ABSTRACT

Ethnography, however must keep to facts, and the point us in an entirely different direction. The Japanese national character is more akin to that of the Polynesian than to the Malay. In Japan each person has his own separate portion set before him, as in a restaurant, upon a little table or tray. The only occasion upon which was insulted during my stay in Japan was by a drunken soldier. Their acquaintance with European laws and customs and the lofty conceptions of marriage and family life entertained by European civilization, has aroused in the more cultivated classes of Japan a lively desire to raise their own standard of conjugal life. It is only amongst base-minded parents however that children are thus sold, and it is just as much forbidden by the tone of respectable society in Japan as it is with people.