chairs and bed, as people both sit and sleep on them. For table a low stool
suffices, and for a young couple to set up housekeeping in Japan is a very
simple matter. As Mrs. Bishop, the well-known writer, remarks:

"Among the strong reasons for deprecating the adoption of foreign houses,
furniture, and modes of living by the Japanese, is that the expense
of living would be so largely, increased as to render early marriages
impossible. At present the requirements of a young couple in the poorer
classes are: a bare matted room (capable or not of division), two wooden
pillows, a few cotton futons (quilts), and a sliding panel, behind which
to conceal them in the daytime, a wooden rice bucket and ladle, a wooden
wash-bowl, an iron kettle, a hibachi (warming and cooking stove), a tray
or two, a teapot or two, two lacquer rice-bowls, a dinner box, a few china
cups, a few towels, a bamboo switch for sweeping, a tabako-bon (apparatus
for tobacco-smoking), an iron pot, and a few shelves let into a recess, all
of which can be purchased for something under L2."

These young people would, however, have everything quite comfortable about
them, and housekeeping can be set up at a still lower figure, if necessary.
Excellent authorities say, and give particulars to prove, that a coolie
household may be established in full running order for 5-1/2 yen--that is,
somewhere about a sovereign.

In better-class houses the same simplicity prevails, though the building
may be of costly materials, with posts and ceilings of ebony inlaid with
gold, and floors of rare polished woods. The screens (shoji) still separate
the rooms; the shutters (amado) enclose it at night. There are neither
doors nor passages. When you wish to pass from one room to the next you
slide back one of the shoji, and shut it after you. So you go from room
to room until you reach the one of which you are in search. The shoji are