Broken Butterflies

by Henry W. Kinney

The eyes behind the great lenses became serious. "No, we're going to leave it alone. In fact, we dare not take it up. The workmen look upon that as futile, a mere sop, a process that's altogether too slow to suit them. We're afraid that if we took up suffrage as an organized movement, the unions would get out of hand; it would set them thinking of more revolutionary measures; they would insist on them and would sweep aside us who are trying to lead them along a constructive line of action. Anyway, the masses are hardly ripe for suffrage yet. They must be educated first; that's what we are trying to do now, to educate them."

So here, too, was temporizing. Labor leaders, like capitalist leaders, were trying to play for time, to avoid facing the music, while the steam in the kettle kept becoming denser and stronger, with ever more insistent force striving against the walls of repression. But how much was there really behind all this clamor of labor? He came to wonder to what extent these complaints were justified. It was true, what the capitalists said, that conditions in Japan were no worse, or not much worse, than they had been in America and Europe not so many decades ago. Of course, the unrest was due to the fact that workers and farmers, heretofore satisfied with feudal conditions not knowing that they could be otherwise, had suddenly been shown by the Socialists, the soldiers coming back from Siberia, the radical press, that workmen in other countries lived in what seemed to frugal Japanese eyes the luxury of millionaires, and now they wanted similar privileges, yes, rights. But capital was right in its contention that workers who could individually bring forth only one-fifth the result produced by the white workmen could be paid wages only in proportion to their output capacity—otherwise Japanese production cost would rise to the point where Japanese goods would be helpless in world competition and industry must cease. The point seemed to be whether capital was holding down labor to unduly harsh conditions.

He took to rambling about in the poorer quarters of Tokyo, but could learn but little. The houses were frail, of thin boards and paper, but so were those of the wealthier classes; it was the form of construction adopted by a hardy people. Even if these buildings were dirtier, dingier, the population showed no sign of abject poverty, of misery. Children played merrily in the streets; men and women moved about or sat chatting in the open stores. A Japanese might have learned something, might have penetrated more intimately into their lives, might have entered their dwellings, have drawn from them their confidential thoughts, but as a foreigner he felt himself baffled by an invisible veil of reserve. They were courteous, friendly, but impenetrable. Only occasionally might he detect a hostile, wondering glance—what might this foreigner be doing in such places—or he might hear childish voices behind his back uplifted in song to the effect that the foreigner's father was a cat. One night a couple of fellows mellowed by sake wanted to take him to their bosom, tried to embrace him, overcome by all-enfolding love of mankind generally, insisted on his joining them in their festive circumambulations. It was annoying. They were harder to deal with than if they had been unpleasant. He was trying to hold them off, irritated at the laughing crowd that had gathered, to escape, in some way. Suddenly the ranks of the onlookers parted and a Japanese in foreign clothes strode through, a middle-aged man, muscular, authoritative. "Here, you fellows, run along; can't you see that this foreigner wishes to pass?" The men stood back shamefacedly, murmured some apology. "All right, now run along." He cleared a way through the crowd. "They mean well enough," he explained to Kent, "but probably you had better let me go with you for a moment."

"Oh, I'm all right. Still, I want to thank you for your help." He began to explain why he had come; it was only due this unknown rescuer, and then the man had spoken in English, and evidently held some authority that the people here recognized. Who might he be, anyway?

"So you come to see poverty," the man laughed. "Well, if you really want to see it, the real thing, I think you may find no better man to guide you. That's my specialty, you see." He went on to explain. He was an official, it appeared, had charge of a government home for unemployed, where men might sleep for fifteen sen a night and board for forty sen a day. "But there are too few of these places," he complained. "We can take care of less than one tenth of the thousands who need it. There are no free sleeping places, no free food. The Capital-Harmony Society has provided a few reading rooms, playgrounds and all that; every now and then some rich man gives a small park; but they all give a few hundred thousands where they ought to be giving in millions. They can't see that if they don't give now, freely, these people will come some day and take it from them by force. If you care to come along, I'll show you how these people live."

He led Kent through a maze of narrow alleys, into the Fukagawa quarter, through dark lanes illumined only by faint light from open doorways. They must walk warily over rotten boards covering the slimy gutters which served as sewers, to avoid the deepest of the universal mud. Presently they came to a collection of buildings more squalid than the rest,—long, barn-like houses of filthy, rotting wood.

"Here you are," said the guide. "These are the 'Nagaya Tunnels'; they are famous for being the worst place in the city."

They entered. Through the length of the building ran a narrow passage, faced on both sides by cubicles of three mats each, spaces of six by nine feet, each housing a family, several adults and swarms of children. In the passageway all cooking and washing was done. It was cluttered with hibachi, firewood, cooking utensils, buckets for water brought from a pump outside, heterogeneous implements. Women were busy cooking, and acrid smoke ascended idly against the roof, escaping through a large hole and numerous cracks and crevices. As they passed down this corridor they could look into the minute rooms, packed with goods, ragged futon, tattered clothing, poor belongings of every kind, leaving only a scant space in the middle where humans sat huddled together or lay asleep. Some of the rooms, particularly those where a few men maintained slovenly bachelor housekeeping, were ill-kept, with paper hanging in streamers from broken shoji ribs, and goods scattered about haphazardly. Others formed striking contrast with desperate attempts at cleanliness, where woman hands had tried pathetically to create some kind of home atmosphere in the box-like spaces allotted them in this turmoil of poverty. Kent caught a glimpse of a family seated about a low Japanese table, father, mother and a couple of children, sitting decorously, with the same display of graceful manners as might be seen in the abodes of the rich, daintily picking with their chopsticks fish and vegetables from cheap earthenware. A tiny glass globe with a couple of goldfish was suspended from the window frame. The little tableau was like a ray of light in the mass of grime and poverty all about it, a pitiable insistence on maintenance of the spirit of family life, of decency despite the squalor hemming it in on all sides.

As they fumbled on, some of the inhabitants recognized the guide, crowded up to him with tales of their troubles. These were men only; the women eyed them curiously, dully, but remained apathetic. From the shadows unkempt wretches emerged. An old fellow with only one eye insisted on removing his bandage. He had lost his eye in an accident while working for the municipal electric light works; but they had given him nothing. Now, he had been trying to peddle small fish, but they had stopped him because he had no license. Where could he get money for a license? He had nothing to eat; others could find no employment. They wanted assistance, money, jobs.