The villages we passed through, were wonderfully clean considering the evident poverty of the inhabitants, and still more wonderfully free from bad smells, a virtue one cannot fail to remark after a residence in China.
Letters from China & Japan (1875)
Their only unclean habit is that of permitting the refuse of the houses to collect in little trenches around the buildings, so that in hot weather the stench is often quite unsupportable.
Japan, the Amoor, and the Pacific (1861)
In hot weather and when crowded, Japanese inns may have an offensive atmosphere; and the best rooms are not always the freest from evil odours, as at the end of their verandahs closets are invariably placed, with a nearness to the inhabited quarters which is sometimes anything but an unmixed convenience.
The Land of the Morning (1882)
Evil odours are abundant in Japanese houses; the natives have good eyes for the picturesque, but no noses.
Journal of a Lady’s Travels Round the World (1883)
We spend a night at Koyias, intending to scale O-yama on the succeeding day. But alas for ‘the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men!’ The night’s rest is to some of us destroyed, to the others much broken, by certain exhalations which show plainly that no sanitary commission has ever inspected Koyias. We feel bound to record this, partly from the very fact that it is the exception which proves the rule that Japanese tea-houses, as far as we know them, are well-arranged in this respect. Next morning votes are taken on a motion that O-yama be ascended, and, the weather being doubtful, the motion is lost.
Round the World in 1870 (1872)
The working of the fields has been done for thousands of years exclusively by hand and with the spade. There are only few horses and cattle in the country, and no sheep, goats, or pigs. In consequence the procuring and preparing of manure, which when there is permanent cultivation cannot be omitted even with the best soils, has had to become quite a particular study. Under the circumstances the principal manure could only be human manure, and the collecting, transporting, and distributing of it at all times of the day is anything but pleasant to European nostrils.
Japan As I Saw It (1912)
Luscious berries and tempting salads are dangerous from lack of drainage, for, as there is no sewage system, the little farms are enriched by human refuse. All is not skittles and beer in the land of the cherry blossom. In the late afternoon the open green is beautiful beyond the huddled town. It is a wondrous picture of sky and land, thatched roofs and sacred Fuji, towering in majestic glory, but the air is defiled by noisome odours, which stalk abroad like grim pestilence. Coolies tramp about with yoke and buckets dangling from their shoulders. The green fields will be richer for the fertilizing agent which they scatter, but the beauty all about is tainted by the nauseous air, and garden fruits are no temptation.
A Woman Alone in the Heart of Japan (1906)
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