Blue waters and green and the Far East today . arrow-gauge Pullmans. Thedining-cars serve an excellent lunch for forty centsgold, and dinner for sixty cents. Every passengerpays a tax to the Government in addition to his fare,something like ten cents of our money on long stations are well built, and the courtesy of em-ployes leaves nothing to be wished for. You maytravel from end to end of Japan without knowingthe language, for always there is some one aroundwho has a little English. Among our fellow-passengers were a charmingJewish couple just married, she an Englishwoman,who had go
Blue waters and green and the Far East today . arrow-gauge Pullmans. Thedining-cars serve an excellent lunch for forty centsgold, and dinner for sixty cents. Every passengerpays a tax to the Government in addition to his fare,something like ten cents of our money on long stations are well built, and the courtesy of em-ployes leaves nothing to be wished for. You maytravel from end to end of Japan without knowingthe language, for always there is some one aroundwho has a little English. Among our fellow-passengers were a charmingJewish couple just married, she an Englishwoman,who had gone to school at Lausanne with a daughterof Gardiner Lathrop, and he French, eight years inthe wine import business at Yokohama, speakingJapanese like a native. They were very kind to usat Yokohama, and I got from him another side of theJapanese business character. His partner is a native,and Mr. W. told me that among themselves, in theirbusiness dealings with each other, there is absolutehonesty. He thinks as. I do, that their dishonesty[252]. JAPAN. is a passing phase of national character that is al-ready amending. It is due to two causes: Under the shogunate, in the old days, the highestclass was the soldier, the saumurai, or two-swordmen. They were gentry, petty nobles, entitled towear two swords. Their only business was next in rank was the agricultural class, the farm-ers; and below them all the merchants or class was fixed by heredity, and none could riseto a superior class. Traders were low people, verylow, and the taint of trade, the shame of their em-ployment, made them dishonest. It is less thanfifty years since these restrictions were removed, andnow that the merchant and trading class are theequals of every one, now that Japan has grown demo-cratic and trade is deemed honorable and the highestnobles in the empire engage in it, a change is comingswiftly. Besides that, the old system of Japan was largelycommunal. Artisans were the dependents on,
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