Wrestling in Japan

1895

How the Almost Naked Athletes Conduct Themselves In the Arena.

According to an article in Current Literature, the contests take place in a huge amphitheater, much like a large circus, sheltered by a bamboo framework covered with matting to keep out the people who do not pay to go in. The top is unroofed. Tiers of boxes of a primitive description line the sides, being reached by ladders from the front. A ring of rice bags incloses the sanded arena, some dozen feet in diameter, in which the combatants meet. The center is occupied by the umpire, a person of much distinction, dressed in an old brocade costume, picturesque enough to Europeans and reminiscent of feudal times. Four judges are also in attendance in case the umpire's decision should be disputed.

The umpire stretches out his fan and shouts something in a strident voice. At this behest the first couple of combatants appear. The dress is scarcely conventional according to occidental ideas. Indeed there is practically no dress at all. Beyond a strip round the loins absolutely nothing is worn. They stride into the ring amid the plaudits of thousands, take a draft of water from a bucket in the corner, sprinkle themselves with the fluid and are ready for the encounter.

Two mighty men are they, with limbs and trunks that would not disgrace Samson. Mountains of muscle some, others mountains of fat. Good humor gleams in their faces. They slap their thighs and stamp their legs like restive horses and then crouch ready for the spring like beasts of prey. The umpire gives the signal to commence, and they bound into each other's embrace. Perhaps the feint is parried, so that we have it all over again.

It is a Homeric moment as the champions struggle and sway this way and that until with a final effort one is thrown to the ground. In one instance a heavy man was hurled right over the rice bags by a wiry opponent and would have had a nasty fall off the stage but for the intervention of an attendant placed ready to prevent accidents.

You May Kill Cats

New York, 1895

Thomas P. Lally, of Morris Park, who was arrested for shooting cats, was acquitted of the charge of cruelty to animals before Justice Lott at Ozone Park Tuesday night. Lally swore that the feline disturbed his slumbers and he had shot it because his health was becoming impaired. Justice Lott said the man had done the community a favor, and discharged him.


Why Newman Went to Japan

Prof. Koppell Newman, who used to live at Northport, has gone to Japan. He ran away to escape appearing against John Hoffman, who assaulted him for paying attentions to the latter's married daughter.


Small Damages Awarded

More than a year ago a horse driven by Stephen M. Van Allen of Jamaica ran away and came in collision with a wagon in which Mrs. Frederick Ayres was riding. She was thrown out and claimed to have been severely injured. She sued Mr. Van Allen for $5,000. The case was tried before Judge Barnard and a jury on Monday, and Mrs. Ayres got a verdict for only $50. Counselor Gillen tried the case for Mr. Van Allen.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, April 26, 1895, p. 8.

Japanese Comparisons

1895

The Japanese are apt at queer comparisons. A dolphin is always represented in sculpture as diving, head downward. So a man "walking dolphin" is either standing or falling on his head. A man with protruding teeth is called yamazakura, after the cherry tree, which puts forth its "ha" (leaves) before its "hana" (flowers), the same words meaning teeth and nose. A yamazakura man, therefore, carries his teeth before his nose. — New York Recorder.


The Growing Boy Ahead of the Anaconda

"I used to think," said Mr. Billtops, "that the anaconda did a wonderful thing when it ate at one meal enough for a dozen meals, even though it slept a month afterward. But, goodness! my oldest boy eats the anaconda's meal and then sleeps only one night." — Exchange.


Trivia

Camlet was first made in England during the reign of Elizabeth. It was so called not, as some suppose, from its being made of camel's hair, but from the river Camlet, in Montgomeryshire, on which the first factory was located.

During the reign of Vitellius lions from Africa were worth nearly $100 each.

Writing Lessons in Japan

1895

The Instructor Must Not Speak to His Princely Pupils.

One of the most remarkable occurrences one meets in Japan is the instruction in chirography given to a daimio, a member of the Japanese military nobility.

The writing teacher, who is called a professor there as well as here, prepares the copies in secret, so they can be used only for the little prince in question. A swarm of maids is busy waiting on the daimio, fetching and preparing what pupil and teacher need. At the appointed hour the professor makes his appearance. Without saying a word, and with the most funereal countenance, he approaches his pupil. A white napkin covers his mouth, so that his breath cannot offend the little prince. The Japanese are very sensitive in this regard. After exhausting every possible form of silent greeting the professor sits down, rules the paper and begins the instruction.

When the daimio has scribbled over several of the lines, it is the duty of the teacher to go into raptures over the wonderful talent of the youngster. Tears of joy must fill his eyes, but all must be done in silence; not a word must be spoken to the daimio. All the professor is permitted to do is to call the head maid, commissioning her to express in proper language his most devoted admiration. — St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Journalism In Japan

1895

"Journalism In Japan" is the subject of an interesting article by a Japanese in The Revue des Revues. The writer, Mr. Saizau, for several years settled in France, has brought out on the stage Japanese plays turned into French.

The founder of journalism in the Land of the Rising Sun was a chemist — that is to say, of the pharmaceutical order — named Kishida-Chinkau, who issued, some 25 years ago, a periodical sheet to spread the praise of his medicines. It came out twice or three times a month. Politics he was forbidden by law from touching, but in order to make his circular more interesting he introduced into it society paragraphs and sensational police cases, and even serial stories from national legends.

Still journalism languished in Japan till the introduction of modern printing presses, when it fast became prosperous. Kishida-Chinkau was, however, ruined by competition. The Japanese have now upward of 400 dailies, costing a half penny or a penny, and something like 300 reviews or magazines.

At a Hotel in Japan

1895

EXTRACT FROM AN INTERESTING DESCRIPTION BY A TRAVELER.

In No Respect Does the Japanese Inn Resemble the American Brand — Tea That Is Tea and No Mistake — A Bath That May Become a Boil.

A Japanese hotel is built on the maze principle. Rarely is it more than a story and a half in height, as befits a house which, in this seismic land, must sometimes dance on a boiling kettle, but it spreads over a great deal of ground and has as many passageways as a gopher warren. A business man's case of pigeonholes laid flat on its face would describe the ground plan very well. Outside the hotel presents, especially at night, an implacable front. The lower facade is a solid wall of cement, with a small doorway closed by a sliding panel, and the oblong aperture above is so crisscrossed with gratings as to give it the look of a rural lockup or a ship's brig.

The manager of the hotel is a humble and obsequious person, and so is his chief clerk. By his manner or costume neither is to be distinguished from the chef or the waiter. When a guest enters, there is no imposing figure at the desk to swing a register about, dip a pen in ink and inquire if the gentleman has any baggage to be sent up. Instead is a gowned, diminutive oriental, who bows until his body has taken the attitude of a carpenter's square standing on end, and about him is a staff which drops to its knees and touches its collective forehead to the floor. The guest is then invited, in phrases that are full of apology, to remove his shoes. Having done this and being filled with thankfulness that his socks have not worn through, he is bowed into a second room and then into a third and perhaps into a fourth, each apartment but little larger than a steamship's stateroom, its walls made of sliding partitions, with oiled paper windows, and its floor covered with small squares of matting, underlaid with soft cloth and tacked down. One of these cubby holes is assigned to him for a sleeping and living apartment.

Very likely one finds it cold, for Japan, in spite of its gulf stream, is too near Siberia to escape the rigors of the northern winter. The guest looks about for a warm corner, but there is no steam radiator, no stove, no fireplace. He claps his hands for a servant, and with his phrasebook in hand demands a fire. Again the shuffling footfall and the young woman with the oblique glance. This time she brings a brass brazier filled with burning charcoal. She places this on the floor, pokes the fire with two iron sticks, which look like knitting needles, giggles as before, and in the lowest and sweetest of flute tones says, "Cha?"

"Cha," which has a sound corresponding with "hah," is the first word one should learn in Japan. It means tea, and tea is as much the national beverage here as beer is in Germany or ice water in the United States.

So the guest has cha. The maid, already seated on the floor, takes a dainty china cup without a handle, and placing it on a salver fills it with an unsweetened, colorless liquid, which tastes as much unlike the tea of commerce as it does unlike the vichy of a soda fountain. This is tea indeed — tea that is fit for the daimio or the mandarins — nay, for royalty itself; tea that the Japanese are wise enough to keep at home, letting the western barbarians pay their yellow gold for the acrid stuff that stains one's vitals black.

When cha has been drunk, the proprietor attends. He falls on his knees and wishes to know "if gentlemans" — the generic name of the fair skinned species in native hotel vocabulary — will take a bath. At last there is something customary and familiar about this hotel. By all means a bath.

The proprietor leads, walking sidewise, through devious passages which have the narrowest of doors and the lowest of ceilings and finally opens the side of a small room, In which hangs horizontally a bamboo rod. This rod is a rack for one's clothes. In the next room is the bath. Fortunate is the man who has not prepared himself to expect a porcelain tub, a tiled floor, a shower and a corner washstand with nickel plated fittings, for he will not find them. Instead, there is a great slab of rock to stand on and an upright barrel, resting upon what looks like a block of granite, into which one is at liberty to climb and submerge himself.

The barrel is nearly full of water, which almost bubbles with heat. There is no faucet from which to turn on a cold douche, but a pair of great, clumsy, wooden buckets, filled with well water, are near by, and the guest, in the absence of a derrick, is privileged to lift them himself and turn them into his bath.

With the bath properly tempered the barrel is very comfortable indeed. There are no exposed surfaces below the bather's neck to catch the chill of the surrounding air and gather goose pimples. One sits down luxuriously, grows cheerful in the all pervading warmth and even lights a cigarette and sees visions of home in the curling smoke. But beware! It is not long before the bather begins to suspect that he is being parboiled. Was the water as hot as this when he got into it? Hark! Is that the crackle of a fagot? Is that a chimney that comes up by the barrel and disappears through the ceiling? Heavens, the stone foundation of the bath is merely a stove, a furnace, in which is the hottest fire that can be made in a space four feet square! Your bath is what you might got at home if you should crawl into the kitchen boiler an hour before dinner time. — Cor. San Francisco Chronicle.

In Japan

1895

The Philadelphia Record quotes a traveler in Japan as saying that, in spite of their advance in civilization, the Japanese retain much of their primitive simplicity. They always leave their shoes at the door of a house when they enter and walk inside in their stocking feet. When the first railroad was started from Yokohama to Tokyo, all the Japanese gentlemen were crazy to ride. They hurried to the station, kicked their shoes off on the platform and entered the train. When they arrived at Tokyo, they eagerly looked around the platform for their shoes, and great consternation prevailed when those shoes were nowhere to be found.


The Ideal Woman

Ruth Ashmore, who writes so interestingly for girls, said recently: "The manner of woman I would be is the woman who is nearest to best in everything, in her thought of other people, in her care for them, and in her loving kindness to them. Don't you think this comes near the ideal woman?"


Emphatic

"Don't you think it's a speaking picture?"
"Yes, Beardsley, it fairly shrieks. Why don't you muffle it?" — New York Record.

Helpless China

1916

Mr. Boyce's Talks

Japan has served a new set of demands upon China. Taking advantage of the fact that most of the world is at war, the Japanese have been gradually moving in on their big neighbor, with the object of gaining complete control, at least, if not actually seizing the country.

The latest move follows a fight between Chinese and Japanese in Mongolia. Japan demands that China employ Japanese military advisers for its Manchurian and Mongolian armies, that it employ Japanese military inspectors in its schools, that certain Chinese army officers be punished and that "special interests" of Japan in Mongolia and Manchuria be recognized.

Over a year ago, when it became known that Japan had forced China to yield a number of important concessions, the United States sent a warning to both countries that we would not recognize any agreement between them which impaired American rights in China or endangered the so-called "open door" policy. That warning was too late, but it kept the record straight, so that if the "open door" was closed we could say that we objected.

The "open door" was secured in 1900, when John Hay, our Secretary of State, requested Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan to sign an agreement that the treaty rights of the United States with China would not be affected by new treaties entered into by them, and every one gave such assurance.

Japan will no doubt declare that she has no designs against the "open door" — and will go ahead with her plans just the same. The Japs could say, "What are you going to do about it?" but that would not be polite and would not be necessary, anyway.

The United States has lost out in China, where we had great hopes of building up an extensive trade. Also, we are naturally concerned over Japan's ambitions, because of the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands. Japan has long sought to get hold of China, with her great area and enormous population, which could be converted into a strong force to aid in ruling the Far East. Poor old China cannot resist the demands of the smaller nation, for she is unprepared to defend herself, and it does not look as if it would do her any good to cry for help.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 6.

A Glimpse of the Japanese

1901

Mrs. Hugh Fraser, the author, widow of an English diplomat and sister of Marion Crawford, says of her life in Japan, to which her husband was minister from Great Britain:

The absence of snobbishness and kindred vices in Japan impresses itself very clearly upon one. There are two characteristics of the Japanese which stand out very boldly. Home life is paramount, and the possession of money is but lightly regarded. Any one who would pretend to be richer than he is would be calmly avoided as a fool. Money is not spoken of, the absence of it is not apologized for. A person living in a poor way gives a guest all he has to offer and is not humiliated at having to show his poverty. The rich man does not overwhelm you with his riches. He shows you one beautiful object from his collection at a time in an empty room, only beautiful through its perfect proportions, coloring and cleanliness.

These people travel through life so lightly weighted, their requirements are so few in the material order, that they seem as independent as the swallows and fly where we, weighted down by the commissariat for our artificial wants, can only creep. But they hold invisible things very precious. Honor and self respect, the love of their children, the harmony of the family, the privileges of patriotism, the commonwealth of learning, these are things for which they will sacrifice much.

Use Chopsticks in Japan

1917

Old Custom Prevails Among Poorer Classes, While the Rich Have European Knives and Forks

The use of chopsticks is general in Japan, except among the richer classes, who have adopted European knives and forks, and, to some extent, the European cuisine, London Tit-Bits says.

5mall bowls of china or lacquered wood are the usual table equipment. After the various solid portions of the food have been lifted to the mouth with chopsticks the liquor remaining is sipped from the bowl. In the case of rice, which would be tedious to pick up grain by grain, the bowl is often raised to the mouth and the rice shoveled or pushed in with the chopsticks. It is also customary to pour a little tea into the rice bowl after it has been nearly emptied, and in this way the few remaining grains of rice are washed down as the tea is drunk.

At public places the chopsticks at each meal must be new; this is indicated by the fact that the chopsticks are made from one piece of wood and are left joined together, as were matches at one time. These new chopsticks are incased in a thin paper envelope, sealed at the end, and bearing Japanese characters advertising either the hotel or some firm that has furnished them free to the proprietor for the sake of the publicity thus gained.

Japanese Villages Are Dark

1905

"Without having actually seen them, you cannot imagine how dark some Japanese country villages remain, even in the brightest and hottest weather. In the neighborhood of Tokyo itself there are many villages of the kind. At a short distance from such a settlement you see no houses; nothing is visible but a dense grove of evergreen trees.

The grove, which is usually composed of young cedars and bamboos, serves to shelter the village from storms, and also to supply timber for various purposes. So closely are the trees planted that there is no room to pass between the trunks of them; they stand straight as masts and mingle their crests so as to form a roof that excludes the sun. Each thatched cottage occupies a clear space in the plantation, the trees forming a fence about it, double the height of the building. Under the trees it is always twilight, even at high noon; and the houses, morning or evening, are half in shadow. What makes the first impression of such a village almost disquieting is not the transparent gloom, which has a certain weird charm of its own, but the stillness.

There may be fifty or a hundred dwellings; but you see nobody; and hear no sound but the twitter of invisible birds, the occasional crowing of cocks and the shrilling cicadae. Even the cicadae find these groves too dim and sing faintly; being sun lovers, they prefer the trees outside the village. I forgot to say that you may sometimes hear a viewless shuttle — chaka-ton, chaka-ton — but that familiar sound, in the great green silence, seems an elfish happening. The reason of the hush is simply that the people are not at home. All the adults have gone to the neighboring fields, the women carrying their babies on their backs; and most of the children have gone to the nearest school, perhaps not less than a mile away. — Atlantic Monthly.

Forcing Port Arthur Gate

1905

One hour before midnight you could see once more the same men who had applied the explosives in the day making for their victim. The foundation of the caponiere was made of concrete, sand and steel plates. It could turn the largest and most powerful shells ever manufactured by men into a loud and foolish joke. The men carried this time a large quantity of gunpowder. This they applied to the cracks made by the former explosion.

The white heat fuse was applied. The report certainly handled the serene silence of the midnight without mercy, tore it into pieces. This time there was a large rent made in the wall. Night, once more, rocked the confusion back to peace and there came into the rent a number of Russian heads. Some of us laughed. Quick as a flash the rifles of our men greeted them. Wide as the rent was, it was not quite sufficient for men in haste to pass, and for the third time we made the preparation of explosives. At 14 minutes past 4, in the still dark hours of the 28th, the earth about us shuddered as it had never shuddered before, and we saw a hole in the wall that was over one meter in width and considerably over one meter in height.

Through this hole our engineer threw in over twelve sacks of explosives. The caponiere was choked with fume and smoke. The ash gray of the breaking day and the most sinister gray of the smoke from the explosives creeking like cowardly ghosts from the hole in the wall was broken by silvery flashes here and there. They were the icy blades of our men rushing into the caponiere through the confusion of the explosion. A crash of arms, groans, sounds of failing bodies, of broken steel, shrieks with which the life flew away from the clay, all mingled and melted in a confusion far beyond pen and brush. A few moments later the sun-round flag waved from out of a torn hole over the covered caponiere a welcome to the new-born day. — Leslie's Monthly.

Wikipedia: Port Arthur, Manchuria. 1904, the starting battle of the Russo-Japanese War.

Fox as "Will O' The Wisp"

1905

Curious Belief That Is Prevalent Among the Japanese

Among the many superstitions of the Japanese there is none more strange or more universal than the belief in the power of the fox to do them harm, and many are the stories told of those against whom this power has been exercised.

The Japanese fox is a pretty creature about two feet long and of a tawny color, and is found nearly everywhere in Japan. The mischievous tricks which foxes are said to play upon the unwary are many, and wonderful are the tales told to awed groups of listeners by those who have been duped by them.

The designing fox usually takes the form of a fairy maiden in order to play tricks upon some unsuspecting wayfarer, and beckons him on until he falls into a ditch or is lost in the mountains. It is almost always at night that the fox goes out to deceive, and those who have met with such adventures say that the only way to know the difference between a real maiden and a fox lady is that the latter is clearly distinguishable, even on the darkest night, the stripes or patterns on her clothing being clearly visible even in the darkness.

It is usually to those who are carrying some article of food that the artful fox appears, with the design of obtaining the dainty, and those who have been through the experience say that a bewildered feeling takes possession of them and they are not able to exert their own wills.

Displays His "Happy Family"

1915

Printing Firm's "Zoo" Proves Real Attraction

PERRY, Oklahoma, Dec. 16. — In the front show window of the Southern Printing Company's office here is a "Happy Family" that attracts the attention of hundreds of people. Living happily together and eating from the same dishes are many beautiful canary birds, guinea pigs of different kinds, squirrels, white and spotted rats, horny toads, and a pair of beautiful Persian kittens. It is a sight worth looking at.

Back of the office is a garden of beautiful flowers, and cages in which are tame possums, pet coons that will follow visitors around like dogs, over a hundred guinea pigs of many kinds, pigeons and other birds and animals. "Wish you could all enjoy them with us," is the company's message to Blade readers.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 7.


1910

A Funeral in Japan

Tokyo, Japan. — In Japan a funeral procession is supposed never to go out of the front gate of a house, the back gate being generally used, and if there is no back gate an arch or ring of bamboo is held by two men within the front gate and the bier passes through that. After a funeral salt is sprinkled on the threshold and the house is swept out.


Natural Antipathy

Work kills a few men, but that isn't why so many are afraid of it.

Boys Play Skittles With Skulls

1905

Numerous bones and skulls hare been recently dug up near the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and boys of the locality are playing skittles with them.

This will soon be stopped, as the human debris is to be carefully collected by the workmen who are excavating in the district.

The skulls and bones come from the old graveyard of the Abbey of St. Martin-des-Champs, which existed where the Commercial Conservatoire now stands. There was also another cemetery, that of St. Nicolas, in the same district, and it was built over in the eighteenth century. — Paris correspondence, London Telegraph.


Japanese Live By Rule

Their Diet and Habits Regulated Strictly Through a Thousand Years

An army officer, discussing recently with friends the surprising immunity from sickness of the Japanese troops as manifested in the present war, said that, while the first cause was doubtless the diet prescribed, the real reason was to be found in the way the dietary is adhered to.

The Anglo-Saxon fighting man might be told what to eat and what to eschew, but centuries of personal liberty in eating and drinking and the ordering of his daily regimen to suit himself had given him a certain independence. With the gallant little yellow man, however, the adherence to the instructions they receive on such matters was slave-like.

Their minutest personal actions had been regulated through a thousand years of feudal strife and dependence, which, taken with their peculiar temperament, had made them submissive to a degree unknown among the freer races, or races which, if not freer, had freer institutions, in which minute details of life were not so closely regulated.

Much-Shaken Japan

1900

In 1893 the Japanese government appointed an investigating committee on earthquakes. This committee, which has now nearly completed its labors, reports, among other things, that it seems likely that one part or another of Japan will be visited by a destructive earthquake once in every two-and-a-half years.

That portion of the land bordering the Japan Sea is seldom disturbed by other than local earthquakes, while the Pacific coast of the country frequently suffers from great shocks originating under the ocean. When a region is shaken by constantly recurring small earthquakes, it appears to be rendered safe against the occurrence of destructive shocks, because the accumulation of stress in the earth's crust at that point is prevented.


Modern Bullets

Sir William MacCormac writes in the Lancet that in most cases the damage done by modern bullets, and especially the Mauser, cannot be compared with that inflicted by the projectiles of the needle-guns or the Chassepôt rifle, weapons employed in the Franco-German War. A similar result is obtained when comparison is made with the work of the bullets used in our Civil War.


Studying A Prodigy

At Indiana University a 19-year-old boy who possesses extraordinary powers of arithmetical calculation is under investigation to determine, scientifically, the nature of his mental processes.

It has been found that a tenacious memory underlies much of his singular power, the rapidity of his calculations depending upon the great quantity of number relations which he has memorized, as well as upon the short cuts that he has invented. — Youth's Companion.

Truthful Children

1900

Children are naturally truthful. Nature does not lie. Let nothing be done to alter this happy disposition. Cultivate in them the love of truth, candor, and the confession of error.

It is lamentable to think what fearful falsehoods are uttered to deter children, to keep them quiet, or to make them obedient. Threats of being taken by old men, and black men, and other like terrors, are resorted to by ignorant and foolish servants to frighten them, and make them lie still in bed. It is ascertained that death, fits, idiocy, or insanity have been the consequences of such inhumanity.

But, setting aside the probable chance of such calamities, there are other certain results. If the child discovers the falsehoods practiced upon him, he becomes boldly indifferent to the threats, is more disobedient and willful than ever, disbelieves all that is said to him, and, finding no respect for truth in others, has no regard for it himself.

Firmness in adhering to promises, or any particular line of discipline in relation to children, is of first importance.


Japan Consumes Much Rice

Japan is the largest consumer of rice in the world, the average being 300 pounds a person a year. The Americans use but four pounds per capita. Belgium uses more tobacco in proportion, than any other country, about 110 ounces per capita yearly, while Italy uses only twenty-two ounces.

Frog Jumps Inside Woman's Bathing Suit

1910

Interrupts Lesson, Causes Commotion

New York. — It is written in the philosophy of Capt. James Fitzgerald, instructor at Piasa Pool, that there is always a way — that is, nearly always. But there was no way that he could suggest when a bullfrog jumped inside of a woman's bathing suit.

Captain Fitzgerald was giving a swimming lesson when a bullfrog sat in a crevice at the edge of the pool and watched the proceedings with interest. "One, two, three," chanted Captain Fitzgerald, and just as he said "three," a boy running by on the brink of the pool, startled the frog and he leaped wildly into the pool.

The woman pupil wore a low-cut bathing suit, a trifle loose at the neck. The frog landed inside and both tried to get out. While Fitzgerald hesitated and stammered, another woman swam to the one in need of help, reached inside of her bathing suit and caught the frog and withdrew it and thereby earned the gratitude of the woman — and the frog.


Made Sure of Death

A student of a school in Shinshu, Japan, recently committed suicide by jumping into the crater of Asamayama. The tragedy was not discovered until three days afterward, when some documents left by the suicide near the crater were picked up.

A Japanese Rip Van Winkle Story

1878

The Japanese have the story of Rip Van Winkle in another form.

A young man, fishing in his boat, on the ocean, was invited by the goddess of the sea to her home beneath the waves. After three days he desired to go and see his old father and mother. On parting she gave him a golden casket and a key, but begged him never to open it.

At the village where he lived all was changed, and he could get no trace of his parents until an aged woman recollected having heard of their names. He found their graves a hundred years old. Thinking that three days could not have made such a change, and that he was under a spell, he opened the casket. A white vapor arose, and under its influence the young man fell to the ground. His hair turned gray, and his form lost its youth, and in a few moments more he died of old age.

A Japanese Composing Room — Newspapers, Typesetting

1878

A Japanese Composing Room.

A Tokio (Japan) correspondent of the New York Evening Post, has written up the Nichi Nichi Shinbun or Daily News, the leading journal of the empire. The description of the composing room, as given below, will be found interesting reading:

Next to the editorial room is located the space set aside for the composing force. First we come to the proofreaders, two intelligent persons who have a high reputation for scholarship. The necessity for such attainments becomes apparent when we learn that a full font of type comprises fifty thousand characters, while no less than three thousand are in constant use and two thousand more in frequent employment. And not only must the proof-reader be careful to amend all grammatical slips and typographical errors, but he should have a quick eye for inelegances in the manuscript and for imperfections in the characters themselves.

Separated from the proof-readers by a low latticed railing is the office of the foreman, the magistrate of the cases, and beyond him again we reach the printers. The type is disposed about the room on long racks like those in a public reading room, and the aisles furnish a promenade wherein the compositor can labor in his vocation and take exercise simultaneously.

The matter when set is placed on galleys, and a proof taken. Then the foreman manipulates it into the shape in which the public see it. Four forms are used, each eleven by sixteen inches. The first — that is, the last — page is occupied by a display head, the information concerning number of issue, place and date of publication, price and days of appearance, which commonly follow the title, and government notifications. After these come editorial leading articles and paragraphs. The last — that is, the first — page is devoted to market reports, scientific information and advertisements, and with the official editorial matter makes up the outside forms, which are sent down to press at midnight.

On the "inside" we find the day's discoveries of the reporters and such editorial articles, communications, etc., as found no corner in the outside forms. Such is the routine "make up," but it is elastic enough, of course, to suit the journalistic requirements of the day. During the war, when Mr. Fukuchi was for a time at the front as a special correspondent, much space and attention was given to telegraphic news, but the lack of an associated press makes such matter rather costly, and only a limited amount appears. Each correspondent, however, is furnished with a private telegraphic code, and is empowered to send the journal by this means information that seems to justify the outlay.