Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories
Book Excerpt
The boys in the next large picture (p. 9) must be playing with the puppies of a large dog, to judge from their big paws. There are a great many large dogs in the streets of Tokio; some are very tame, and will let children comb their hair and ornament them and pull them about. These dogs do not wear collars, as do our pet dogs, but a wooden label bearing the owner's name is hung round their necks. Other big dogs are almost wild.[4]
[4] Wild-dogs: ownerless dogs have now been exterminated, and every dog in Japan is owned, licensed, taxed, or else liable to go the way of the old wolfish-looking curs. The pet spaniel-like dogs are called chin.
Half-a-dozen of these dogs will lie in one place, stretched drowsily on the grassy city walls under the trees, during the daytime. Towards evening they rouse themselves and run off to yards and rubbish-heaps to pick up what they can. They will eat fish, but two or three dogs soon get to know whe
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Matilda Chaplin Ayrton (1846-1883) was a British physician, one of the earliest women to become a doctor. She spent her life pioneering the cause of women in medicine. She studied at London Medical College for Women, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Paris. She married William Edward Ayrton (1847-1908), in 1872. Their marriage had taken place while William was on home leave from India and Matilda was involved in the Edinburgh Seven campaign to open medical education to women. William was appointed to a professorship at a College in Japan, where Matilda followed. She wrote several books on Japan, before returning to England where she died, aged 37.
Her book, Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories was written for English children and later adapted for an American child audience. This is the version available here.
The book gives an interesting look into mid-19th century Japan and tells a few Japanese fairy tales, but through time it has been superseded by better books that are more detailed and with less of a English colonial mindset.
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