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."