xed
memorial days and ceremonies "that all the students should observe":
the ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, thrift and
morality, and the ceremonies at the end of rice planting, at harvest
and at the maturity of the silk-worm. The fitting-up of the school is
Spartan but the rooms are high and well lighted and ventilated. The
students' hot bath accommodates a dozen lads at a time. The studies
are also the dormitories, and in the corner of each there is stored a
big mosquito netting. Except for a few square yards near the doors,
these rooms consist of the usual raised platform covered with the
national _tatami_ or matting.

I heard a characteristic story of the Director. During the
Russo-Japanese war everybody was economising, and many people who had
been in the habit of riding in _kuruma_ began to walk. Our
agricultural celebrity had always had a passion for walking, so it was
out of his power to economise in _kuruma_. What he did was to cease
walking and take to _kuruma_ riding, for, he said, "in war time one
must work one's utmost, and if I move about quickly I can get more
done."

I may add a story which this rare man himself told me. I had seen in
his house a photograph of a memorial slab celebrating the heroic death
of a peasant. It appeared that in a period of scarcity there was left
in this peasant's village only one unbroken bale of rice. This rice
was in the possession of the peasant, who was suffering from lack of
food. But he would not cook any of the rice because he knew that if he
did the village would be without seed in spring. Eventually the brave
man was found dead of hunger in his cottage. His pillow had been the
unopened bale of rice.

In the house of a small peasant proprietor I visited the inscriptions
on the two _gaku_ signified "Buddha's teaching broken by a beautiful
face" and "Cast your eyes on high." On the wall there was also a copy
of a resolution concerning a recent Imperial Rescript which 500 rural
householders, at a meeting in the county, had "sworn to observe," and,
as I understood, to read two or three times a year.

Japan, as I have already noted, has always been a more democratic
country than is generally understood; but the people have been
accustomed to act under leaders. Some time ago an official of the
Department of Agriculture visited a certain district in order to speak
at the local temple in advocacy of the adjustment of rice fields. (See
Chapter VIII