These articles attracted a great deal of attention, and contained doubtless a certain amount of truth, not unmingled, however, with considerable exaggeration. The Japanese employers of labour are, it should be remarked, after all in very much the same position in which our own were some fifty or sixty years ago. As to the moral tone of the workgirls, it is doubtless neither better nor worse than it is in the great manufacturing centres of Europe and America. At Moscow a manufacturer informed me that the morals of his workgirls were very bad, and at Shanghai another gentleman related to me things on the same subject best left unpublished. The working hours are not longer in Japan than they were in Europe thirty or forty years ago. They never exceed twelve hours a day, from which half an hour must be deducted for the midday meal. Nevertheless, it is excessive, especially when we remember that the week’s work is divided into two parts, one half the hands working all night and the other all day, so that the looms are never at rest. Then they have only two off-days in the month, on the first and the fifteenth; and there are only four special holidays in the year, the three first days in the New Year, and the Emperor’s birthday. Even the first and the fifteenth are not observed if there is a press of work. If these hours appear too long, it must not be forgotten that the Japanese workman, like his brother worker in the South of Europe, does not labour with the intensity that distinguishes the Englishman or the American. As to the employment of women, they are only engaged in the match factories, and their work is of the lightest. Nevertheless, attention in Japan is being directed towards these two very important questions, which will, doubtless, sooner or later, receive proper attention and be modified. Wages are already rising, as the workpeople begin to understand their worth and their own interests, and to know how to protect them. A danger to which the Japanese industries are exposed is undoubtedly due to a diminution of capital, the result of over-production after the late war, which brought about much the same phase that occurred in the commercial history of Germany after the Franco-German War. However, the financial crisis of 1898 and the competition recently created at Shanghai have created a certain degree of anxiety concerning the immediate future of Japanese industry; but, on the other hand, the magnificent results obtained in such a surprisingly short time, and the courageous manner in which this industrious people have overcome the many difficulties which beset them in the earlier stages of their career, must not be forgotten. CHAPTER V RURAL JAPAN