The Foundations of Japan

te rather than imitate them. All I sa

of skilful farmers." Among the speakers were the local governor and chiefs of departments who had been sent down by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Home Office. According to our ideas, everybody but the unpracti

d. "With his spectacles and moustache," explained the chairman-if the man who takes the initiative from time to time at a Japanese meeting may be pr

in a small hut and were in a miserable condition. Then a fierce wind took off the roof. It was at four in the morning when the roof blew off. In February I began to open a rice field. Gradually we got a chō. At length I opened a

nce used to weep as the older men told their tales. The farmers would sit up late round a farmer or a professor who was talking about some subject that intereste

ll for a Japanese, looks indeed rather like a Highland gillie, and when one evening I prevailed on him to put on armour, thrust two swords in his obi and take a long bow

spoke modestly. "Formerly the rice fields of my village suffered very much from bad irrigation," he said, "but when that was put right the soil became excellent. In the days when the soil was bad the people wer

an to do good things. I formed several men's and women's associations, all at once, as if I were Buddha. But the real condition of the people was not much improved. The

ing, but the kind face of a good man has efficacy. There was a man in the village who was demoralised, and when I told of him to a distinguished man who lives near our village he sympathised very much. That distingu

me, for I ought not to accept it. When I know I am doing a good thing and expecting thanks, I am not doing a good thing. My thanks must not come from men but from Buddha. I am trying to cast o

derstood, in the name of the highest patriotism and of devotion to their ancestors. This talk was excellent in its way, but when I got up I hazarded a few words on different lines. If I venture to summarise my somewhat elementary address it is because it furnishes a key to some of the enquirie

ryness. I dared to think that some responsibility for a materialistic outlook must be shared by the admirable officials and experts who moved about among the farm

iness of rural experts to teach agriculture. But a poet of my country had said that it took a soul to move a pig into a cleaner sty. It was necessary for a man who was to teach agriculture well to know something higher than agriculture. The teacher must be more advanced than his pupils. There must be a source from which the energy of the rural teacher

d vital though it was, was only a means to an end. The object in view was to have in the rural districts better men, women and children. The highest aim of rural progress was t

brings his rent rice to this landlord's storehouse," a fellow-guest told me, "it is never examined. The door of the storehouse is left unpadlocked, and the rent rice is brought by the tenant when he is minded to do so. No

the quantity.' The landlord loses somewhat by this, but it is not in accordance with the honour of his family to change the method of collecting his

er dry land again in order that they might extend the area of mulberries. Therefore the landlords raised the rents of the dry farms. But there was one landlord who said, "If this dry far

s, but we cannot." Therefore the landlord who had not raised his rents called his tenants together. He said to them, "It is a hard thing for me to have no social intercourse with my equals. Therefo

order that the reader may not forget on what a very different scale landlordism e

oor crops, and gave it. But he was trying to think of a plan to defeat the pretences of his tenants. At last he hit on one. While the tenants' rice was young he often visited the fields, and when any insects were to be seen he sent his labourers secretly to destroy them. In the same way, when crops seemed to be under-manured, he secr

advised them to buy. They said they had no money, but he answered, 'Means may perhaps be found.' He secretly subscribed a sum to the Shinto shrine and then advised the formation of a co-operative society, which could borrow from the shrine for a tenant, so that the tenant need no

ers had begun to ask their tenants to their gardens, where they were given tea and fruit. "In J

e county authorities find great difficulty in overcoming an objection to destroying the insect life which preys on the rice crops. When rice land does not yield well, one landlord causes an investigation to be made and gives advice bas

practical instruction, "rich men to give their money and poor men their labour." In order to obtain a fund to enable tenants to get money with whic

usband is testing his rice seed with salt water, 'Salt is very dear, nowadays, why not fresh water?' If a husband is kind

landlord every ten days. It is troublesome to be constantly receiving so many small sums, but the landlord and his brother think that they should

roduce to the kitchen "because we heard that the landlord had guests." The village was very kind in its reception of the foreign visitor. A meeting was called in the temple. I told the story of Wren's Si monumentum requiris c

ved until the time we left no servant was allowed to do anything for us. The ladies of the house cooked our food and the landlord and his younger brother brought it to us. The younger brother waited upon us throughout our m

ticed that outside the lattice a company of villagers was listening with no consciousness of in

his old house of fine timbers weathered to silver-grey I found the secret of Cha-no-yu. This flower of Far Eastern civilisation is an ?sthetic expression of t

with its lilies, and the azure hydrangea of the hills which, some say, suggests distance. The hut-like tea-room, traditionally rude in the material of which it was built but perfect in every detail of its workmanship, we entered one by one. According to old custom we humbly crept through the small opening which serves as entrance, the idea being that all worldly rank must bow at the sanctuary of beauty. The tiny chamber held, besides the wonderful vessels of the ceremony, a flower arrangement of blue

ately appeared before the Emperor. After the plays he painted kyōgen scenes for us on kakemono and fan

of the simplest. There was the well-known tale of the sly servant who was sent to town by a stupid daimyo in order to buy a fan, and, though he brought back an umbrella, succeeded in imposing it on his master. There was also the play of the fox who comes to a farmer to advise him not to kill foxes, but is himself caught in a trap. I also recall a story of two good te

to two sisters. Before taking our departure we knelt with our landlord and his father before the Buddhist shrine on which rested the memorial tablets of for

TNO

comprise about a twent

stone or hard-wood seal which he keeps i

about a quar

isplayed the flower arrangement, a piece of

interludes o