PEOPLE OF FEW WANTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1920, Page 9 (Supplement)

PEOPLE OF FEW WANTS.

JAPANESE LIVE ON NEXT TO NOTHING. A Jitjjanese house is one of the simplest tilings ever built, for it consists of little more than four posts and a roof. But such impermanence, which is also seen in other things, is a part of the strength of the nation, for no people in the world have so few wants. The Japanese have no bread, no beds no iires, no boots or shoes, no trousers for the no petticoats for the womiri^-for troth se.ves wear several dressing gowns, one over the other. In their houses they have no windows, 110 doors, no walls, but paper shutters fixed in grooves, no ceilings, no chests of drawers, not even al'washstand.

In the kitchen they have no range, uo pots, no pans, no flour bins, no kitchen tables. But then they have- no tables or chairs in the drawing room, and in the real native house the drawing room itself is only a lot of bedrooms with the paper shutters taken down. There is no reason why you should find anything in a Japanese house except mats and a charcoal stove for warming your Augers and making tea. These and a cushion or two and a quilt to sleep on, with an elaborate conventional politeness, constitute the furniture of a Japanesj houpe, excep - , the guest chamber. And the articles in the guest chamber consist of a screen, a kakemono and a flower vase.

•Along with his magnificent want <if wants, so to speak, the Japanese pombines a capacity to get huge pleasure out of what we would regard as trifles, and after labors and sacrifices that we should think intolerable. This extraordinary patience and whole-hearted enjoyment all the niggardliness of his lot marks the .Japanese aa unique among the peoples of the world.

'He lives on next to nothing and thrives on it. He always has a smile. He works whenever he can get any work to do. Thfcy are all week days to him. Instead of a seventh day, 'Sunday. he has his festa, a national holiday or a temple festival. In either case he goes a-faring to some temple and takes his children or a friend. He is never too poor to have money to treat them.

He gives himself a holiday only when he is out of work, and his holidays are inexpensive. He just walks a hundred miles to see some famous garden in its glory; he carries his baggage in a box. wrapped in oil paper, and gets a bed at an inn for a sum equivalent to a halfpenny of our money. His food is almost as cheap, and when the last (urn in the road shows him the irises of Horikari or the house and cherrv trees of Yoshino on the day of all the year he would not change places with the Kin* of Great Britain and Ireland.

Judging by Western ideas, Japanese babies have a hard time, yet there are no healthier children in the world. The Japanese baby is dressed and undressed in a frigid temperature in winter, and in summer no care is taken to protect its fender little eyes from the full «!are of the sun. In winter the small head is covered with -a worsted cap of the brightest, and gayest design and color I>lai ' k Imir is cut in all sorts of fantastic ways. just, like the hair of the Japanese dolls imported into this country.

The babies 'of the lower classes are generally carried on the backs of the mother or little sister; sometimes the small brother is obliged to be the nursemaid. The kimono is made extra large at the back, with a pock'M of sufficient size to hold the baby, whose round head reaches the back of the neck of the person who is carrying it. It is not an uncommon sight to see children who are barely old enough to toddle burdened with a small brother or sister sleeping peacefully on their backs. At first one expects to see the child stagger and fall beneath thtf weight but apparently none of its movements are impeded and it plays with the other children as unconcernedly as if it. were not loaded down with another member of the family.