or residing in Japan must have been shocked from time to time by the method of treating lunatics.  Only a few months ago an imbecile might have been seen at Hakone confined in what was virtually a cage, where, from year’s end to year’s end, he received neither medical assistance nor loving tendance, but was simply fed like a wild beast in a menagerie.  We have witnessed many such sights with horror and pity.  Yet humane Japanese do not seem to think of establishing asylums where these unhappy sufferers can find refuge.  There is only one lunatic asylum in Tokyo.  It is controlled by the municipality, its accommodation is limited, and its terms place it beyond the reach of the poor.”  And the amazing part is that such sights do not seem to arouse the sentiment of pity in the Japanese.

The treatment accorded to lepers is another significant indication of the lack of sympathetic and humane sentiments among the people at large.  For ages they have been turned from home and house and compelled to wander outcasts, living in the outskirt of the villages in rude booths of their own construction, and dependent on their daily begging, until a wretched death gives them relief from a more wretched life.  So far as I have been able to learn, the opening of hospitals for lepers did not take place until begun by Christians in recent times.  This casting out of leper kindred was not done by the poor alone, but by the wealthy also, although I do hot affirm or suppose that the practice was universal.  I am personally acquainted with the management of the Christian Leper Hospital in Kumamoto, and the sad accounts I have heard of the way in which lepers are treated by their kindred would seem incredible, were they not supported by the character of my informants, and by many other facts of a kindred nature.

A history of Japan was prepared by Japanese scholars under appointment from the government and sent to the Columbian Exposition in 1893; it makes the following statement, already referred to on a previous page:  “Despite the issue of several proclamations ... people were governed by such strong aversion to the sight of sickness that travelers were often left to die by the roadside from thirst, hunger, or disease, and householders even went to the length of thrusting out of doors and abandoning to utter destitution servants who suffered from chronic maladies....  Whenever an epidemic occurred, the number of deaths that resulted was enormous."[N] This was the condition of things after Buddhism, with its civilizing and humanizing influences, had been at work in the land for about four hundred years, and Old Japan was at the height of her glory, whether considered from the standpoint of her government, her literature, her religious development, or her art.