CHAPTER XIII

THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS
(FUKUSHIMA)

I didn't visit this place in the hope of seeing fine prospects--my study
is man.--BORROW


Before I left the town I had a chat with a landowner who turned his
tenants' rent rice into _saké_. He was of the fifth generation of
brewers. He said that in his childhood drunken men often lay about the
street; now, he said, drunken men were only to be seen on festival
days.

There had been a remarkable development in the trade in flavoured
aerated waters, "lemonade" and "cider champagne" chiefly. I found
these beverages on sale in the remotest places, for the Japanese have
the knack of tying a number of bottles together with rope, which makes
them easily transportable. The new lager beers, which are advertised
everywhere, have also affected the consumption of _saké_.[123] _Saké_
is usually compared with sherry. It is drunk mulled. At a banquet,
lasting five or six hours or longer, a man "strong in _saké_" may
conceivably drink ten _go_ (a _go_ is about one-third of a pint)
before achieving drunkenness, but most people would be affected by
three _go_. Some of the topers who boast of the quantity of _saké_
they can consume--I have heard of men declaring that they could drink
twenty _go_--are cheated late in the evening by the waiting-maids. The