CURIOUS HABITS OF THE JAPANESE.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2950, 30 July 1878, Page 2

CURIOUS HABITS OF THE JAPANESE.

The Japanese habit of reversing everything, if, we (Scientific American) may regard our own way of doing as the proper way, is very curious, and in some of its details very interesting. Mr Griffiths, in his work on Japan, discusses it thus: — " Another man is plaining. He pulls the plain towards him. I notice a blacksmith at the work. He pulls the bellow's with his foot, while he is holding and hammering with, both hands. He has several iron* in the fire, and keeps his dinner pot boiling with the waste flame. His whole family, like the generationsJbefore them, seem to get their living ijfihe hardware line. The cooper holds, his tubs with his toes. All of them-sit down while they work. Perhaps that .is an important difference between a European r.nd an Asiatic. One sits down to his wet, the other stands up to it. Why is it thai we do things contrariwise to the Japanese; are we upside down, or they? The Japanese say. that we are reversed. T^hey call our penmanship " crab-writing," because, they say, " it goes backward.'! The lines in our books cross the page like a crawfish, instead of going downward properly. In a Japanese stable we find the horse's flank where we look for his head.. Japanese screws screw the other way. Their locks thrust to the left, ours to the right. The baby toys of the Aryan race squeak when they are squeezed ; the Tnrnonian ,gimcracks emit noise when pulled apart. A Caucasian, to injure his enemy, kills him; a Japanese kills himself to spite his foe. Which ljace is left-handed ? Which is the negative, which is the positive of truth? What is truth? What is down ? What is up ? "