shimbum

Updated: May 20, 2025

The typesetters I saw in the Kokumin Shimbum office were singing like birds, but the field-hands I saw at Komaba were as silent as church-worshippers. The women carry children on their backs and not in their arms. The girls dance with their hands, not with their feet, and alone, not with partners. An ox is worth more than a horse. The people bathe frequently, but in dirty water.

Clarence Hamilton Poe - Where Half The World Is Waking Up : The Old and the New in Japan, China, the Philippines, and India, Reported With Especial Reference to American Conditions