorial the Japanese have not regarded the bamboo as a tree—it forms a category apart, and they speak of “trees and bamboos”; they say it belongs to the grasses, and is just a giant grass and nothing more. It is indeed a beautiful and wonderful grass with a rate of growth which cannot be compared to that of any other member of the vegetable kingdom; some species are said to show a growth of several feet in the course of four-and-twenty hours, reminding one of one of the many ghastly forms of Chinese tortures, when a man is pegged to the ground on the top of a sprouting bamboo, whose shoots are so strong that they will grow right through the man's body in the course of a single night.
