The foundations of Japan

"If we faced such problems directly we should probably make them primary problems, as you do in Great Britain. Our present attitude does not prove, however, that we are cold to political and social problems. In fact, when we think of these terrible political and social questions they make us boil. But you will understand that in order to have something to give to others, we must have that something. We are seeking after that something."

Yanagi, continuing, spoke of the direct contribution which the new artistic movement in Japan, under the influence of modern Western art, was making to the solution of political and social questions ^[113]. The interest of the younger generation in Post Impressionism was "quite disharmonious with the ordinary attitude towards militarism." European art broke down barriers in the Japanese mind. When the younger generation, nourished on higher ideals, grew up, it would be the State, and there would be a more hopeful condition of affairs. People generally supposed that social questions were the most practical; but religious, artistic, philosophic questions were, in the truest sense of the word, the most practical.

Yanagi went on to tell of his devotion to Blake. He could not understand "why Englishmen are so cool to him." He asked me how it was that there was no word about Blake in Andrew Lang's work on English literature. "I cannot imagine," he said, "why such an intelligent man could not appreciate Blake." Yanagi regarded Blake as "the artist of immense will, of immense desire, and a man in whom can be seen that affirmative attitude towards life, exhibited later by Whitman." Yanagi spoke also of "Anglo-Saxon nobility, liberty, depth of character and healthiness," and of "a deep and noble character" in English literature which he did not find elsewhere. Whitman, Emerson, Poe and William James were "the crown of America."

As I close this chapter I recall Yanagi's library, in the service of which, bettering Mark Pattison's example, two-thirds of its owner's income was for some time expended. I remember the thatched dwelling overlooking the quiet reed-bound lagoon with its frosty sunrises, red moonrises and apparitions of Fuji above the clouds seventy miles away. No Western visitor whom I took to Abiko failed to be moved by that room, designed by Yanagi himself in every detail, wherein East meets West in harmony. I have made note of his Western books but not of the classics and strange mystic writings of Chinese and Korean priests in piles of thin volumes in soft bindings of blue or brown. I have not mentioned a Rembrandt drawing and next to it the vigorous but restful brush lines of an artist priest of the century that brought Buddhism to Japan; severe little gilt-bronze figures of deities from China, a little older; pottery figures of exquisite beauty from the tombs of Tang, a little later; Sung pottery, a dynasty farther on; Korai celadons from Korean tombs of the same epoch; and whites and blue and whites of Ming and Korean Richo. On the wall a black and yellow tiger is "burning bright" on a strip of blood-red silk tapestry woven on a Chinese loom for a Taoist priest 500 years ago. Cimabue's portrait of St. Francis breathes over Yanagi's writing desk from one side, while from the other Blake's amazing life mask looks down "with its Egyptian power of form added to the intensity of Western individualism." These are Yanagi's silent friends. His less quiet friends of the flesh have felt that this room was a sanctuary and Yanagi a priest of eternal things, but a priest without priestcraft, a priest living joyously in the world. Above his desk is inscribed the line of Blake:

and Kepler's aspiration, "My wish is that I may perceive God whom I find everywhere in the external world in like manner within and without me."

ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND BACK)

CHAPTER XII

TO THE HILLS

(TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND FUKUSHIMA)

During the month of July I went from one side of Japan to the other, starting from Tokyo, across the sea from which lies America, and coming out at Niigata, across the sea from which lies Siberia.

We first made a four hours' railway run through the great Kwanto plain (6,000 square miles). Travelling is comfortable on such a trip, for travellers take off their coats and waistcoats, and the train-boy—he has the word "Boy" on his collar in English—brings fans and bedroom slippers. The fans, which on one side advertised "Hotels in European style, directly managed by the Imperial Government Railway ^[114]," offered on the other a poem and a drawing. A poem addressed to a snail played with the idea of its giving its life to climbing Fuji. The poem was composed by a poet who wrote many delightful hokku (seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy with the humblest creatures. One poem is:

Like Burns, Issa addressed a poem to a louse.

As we climbed from the vicinity of the sea to higher lands someone recalled the saying about saints living in the mountains and sages by the sea. Speaking of religion, one man said that he had known of people giving half their income to religious purposes. He also mentioned that for some years his mother had gone to hear a sermon in a Japanese Christian church every Sunday, but she still served her Buddhist shrine.

It was at an inn at the hot spring near the Mount Nasu volcano—the odour of the sulphurous hot water was everywhere in the district—that I first enjoyed the attentions of the blind amma (masseur or masseuse), the call of whose plaintive pipe is heard every evening in the smallest community. Amma san rubbed and pommelled me for an hour for 28 sen. The amma does not massage the skin, but works through the yukata (bath gown) of the patient. I had my massaging as I knelt with the other guests of the inn at an entertainment arranged for the benefit of residents. The entertainers, professional and non-professional—the non-professionals were local farmers—knelt on a low platform or danced in front of it. They were extraordinarily able. A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers was about a yokelish young wrestler and a daimyo. Another described the woes and suicide of an old-time Court lady.

The next day we started on foot on a seven miles' climb of the volcano. Its lower slopes were covered with a variety of that knee-high bamboo with a creeping root, which is so troublesome to farmers when they break up new ground. One variety is said to blossom and fruit once in sixty years and then die. An ingenious professor has traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year in which the bamboo fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly. Suddenly their food supply gives out and they descend to the plains to live with the farmers.

At length we came in sight of the smoke and vapour of the volcano. Soon we were near the top, where the white trunks and branches of dead trees and scrub, killed by falling ash or gusts of vapour, dotted an awesome desolation of calcined and fused stone and solidified mud. At the summit we looked down into the churning horror of the volcano's vat and at different spots saw the treacly sulphur pouring out, brilliant yellow with red streaks. The man to whom there first came the idea of hell and a prisoned revengeful power must surely have looked into a crater. In the throat of this crater there seethed and spluttered an ugliness that was scarlet, green, brown and yellow. The sound of the steam blowing off was like the roar of the sea. The air was stifling. It was very hot, and there was a high eerie wind.

Adventurous men had built rude bulwarks of stone over some of the orifices, and in this way had compelled the volcano to furnish them with sulphur free from dirt. The production of sulphur in Japan is valued at close on three million yen.

As we went on our journey we spoke of the sturdiness and cheeriness of our chief carrier, who had told us that he was seventy. I asked him if he thought it fair that he should have to walk so far on a hot day with so much to carry while we were empty-handed. He replied that it might appear to be unjust, but that he was happy enough. He said that he had lived long and seen many things, and he knew that to be rich was not always to be happy. He quoted the proverb, "Sunshine and rice may be found everywhere," and the poem which may be rendered, "If you look at a water-fowl thoughtlessly you may imagine that she has nothing to do but float quietly on the water, yet she is moving her feet ceaselessly beneath the surface."

At the little hot spring inn where we next stayed, insect powder was on sale, not without reasonable hope of patronage by the guests. The Asahi once facetiously reported that I had taken on a journey three to (six pecks) of insect powder. The chief protector of the prudent traveller in remote Japan is a giant pillowslip of cotton. He gets into it and ties the strings together under his chin. The mats and futon of old-fashioned hotels are full of fleas. The hard cylindrical Japanese pillow has no doubt its tenants also, but I never got accustomed to using it, and laid my head on a doubled-up kneeling cushion.

A foot-high partition separated the men's hot bath from the women's. My cold bath in the morning I found I had to take unselfconsciously at a water-gush in front of the house. As the food was poor here, we were glad of our tinned food and ship's biscuits. This was of course in a remote part. Apart from ordinary Japanese food, there are usually available at the inns chicken, fish of some sort, eggs, omelettes and soups. With a pot of jam or two and some powdered milk in one's bag, one can live fairly well. Fresh milk can now be got in unlikely places on giving notice overnight. It is produced for invalids and children. If one makes no fuss, remembers one is a traveller who has resolved to see rural Japan, and realises that the inn people will try to do their best, one will not fare so badly. On the railway one is well catered for by the provision of bento (lunch) boxes, sold on the platforms of stations. These chip boxes contain rice (hot), cold omelette, cold fish or chicken and assorted pickles, and provide an appetising and inexpensive meal.

Monkeys, bears and antelopes are shot in this district. One man spoke of a troop of eighty monkeys. In the high mountain regions there are still people who escape the census and live a wild life. The records of a gipsy folk called Sanka have a history going back 700 or 800 years.

As we wound our way up and down the hill-sides we saw evidence of "fire-farming." It is the simple method by which a small tract with a favourable aspect is cleared by fire and cultivated, and then, when the fertility is exhausted, abandoned. I was assured that after fire-farming "tea springs up naturally," and that though tea-drinking may have been introduced from China there could not be such large areas of tea growing wild if tea were not indigenous.

Most of our paths lay through woods and matted vegetation. I noticed that trees were often felled in order that mushrooms might be grown on and around their trunks. There is a large consumption of these tree-grown mushrooms in Japan and an export trade worth two and a half million yen.

An inscribed stone by our path was a reminder of the belief in "mountain maidens." They have the undoubted merit of not being "so peevish as fairies." At another stone, before which was a pile of small stones, a farmer told us that when a traveller threw a stone on the heap he "left behind his tiredness."

At the town at which we at last arrived, the comfort of the hot bath was enhanced by a sturdy lass of the inn who unasked and unannounced came and applied herself resolutely to scrubbing and knuckling our backs.

The next day I went to the principal school. There were in the place three primary schools, one with a branch for agricultural work. The "attendance" at the principal school, where there were 379 boys and girls, was 98 per cent, for the boys and 94 per cent, for the girls. ^[115] The buildings were most creditable to a small place fifty miles from a railway station. The community had met the whole cost out of its official funds and by subscriptions. More than half the expenditure of many a village is on education, which in Japan is compulsory but not free. One cannot but be impressed by the pride which is taken in the local schools. The dominating man-made feature of the landscape is less frequently than might be supposed a temple or a shrine: where the picture which catches the eye is not the vast expanse of the crops of the plain or the marvels of terracing for hill crops, it is the long, low school building, set almost invariably on the best possible site. The poorly paid men and women teachers are earnest and devoted, and their influence must be far-reaching. They are rewarded in part, no doubt, by the respect which pupils and the general public give to the sensei (teacher). ^[116] At the school I visited, the children, as is customary, swept and washed out the schoolrooms and kept the playground trim. Above one teacher's desk were the following admonitions:

"Be serious"!—graver small folk sit in no schools in the world. Here, as usual, corporal punishment was never given. I suggested to teachers all sorts of juvenile delinquencies, but their faith in the sufficiency of reprimands, of "standing out" and of detention after school hours was unshaken.

A new wing, a beautiful piece of carpenter's work, had cost 4,000 yen, a large sum in Japan, where wood and village labour are equally cheap. It was to be used chiefly for the gymnastics which are steadily adding to the stature of the Japanese people. At one end there was an opening, about 20 ft. across and 5 ft. deep, designed as an honourable place for the portraits of the Emperor and Empress, which are solemnly exposed to view on Imperial birthdays ^[117].

Apart from a local spirit of pride and emulation and a belief in education, one of the reasons for the building of new schools and adding to old ones is to be found in the recent extension of the period of compulsory attendance. It used to be from six to ten years of age; it is now from six to twelve. The visitor to Japan usually under-estimates the ages of children because they are so small. Japanese boys grow suddenly from about fifteen to sixteen.

In the whole of this county, with a population of 35,000, there were, I learnt at the county offices, 22 elementary schools with 36 branch schools, 3 secondary schools and 17 winter schools. Within the same area there were 46 Buddhist temples with about 60 priests, and 125 Shinto shrines with 11 priests.

The chief police officer, in chatting with me, mentioned that, out of 71 charges of theft, only 47 were proceeded with. When charges were not proceeded with it was either because restitution had been made or the chief constable had exercised his discretion and dismissed the offender with a reprimand. When transgressors are dismissed with a reprimand an eye is kept on them for a year. As the Japanese are in considerable awe of their police, I have no doubt that, as was explained to me, those who have lapsed into evil-doing, but are released from custody with a warning, may "tremble and correct their conduct." In the whole county in a year 14,400 admonitions were given at 14 police stations. The noteworthy thing in the criminal statistics is the small proportion of crime against women and children.

The fact that the county was in a remote part of Japan may be held, perhaps, to account for the fact that there were in it, I was assured, only 14 geisha and 8 women known to be of immoral character. All of them were living in the town and they were said to be chiefly patronised by commercial travellers and imported labourers. I was told that there were pre-nuptial relations between many young men and young women. Two undoubted authorities in the district agreed that they could not answer for the chastity of any young men before marriage or of "as many as 10 per cent." of the young women. In an effort to save the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes register illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and their wives. Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father may call the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his daughter to her lover. The figures for illegitimate births are vitiated by the fact that in Japan children are recorded as illegitimate who are born to people who have omitted to register their otherwise respectable unions. ^[118]

In the county in which I was travelling I was assured that half the still births might be put down to immoral relations and half to imperfect nourishment or overworking of the mother. In this district girls marry from 17 or 18, men from 18 to 30.

The town was full of country people who had come to see the festival. One feature of it was the performance of plays on four ancient wheeled stages of a simplicity in construction that would have delighted William Poel. Formerly these plays were given by the local youths; now professional actors are employed. The different acts of the historical dramas which were performed were divided into half a dozen scenes, and when one of these scenes had been enacted the stage was wheeled farther along the street. At the conclusion of each scene some three dozen small boys, all wearing the white-and-black speckled cotton kimono and German caps which are the common wear of lads throughout Japan, would swarm up on the stage, and, with fans waved downwards, would yell at the pitch of their voices an ancient jingle, which seemed to signify "Push, push, push and go on!" This was addressed to a score or so of young men who with loud shouts hauled the heavy stage-wagon along the street. The performances on the four moving theatres went on simultaneously and sometimes the cars passed one another. The performances were given on the eve and on the day and through the night of the festival. The acting was amazingly good, considering the July heat and the cramped conditions in which the actors worked. Happy boys sat at the back of the scenes fanning the players. Our kindly and voluble landlady was not satisfied with the number of times the stages stopped before her inn. She loudly threatened the youths who were dragging them that she would reclaim some properties she had lent and tell her dead husband of their ingratitude!

At one of the booths which had been opened for the festival by a strolling company there were women actors, contrary to the convention of the Japanese stage on which men enact female rôles and in doing so use a special falsetto. Some of these actresses performed men's parts. At every performance in a Japanese theatre, as I have already mentioned, a policeman is provided with a chair on a special platform, or in an otherwise favourable position, so that he can view and if necessary censor what is going on. The constable at this particular play was kind enough to offer me his seat. The rest of the audience was content with the floor. The poor little company of players brought to their work both ability and an artistic conscience, but they had to do everything in the rudest way. They were in no way embarrassed by the attendants frequently trimming the inferior oil lamps on the stage. A little girl on the floor, entranced by the performance on the stage, or curious about some detail of it, ran forward and laid her chin on the boards and studied the actors at leisure. The folk in the front row of the gallery dangled their naked legs for coolness.

One of my friends asked me how we managed in the West to identify the people who wanted to leave the theatre between the acts. I explained that as our performances did not last from early afternoon until nearly midnight it was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre until the play was over. At a Japanese playhouse, however, a portion of the audience may be disposed to go home at some stage of the proceedings and return later. The careful manager of a small theatre identifies these patrons by impressing a small stamp on the palms of their hands.

From the theatre we went to the travelling shows. They charged 2 sen. We were shown a mermaid, peepshows, a snake, an unhappy bear, three doleful monkeys and some stuffed animals which may or may not have had in life an uncommon number of legs. There was a barefaced imposture by a young and pretty show-woman who insisted that two marmots in her lap were the offspring of a girl. "Look," she cried, "at two sisters, the daughters of one mother. See their hands!" And she held up their paws. She rounded off the fraud by feeding the creatures with condensed milk.

As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes I noticed that I was preceded in the crowd by a spectacled policeman who carried a paper lantern. Although, as I have explained, the stage plays given in the street were continued all night, only one arrest was made. The prisoner was a drunkard who proved to be a medicine seller but described himself as a journalist. I went to see the clean wooden cell where topers are confined until they are sober. It had a very low door, so that culprits might be compelled to enter and leave humbly on their knees.

We had begun our festival day at six in the morning by attending a celebration at the Shinto shrine. "Although it is no longer necessary, perhaps, to attend the ceremony in a special kind of geta," said our landlady, "it would be as well if you observed the old rule not to attend without taking a bath in the early morning." ^[119]

At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was to attend the annual function had assembled in ceremonial costumes. One man wore his hair tied up in the fashion of the old prints. The plaintive strains of old instruments made the strange appeal of all folk music. A decorous procession was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine. Youths and maidens carried aloft tubs of rice, vegetables, fish and saké. These were received by the chief priest. He carefully placed a strip of cloth before his mouth and nose ^[120] and addressed the chief deity, all heads being bowed. Then the priest placed the offerings in the darkened interior of the shrine. There was a cheery naturalness in all the proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress ran freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent smiles. When an end had been made of offering food and drink the priest within the shrine read a second message to the deity. Again all heads were bowed. His thin voice was heard in the morning quiet, interrupted only by a child's cry, the twittering of birds and the wind rustling the cryptomeria, dark against the blue of the hills.

After the ceremony the food and drink which had been brought by the people were consumed by the priests and the country folk in a large room of the chief priest's house. We were given ceremonial saké to which rice had been added and as mementoes little cakes and dried fish. Not so long ago the presence of a foreigner would have been unwelcome at such a ceremony as we had witnessed: the fear of "contagion of foreigners" extended even to people from another prefecture. To-day the amiable priest placed in our hands for a few moments a small Buddha supposed to be six centuries old.

Before the festival the priest had observed certain taboos for eight days. He had avoided meeting persons in mourning and his food had been cooked at a specially prepared fire. He had been careful not to touch other persons, particularly women; he had bathed several times daily in cold water and he had said many prayers. The heads of the household in the community whose turn it was to attend at the shrine were also supposed to have observed some of the same taboos. Only those persons might make offerings at the shrine whose fathers and mothers were living.^[121] Formerly portions of the offerings of rice and saké at the shrine were solemnly given to a young girl.

In this district, when we discussed the influences which made for moral or non-material improvement, everyone put the school first. Then came home training. In this part of the world the Buddhist priest was too often indifferent; the Shinto priest worked at his farm. One person well qualified to express an opinion said that a "wise and benevolent" chief constable could exercise a good moral influence. Others believed in public opinion. A policeman said, "The first thing is for people to have food and clothes; without such primary satisfaction it is very difficult to expect them to be moral." In considering the influence of the police and the schoolmaster it is not without interest to remember that a chief of police and the head of a school receive about the same salary. Assistant teachers and plain constables are also on an equality. I found the salary of the administrative head of one county, the gunchō, to be only 2,000 yen a year.

I was told that in the prefecture we were passing through there were no fewer than 360 co-operative societies. The credit branches had a capital of two million yen; the purchase and sale branches showed a turnover of three million yen. In time of famine, due to too low a temperature for the rice or to floods which drown the crop, co-operation had proved its value. The prefectures north of Tokyo facing the Pacific are the chief victims of famine, for near Sendai the warm current from the south turns off towards America. I was told that the number of persons who actually die as the result of famine has been "exaggerated." The number in 1905 was "not more than a hundred." These unfortunates were infants "and infirm people who suffered from lack of suitable nourishment." Every year the development of railway and steam communications makes easier the task of relieving famine sufferers. ^[122] In the old days people were often found dead who had money but were unable to get food for it. As Japan is a long island with varying climates there is never general scarcity.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS (FUKUSHIMA)

Before I left the town I had a chat with a landowner who turned his tenants' rent rice into saké. He was of the fifth generation of brewers. He said that in his childhood drunken men often lay about the street; now, he said, drunken men were only to be seen on festival days.

There had been a remarkable development in the trade in flavoured aerated waters, "lemonade" and "cider champagne" chiefly. I found these beverages on sale in the remotest places, for the Japanese have the knack of tying a number of bottles together with rope, which makes them easily transportable. The new lager beers, which are advertised everywhere, have also affected the consumption of saké. ^[123] Saké is usually compared with sherry. It is drunk mulled. At a banquet, lasting five or six hours or longer, a man "strong in saké" may conceivably drink ten go (a go is about one-third of a pint) before achieving drunkenness, but most people would be affected by three go. Some of the topers who boast of the quantity of saké they can consume—I have heard of men declaring that they could drink twenty go—are cheated late in the evening by the waiting-maids. The little saké bottles are opaque, and it is easy to remove them for refilling before they are quite empty.

The brewer, who was a firm adherent of the Jishu sect of Buddhists, was accustomed to burn incense with his family at the domestic shrine every morning. But this was not the habit of all the adherents of his denomination. As to the moral advancement of the neighbourhood, his grandfather "tried very earnestly to improve the district by means of religion, but without result." He himself attached most value to education and after that to young men's associations.

As we left the town we passed a "woman priest" who was walking to Nikko, eighty miles away. Portraits of dead people, entrusted to her by their relatives for conveyance to distant shrines, were hung round her body.

As the route became more and more hilly I realised how accurate is that representation of hills in Japanese art which seems odd before one has been in Japan: the landscape stands out as if seen in a flash of lightning.

Three things by the way were arresting: the number of shrines, mostly dedicated to the fox god; the rice suspended round the farm buildings or drying on racks; and the masses of evening primroses, called in Japan "moon-seeing flowers."

A feature of every village was one or more barred wooden sheds containing fire-extinguishing apparatus, often provided and worked by the young men's association. Sometimes a piece of ground was described to me as "the training ground of the fire defenders." The night patrols of the village were young fellows chosen in turn by the constable from the fire-prevention parties, made up by the youths of the village. There stood up in every village a high perpendicular ladder with a bell or wooden clapper at the top to give the alarm. The emblem of the fire brigade, a pole with white paper streamers attached, was sometimes distinguished by a yellow paper streamer awarded by the prefecture.

On a sweltering July day it was difficult to realise that the villages we passed through, now half hidden in foliage, might be under 7 ft. of snow in winter. In travelling in this hillier region one has an extra kurumaya, who pushes behind or acts as brakeman.

At the "place of the seven peaks" we found a stone dedicated to the worship of the stars which form the Plough. Again and again I noticed shrines which had before them two tall trees, one larger than the other, called "man and wife." It was explained to me that "there cannot be a more sacred place than where husband and wife stand together." A small tract of cryptomeria on the lower slopes of a hill belonged to the school. The children had planted it in honour of the marriage of the Emperor when he was Crown Prince.

Often the burial-grounds, the stones of which are seldom more than about 2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow strips of roadside waste. (The coffin is commonly square, and the body is placed in it in the kneeling position so often assumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere, there seemed to be rice fields in every spot where rice fields could possibly be made.

On approaching a village the traveller is flattered by receiving the bows of small girls and boys who range themselves in threes and fours to perform their act of courtesy. I was told that the children are taught at school to bow to foreigners. I remember that in the remoter villages of Holland the stranger also received the bows of young people.

On the house of the headman of one village were displayed charms for protection from fire, theft and epidemic. We spoke of weather signs, and he quoted a proverb, "Never rely on the glory of the morning or on the smile of your mother-in-law."

We had before us a week's travel by kuruma. Otherwise we should have liked to have brought away specimens of the wooden utensils of some of the villages. The travelling woodworker whom we often encountered—he has to travel about in order to reach new sources of wood supply—has been despised because of his unsettled habits, but I was told that there was a special deity to look after him. In the town we had left there was delightful woodwork, but most of the draper's stuff was pitiful trash made after what was supposed to be foreign fashions. I may also mention the large collection of blood-and-thunder stories upon Western models which were piled up in the stationers' shops.

As we walked up into the hills—the kuruma men were sent by an easier route—we passed plenty of sweet chestnuts and saw large masses of blue single hydrangea and white and pink spirea. We came on the ruined huts of those who had burnt a bit of hillside and taken from it a few crops of buckwheat. The charred trunks of trees stood up among the green undergrowth that had invaded the patches. There was a great deal of plantain and a kurumaya mentioned that sometimes when children found a dead frog they buried it in leaves of that plant. Japanese children are also in the habit of angling for frogs with a piece of plantain. The frogs seize the plantain and are jerked ashore.

We took our lunch on a hill top. It had been a stiff climb and we marvelled at the expense to which a poor county must be put for the maintenance of roads which so often hang on cliff sides or span torrents. The great piles of wood accumulated at the summit turned the talk to "silent trade." In "silent trade" people on one side of a hill traded with people on the other side without meeting. The products were taken to the hill top and left there, usually in a rough shed built to protect the goods from rain. The exchange might be on the principle of barter or of cash payment. But the amount of goods given in exchange or the cash payment made was left to honour. "Silent trade" still continues in certain parts of Japan. Sometimes the price expected for goods is written up in the shed. "Silent trade" originated because of fears of infectious disease; it survives because it is more convenient for one who has goods to sell or to buy to travel up and down one side of a mountain than up and down two sides.

As we proceeded on our way we were once more struck by the extraordinary wealth of wood. Here is a country where every household is burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is no fitting word but jungle.

At the small ramshackle hot-spring inns of the remote hills the guests are mostly country folk. Many of them carefully bring their own rice and miso, and are put up at a cost of about 10 sen a day. In the passage ways one finds rough boxes about 4 ft. square full of wood ash in the centre of which charcoal may be burned and kettles boiled.

We were in a region where there is snow from the middle of November to the middle of April. For two-thirds of December and January the snow is never less than 2 ft. deep. The attendance of the children at one school during the winter was 95 per cent. for boys and 90 per cent. for girls. (See note, p. 112.)

My kurumaya pointed to a mountain top where, he said, there were nearly three acres of beautiful flowers. The rice fields in the hills were suffering from lack of water and a deputation of villagers had gone ten miles into the mountains to pray for rain. It is wonderful at what altitudes rice fields are contrived. I noted some at 2,500 ft. In looking down from a place where the cliff road hung out over the river that flowed a hundred feet below I noticed a stone image lying on its back in the water. It may have come there by accident, but the ducking of such a figure in order to procure rain is not unknown.

At an inn I asked one of the greybeards who courteously visited us if there would be much competition for his seat when he retired from the village assembly. He thought that there would be several candidates. In the town from which we had set out on our journey through the highlands a doctor had spent 500 yen in trying to get on the assembly.

The tea at this resting place was poor and someone quoted the proverb, "Even the devil was once eighteen and bad tea has its tolerable first cup." On going to the village office I found that for a population of 2,000 there were, in addition to the village shrine, sixteen other shrines and three Buddhist temples. Against fire there were four fire pumps and 155 "fire defenders." A dozen of the young men of the village were serving in the army, four were home on furlough, six were invalided and forty were of the reserve. As many as thirty-seven had medals. The doctors were two in number and the midwives three. There was a sanitary committee of twenty-three members. The revenue of the village was 5,740 yen. It had a fund of 740 yen "against time of famine." The taxes paid were 2,330 yen for State tax, 2,460 yen for prefectural tax and 4,350 yen for village tax. The village possessed two co-operative societies, a young men's association, a Buddhist young men's association, a Buddhist young women's association, a society for the development of knowledge, a society of the graduates of the primary school, two thrift organisations, a society for "promoting knowledge and virtue," and an association the members of which "aimed at becoming distinguished." There were in the village ninety subscribers to the Red Cross and two dozen members of the national Patriotic Women's Association.

In the county through which we were moving there was gold, silver and copper mining. ^[124] Out of its population of 36,000 only 632 were entitled to vote for an M.P.

We rested at a school where the motto was, "Even in this good reign I pray because I wish to make our country more glorious." There were portraits of four deceased local celebrities and of Peter the Great, Franklin, Lincoln, Commander Perry and Bismarck. Illustrated wall charts showed how to sit on a school seat, how to identify poisonous plants and how to conform to the requirements of etiquette. The following admonitions were also displayed—a copy of them is given to each child, who is expected to read the twelve counsels every morning before coming to school: