water for a month on end, with a stone on their lap to prevent them from floating in their sleep. When we were there some years ago, the care-taker of the establishment, a hale old man of eighty, used to stay in the bath during the entire winter. To be sure, the water is, in this particular case, one or two degrees below blood-heat. Thus alone is so strange a life rendered possible. In another case, some of the inhabitants of a certain village famed for its hot springs excused themselves to the present writer for their dirtiness during the busy summer months: "For," said they, "we have only time to bathe twice a day." "How often, then, do you bathe in winter?" "Oh! about four or five times daily. The children get into the bath whenever they feel cold."
Sea-bathing was not formerly much practised; but since 1885 the upper classes have taken to it, in imitation of European usage, and the coast is now dotted with bathing establishments under medical supervision. Ōiso, Ushibuse, Kamakura, and Dzushi are the favourite sea-side places of the gentry of Tōkyō.
Bibliography. The best, for European books on Japan, is Fr. von Wenckstern's Bibliography of the Japanese Empire, which, however, only goes as far as the year 1895. It includes a facsimile reprint of Léon Pagè's Bibliographie Japonaise, which had appeared a generation earlier. Though not a regular bibliography, Sir Ernest Satow's admirable article on Japanese Literature in the "American Cyclopædia" gives the titles of a considerable number of native Japanese books. The Gunsho Ichiran, published in 1801, ranks as the standard Japanese authority on the subject, but takes no notice of novels and other works of a popular nature. Samura's Zusho Gedai (revised edition, 1904) has a more extended scope.
Birthdays are not much observed in Japan, except that rice mixed with red beans is eaten on the auspicious day. All the little girls celebrate their yearly holiday on the 3rd March, and
