PEOPLE OF FEW WANTS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VII, Issue 2142, 27 December 1920, Page 8

PEOPLE OF FEW WANTS.

JAPANESE LIVE ON NEXT TO NOTHING. j AND THRIVE TO AN AMAZINO DEGREE. A Japanese house Is one of the simple*! things ever built, for it consists of fitf!* more than four posts and a roof. Bu£ such impermanonce, 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 bwii no fires, no boots or shoes, no trouser i for the men, no petticoats for the womoi ! —for both sexes wear several dressta) gowns, one over the other. In their housai i they have no windows, no doors, no walls, but paper shutters fixed in grooves, nj ceilings, no chests of drawers, not even %. washstand. In tbe~"kitchen they have no range, »* pots, no pans, no flour bins, no kitchen tables. But then they have no tobies (if chairs in the drawing-room, and in this real native house the drawing-room itself is only a lot of bedrooms with the pape* 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 fingers and making tea. These and a cushion or two and a quill to sleep on, with an elaborate conventional politeness, constitute the furniture of a Japanese house, except the guest chamber. And the articles in the guest chamber consist of a screen, a kakemono and 4 flower vase. Along with bis magnificent want of wants, so to speak, the Japanese combined a capacity to get huge pleasures out of what we would regard as trifles, ana after labours and sacrifices that We shoulathink* intolerable. This extraordinary ps> tience and wholehearted enjoyment undet all the niggardliness of his lot marks the Japanese as unique among the peoples ol the world. He lives on next to nothing, and thrives on it. He always has aam Lie. He work} whenever he can get any work to do. They are all week-days to him. Instead of a seventh day, Sunday, he has his festa, A national holiday or a temple festival. 14 either case he goes a-f aring to some tern pie and takes his children or A friend. Hi is never too poor to have money to treat them." He gives himself a holiday only when be is out of work, and bis holidays are inexpensive. He just walks a hundred miles to see some famous garden in it* glory; he carries his baggage in a bot wrapped in oil paper, and gets a bed « an inn for a sum equivalent to & hal£r penny of our money. His food is almost as cheap, and when the last turn in the road shows him the irises of Horikari Of the house and cherry trees of Yoshin? on the day of all the year he would not change places with the King of Great Britain, and Ireland.

Judging by Western ideas, Japanese babies have a hard time; yet there art 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 tender little eyes from the fall glare of the sun. In winter the small load is, covered with a worsted cap of tip brightest and gayest design and colour. The black hair is cut in all sorts oi fantastic ways, just like the hair of the Japanese dolls imported into this cons* try. The babies of the lower classes are generally carried on .the back or iw mother or little sister: sometimes the small brother is obliged to be the nursemaid. The kimono is made extra larg* at the back, with a pocket of auflU etont size to hold the baby, whose round head reaches the back of the neck 0* the person who is carrying it. It is not an uncommon sight to so* children who are barely old enough t« toddle burdened with a small brother Of sister sleeping peacefully on their backs. At first one expects to see the chili stagger and fall beneath 'the weigh* but apparently none of its movement! are impeded, and it plays with the othef children as unconcernedly as If It WW* not loaded down with another ffiembet of the family. '