The Japanese peasantry usually live in small villages, separated from each other only by a few hundred yards. Sometimes, however, their houses are built in little groups of four or five, but it is extremely rare to find a peasant’s cottage quite isolated. Nothing can exceed the simplicity of the construction of these habitations, which only differ from those of the townspeople by their lofty and heavy thatched roofs, which usually contain a granary, and are supported by very stout wooden pillars, rising from a heap of stones placed on the bare ground, without any attempt at a foundation. Those walls only which support the gable are solidly built with clay kept together by a bamboo lattice. The two principal façades stand back about a yard inside the pillars, and consist of paper screens which slide backwards and forwards. At night, or in stormy weather, these screens are replaced by wooden shutters. The whole front is thrown wide open when the weather is fine or there is a ray of sunshine, so that passers-by may have a full view of the interior. It is this curious fashion of living in public which most strikes the traveller who arrives in Japan from China, where you cannot even see what is going on in the outer courtyard, and is one of the chief characteristics that differentiate the Japanese from all other Orientals. Another very striking feature is the scrupulous cleanliness which reigns in these dwellings, whose only furniture are _tatamis_, or thick straw mats, which cover the floor of the whole house, excepting a space immediately opposite the door where visitors are expected to leave their boots and slippers. The total absence of furniture, added to an equal lack of heating apparatus and to the non-existence of any means of shutting out cold and draughts, at first gives one an impression of extreme discomfort, but it must not be forgotten that when the Japanese adopted Chinese civilization they rejected three things: chairs, coverlets, and stoves. The Imperial palaces at Kioto would make one of our humblest cottages, so far as furniture is concerned, appear quite luxurious. At Hirashima, a town of 100,000 inhabitants, the principal hotel is kept by a Japanese, and although lighted by electricity and possessing a telephone, the guests are expected to sit upon the floor, and only to warm the tips of their fingers at the two or three little scraps of burning embers in the _hibachi_, and in the morning, although it may be freezing, they have to perform their toilet in the open courtyard. When I was in this city I visited the house occupied by the Emperor during the Chinese War, and was shown his study, which contained merely an arm-chair, a few other chairs, and by way of stove only a _hibachi_, of exquisite workmanship, it is true—black lacquer worked over with gold.