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Show THE JAPANESE JINRIKISHA. Twenty years ago or so when rail-puts rail-puts Into practice the lesson given ways in Japan were yet few and motor mo-tor enrs undreamed of the common mcthoJ of travel for natives and foreigners for-eigners alike was the rickshaw. Horses were scarce and of indifferent indiffer-ent quality, the bicycle had hardly niado Its appearance lu the far east, so piactlcally the only means of getting get-ting about the country away from the main line of the railway between be-tween Tokio and Hlogo was in the r-odlfled perambulator which is known all over the world as the rickshaw. rick-shaw. There are a number of versions of its invention and to whom credit should be given for it The Japanese Japan-ese themselves claim It for a paralytic paraly-tic old gentleman of Kioto, who some time before 1SG8. finding bis palanquin palan-quin uncomfortable, took to a little cart Instead. The usual foreign account ac-count adopted by Mr. Black, the author au-thor of "Young Japan," Is that an American named Goble. half cobbler and half missionary. was the person to suggest tho Idea of a glorified go-cart somewhere about 1867. The first official application to be allowed to manufacture rickshaws was, however, made In 1S70. They were soon being turned out In hundreds hun-dreds and thousands, for the middle class Japanese l'ound It a cheap and comfortable way of traveling long or dhort distances and there was an Inexhaustible In-exhaustible supply of men eager to turn themselves Into beasts of burden In order to earn the high wages that the employment brought them. Curl ously enough, though elsewhere the thing Is called a rickshaw, in Japan Ja-pan it generally goes by the name of Jlnrikl. Both are abbreviations of the real word w hich is Jln rikl sha, meaning literally "man power vehicle." that Is a cart pulled by a man. Sometimes you hour kuruma used as au equivalent, equiva-lent, and that is a Japanlng of the Chinese syllable sha. Kuruma-ya ',3 a rickshaw puller and you would call it out In Jupan when you wanted want-ed a .rickshaw, just as we called "hansom" in the days when Jhe hansom han-som had not been driven off the ranks by the taxicab. London Dally News. |