Hereditary Tradesmen In Japan

The boys seen in nearly all the places of sküled labor suggests what is the fact, that apprentices begin to learu their trades usuully much earlier than in our country, so that when majority is attained the mastery of the crafts is thorough. Another striking feature of the Japanese system is that of heredity. Skill runs in family lines. Not a few of the famous artisans of the present decade are descendants in the ninth, tenth and even twentieth generation of the founder of the establishment. I once employed a carpenter in Fukui, who was proud of his ancestry of wood workers through twentyseven generations; and the temple records show such boasting to be true, though of ten adoption interrupts the actual blood line. At a papermaker's establishment in Awotabi, in Echizen, I dined with the proprietor, whose fathers iirst istublished the industry a millennium ngo, the national history showing also that the Coreans, before the Ninth century of ourera. visitetl the