Japan and the Japanese

320 JAPAN. A. D. 1C90 1C02.
relations, labor under, or from some other great misfortunes they
were threatened with. They live very poorly and miserably upon
the road, receive no charity, and proceed on their journey by them-
selves, almost perpetually running.
" Multitudes of beggars crowd the roads in all parts of tho
empire, but particularly on the so much frequented Tokaido,
among them many lusty young fellows, who shave their heads.
To this shaved begging tribe belongs a certain remarkable religious
order of young girls,
called Bikuni, which is as much as to
say,
nuns. They live under the protection of the nunneries at Kaiuakura
and Miako, to which they pay a certain sum a
year, of what
they get by begging, as an acknowledgment of their authority.
They are, in my opinion, by much the handsomest girls we saw in
Japan. The daughters of poor parents,
if they be handsome and
agreeable, apply for and easily obtain this privilege of begging in
the habit of nuns, knowing that beauty is one of the most persuasive
inducements to generosity. The Jamabo, or begging
priests (of
mountain
whom more hereafter), frequently incorporate their own
daughters into this religious order, and take their wives from among
these Bikuni. Some of them have been bred up as courtesans, and
having served their time, buy the privilege of entering into this
religious order, therein to spend the remainder of their youth and
beauty. They live two or three together, and make an excursion
every day some few miles from their dwelling-house. They partic-
ularly watch people of fashion, who travel in norimons, or in kangos,
or on horseback. As soon as they perceive somebody coming they
draw near and address themselves, though not all together, but singly,
every one accosting a gentleman by herself singing a rural song ;
and if he proves very liberal and charitable, she will keep him com-
pany and divert him for some hours. As, on the one hand, very
little religious blood seems to circulate in their veins, so, on the
other, it doth not appear that they labor under any considerable
conform themselves to
degree of poverty. It is true, indeed, they
the rules of their order, by shaving their heads, but they take care
to cover and to wrap them up in caps or hoods made of black silk.
They go decently and neatly dressed, after the fashion of ordinary
people. They wear also a large hat to cover their faces, which are
often painted, and to shelter themselves from the heat of the sun,