File:The playground of the Far East (1918) (14769779871).jpg

Identifier: playgroundoffare00west (find matches)
Title: The playground of the Far East
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Weston, Walter, b. 1861
Subjects: Mountaineering Japan -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : J. Murray
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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r withthem privacy is an almost unknown and unthought-of thing—that tends to make them natural and con-siderate, and that develops self-restraint, resourceful-ness, and patience. They were men of no education,but they showed great interest in my country, andsometimes asked most thoughtful questions about it.The headmen of the various districts usuallypossessed some sort of map of the surrounding country,and my companions quite readily came to understandthe use of those I carried when once explained tothem. The headmen, of whom the ku-cho is thechief official of an urban district, and the son-cho isa kind of village mayor, are amongst the mostvaluable assets of that wonderful social organisationso dear to the Japanese heart, and so thorough inall its workings. The quickness of the averageJapanese mind engenders a remarkable aptitude formastering details, and in the course of some famine-relief work in which I was engaged some years agoin Northern Japan, I found it possible to obtain,
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T. Z. Takano, Fhot.) Karaonji at his Besso, near Hodaka. (To face ^j. 230. THE OLD NEW WOMAN 231 almost at a moments notice, through the son-cko ofany given village, the minutest kind of informationas to the circumstances of any particular family. In some of the remoter hamlets of Alpine Japan,the traditions of ancient custom and the practices ofinternal social administration are at times exceed-ingly interesting and quaint. At one hamlet, whenexploring the fine mountain Akaishi-san, in theSouthern Alps, I found the heads of householdswere all women. I was informed that life for anymale outsider who ventured to intermarry there wasforedoomed to be both bitter and brief. The rule there (Omm-taka, Womens Hill) isone of a heavy hand as well as a sharp tongue.Sometimes one was told of a village that it wasnotorious as Kaka-denka (lit. a womans throne);this, too, indicates a masculine spirit housed in afeminine form. On more than one occasion myhunters or I came across the remains of some

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