Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, page 319 by Isabella L. Bird
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f the lowest excursionists from the Treaty Ports.
{11} Many unpleasant details have necessarily been omitted. If the reader requires any apology for those which are given here and elsewhere, it must be found in my desire to give such a faithful picture of peasant life, as I saw it in Northern Japan, as may be a contribution to the general sum of knowledge of the country, and, at the same time, serve to illustrate some of the difficulties which the Government has to encounter in its endeavour to raise masses of people as deficient as these are in some of the first requirements of civilisation.
{12} The excess of males over females in the capital is 36,000, and in the whole Empire nearly half a million.
{13} By one of these, not fitted up for passengers, I have sent one of my baskets to Hakodate, and by doing so have come upon one of the vexatious restrictions by which foreigners are harassed. It would seem natural to allow a foreigner to send his personal luggage from one Treaty Port to another without going through a number of formalities which render it nearly impossible, but it was only managed by Ito sending mine in his own name to a Japanese at Hakodate with whom he is slightly acquainted.
{14} This hospital is large and well ventilated, but has not as yet succeeded in attracting many in-patients; out-patients, specially sufferers from ophthalmia, are very numerous. The Japanese chief physician regards the great prevalence of the malady in this neighbourhood as the result of damp, the reflection of the sun's rays from sand and snow, inadequate ventilation and charcoal fumes.
{15} Kak'ke, by William Anderson, F.R.C.S. Transactions of English Asiatic Society of Japan, January 1878.
{16} I failed to learn what the liquor was which was drunk so freely, but as no unseemly effects followed its use, I think it must either have been light wine, or light sake.
{17} I venture to present this journal letter, with a few omissions, just as it was written, trusting that the