. Mysterious Japan; . ake—The Man Who Went Home—Fire!—ARicksha Ride to the Wrong Address—A Front-Porch Bath HAVE I given the impression that Tokyo isa disappointing city to one in search ofthings purely Japanese? If so it was be-cause I tarried too long in the district of railroadstations and big business. Moreover, to the prac-tical commercial eye, this portion of the city mustlook promising indeed, because of the wide streetsand the new building going on. And it is buildingof a kind to be approved by the man of commerce,for in her new edifices Tokyo is adopting steel-frame construction. That
. Mysterious Japan; . ake—The Man Who Went Home—Fire!—ARicksha Ride to the Wrong Address—A Front-Porch Bath HAVE I given the impression that Tokyo isa disappointing city to one in search ofthings purely Japanese? If so it was be-cause I tarried too long in the district of railroadstations and big business. Moreover, to the prac-tical commercial eye, this portion of the city mustlook promising indeed, because of the wide streetsand the new building going on. And it is buildingof a kind to be approved by the man of commerce,for in her new edifices Tokyo is adopting steel-frame construction. That she is only now beginning to build in thisway is not due to inertia, but to the fact that earth-quakes complicate her building problem. The tallestof her present office buildings is, I believe, but sevenstories high, and I have heard that twice as muchsteel was employed in its construction as wouldhave been employed in a similar building whereearthquakes did not enter into the calculationsof the architect. S8. The Japanese is not a slave to his possessions. The averagefamily can move its household goods in a hand-cart {Above) Sawing and planing are accomplished with a pulling insteadof a driving motion {Below) MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 39 It would be difficult to overestimate the partthat earthquakes play in establishing the characterof Japanese cities. There will never be skyscrapersin Japan, or apartment buildings with familiespiled high in air. The family, not the individual,is the social unit of the land, and the private houseis the symbol of the family. Even in the congestedslums of Japanese cities, or in the quarters givenover to the pitiful outcast class called eta, eachfamily has its house, though the house may consistonly of a single room no larger than a woodshedand may harbour an appalling number of people,as miserable and as crowded as those of the poorestslums in the United States. Though the seismograph records an average ofabout four earthquakes a day, most of th
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