I Saw Things At Their Worst That Night As I Tramped Into The Hamlet
Of Numa, Down Whose Sloping Street A Swollen Stream Was Running,
Which The People Were Banking Out Of Their Houses.
I was wet and
tired, and the woman at the one wretched yadoya met me, saying,
"I'm sorry it's
Very dirty and quite unfit for so honourable a
guest;" and she was right, for the one room was up a ladder, the
windows were in tatters, there was no charcoal for a hibachi, no
eggs, and the rice was so dirty and so full of a small black seed
as to be unfit to eat. Worse than all, there was no Transport
Office, the hamlet did not possess a horse, and it was only by
sending to a farmer five miles off, and by much bargaining, that I
got on the next morning. In estimating the number of people in a
given number of houses in Japan, it is usual to multiply the houses
by five, but I had the curiosity to walk through Numa and get Ito
to translate the tallies which hang outside all Japanese houses
with the names, number, and sexes of their inmates, and in twenty-
four houses there were 307 people! In some there were four
families - the grand-parents, the parents, the eldest son with his
wife and family, and a daughter or two with their husbands and
children. The eldest son, who inherits the house and land, almost
invariably brings his wife to his father's house, where she often
becomes little better than a slave to her mother-in-law.
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