at 14 police stations. The noteworthy thing in the criminal
statistics is the small proportion of crime against women and
children.

The fact that the county was in a remote part of Japan may be held,
perhaps, to account for the fact that there were in it, I was assured,
only 14 geisha and 8 women known to be of immoral character. All of
them were living in the town and they were said to be chiefly
patronised by commercial travellers and imported labourers. I was told
that there were pre-nuptial relations between many young men and young
women. Two undoubted authorities in the district agreed that they
could not answer for the chastity of any young men before marriage or
of "as many as 10 per cent." of the young women. In an effort to save
the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes register
illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and their wives.
Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father may call
the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his
daughter to her lover. The figures for illegitimate births are
vitiated by the fact that in Japan children are recorded as
illegitimate who are born to people who have omitted to register their
otherwise respectable unions.[118]

In the county in which I was travelling I was assured that half the
still births might be put down to immoral relations and half to
imperfect nourishment or overworking of the mother. In this district
girls marry from 17 or 18, men from 18 to 30.

The town was full of country people who had come to see the festival.
One feature of it was the performance of plays on four ancient wheeled
stages of a simplicity in construction that would have delighted