The Foundations of Japan

These pages deal with a field of investigation in Japan which no other volume has explored. The fashion in which many landowners "despised exertion and lived luxuriously" was another hindrance. These men looked down on education",thinking themselves clever because they read the newspapers". Landlords of this sort were fond of curios, and kept their capital in such things instead of in agriculture. Sellers of curios visited the village too often. A wise man had called the curio-seller the "Spirit of Poverty" (Bimbogami). He said that the Spirit visited a man when he became rich—in order to bring curios to him; and again when he became poor—in order to take them away from him! After he became poor the Spirit of Poverty never visited him again.