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These damsels belong to poor families, else they would wear cloth stockings over those bare feet —— stockings with the big toe separated from the rest of the foot to allow that strap to pass over and hold those curious wooden clogs in place. These kimonos and aprons are gay-colored cotton stuff; if the wearers belonged to rich families they would be of crape or silk in similar gay colors bug woven with elaborately beautiful fig-ures or embroidered in silk, and broad sashes, carefully tied at the back in a large thick bow of a certain prescribed shape, would be sure to complete the costume.

Notice especially the way in which these babies, awake or asleap, are strapped to the backs of their patient guardians. All Japanese babies are carried in this way by sisters or mothers or nurses; they are almost always good-natured mites and seldom cry even when their bearers run about at work or at play and their own little heads nod with sleepiness. All girls lean how to carry babies this way —— they begin when they themselves are wee, toddling things, experimenting with a doll, and, in poor famileis, where there are many little folks, they take charge of their juniors in this way, while they are no more than seven or eight years old, going about their work or playing childish games exactly as if thy carried no such burden.

There are few cows in Japan. When these chubby babies are too old to be nursed by their mothers they learn to eat soft, boiled rice.

There are public schools to which these little ones will be sent by and by, and their home-training, even in a poor workman's family, will cultivate good manners. Toys are cheap here and amusements many.

(Read Bacon's "Japanese Girls and Women"; Morse's "Japanese Homes"; Chamberlain's "Things Japanese," etc.)

From Notes of Travel, No. 8, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.


Big Sisters and Little Brothers in Japan.

Grandes Sœurs et Petits Frères au Japon.

Grosse Schwestern und kleine Brüder in Japan.

Grandes Hermanas y Pequeños Hermanos en el Japon.

Stora systrar och små bröder i Japan.

Старшие сестры и младшие братья в Японии.

Transcription Notes:
I couldn't get the non-english languages correct