Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/671

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JAPANESE HOUSE-BUILDING.
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larger cities, are palatial in contrast to the shattered and filthy condition of a like class of tenements in many of the cities of Christian countries.

In traveling through the country the absence of a middle class, as indicated by the dwellings, is painfully apparent. It is true that you

Fig. 9.—Street in Kanda Ku, Tokio.

pass, now and then, large comfortable houses with their broad thatched roofs, showing evidences of wealth and abundance in the numerous kura and out-buildings surrounding them; but, where you find one of these, you pass hundreds which are barely more than shelters for their

Fig. 10.—Street View of Dwelling in Tokio.

inmates, and, within the few necessary articles render the evidences of poverty all the more apparent.

Though the people that inhabit such shelters are very poor, they appear contented and cheerful notwithstanding their poverty. Other