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Updated: May 11, 2025
He could not obtain employment as a common laborer in any capacity, except by going to some distant city where he could hope to conceal his origin. But if detected under such conditions he would run serious risk of being killed by his fellow- laborers. Under any circumstance it would be difficult for a yama-no-mono to pass himself off for a heimin.
Youths, who might in another era have aspired to offices of State, had become the trusted servants of Oki heimin. Others, again, had entered the police, and rightly deemed themselves fortunate.
The faces I saw seemed much like the faces of the heimin, except that I fancied the ugly ones were uglier, making the pretty ones appear more pretty by contrast. There were one or two sinister faces, recalling faces of gypsies that I had seen; while some little girls, on the other hand, had remarkably pleasing features.
When Bushido imposed itself on all above the herd, they had a sense of honor not surpassed by the people of any nation; but commerce, the destruction of the castes of samurai, heimin, and eta, the plunging of a military people into business and competition with Western cunning, and the lacquer of Christianity which had done little more than Occidentalize to a considerable degree a few thousands, without giving them the practice of the golden rule, or an appreciation of the Sermon on the Mount, had robbed the Japanese of an ancient code of morality and honor, and replaced it with nothing worth while an insatiable ambition to equal Occidental peoples and to conquer Oriental ones, and a thousand factories which killed women and children.
But many perils attended upon such distinction; and the wisest policy for the heimin was to remain satisfied with his position, and try to find as much happiness in life as the law allowed.
We also find that although heimin were made subject to the military class, it was possible for artizans and commercial folk to form, in the great cities, strong associations by which military tyranny was kept in check.
The richest heimin, who attempted to indulge himself in any of these ways, would at once have been forcibly reminded that he must not attempt to imitate the habits, or to assume the privileges, of his betters. He could not even order certain kinds of things to be made for him.
On the other hand, we are yet in doubt as to whether many of the poorer converts servants and other common folk possessed a domestic ancestor-cult. The outcast classes, among whom many converts were made, need not be considered, of course, in this relation. Before the matter can be fairly judged, much remains to be learned about the religious condition of the heimin during the sixteenth century.
A large public bath-house and a public laundry bore evidence that the yama-no-mono liked clean linen as well as their heimin neighbors on the other side of the hill. "A crowd soon gathered to look at the strangers who had come to their village, a rare event for them.
My friend called my attention to the fact that the women were dressed differently from Japanese women of the ordinary classes. For example, even among the very poorest heimin there are certain accepted laws of costume; there are certain colors which may or may not be worn, according to age.
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