.) A dignitary corresponding to the chairman of an English
county council was at the temple to receive the official, but at the
time appointed for the meeting to begin the audience consisted of one
old man. Although the official from Tokyo and the _guncho_ (head of a
county) waited for some time, no one else put in an appearance. So
they asked the old man the reason. He replied by asking them the
object of the meeting. They told him. He said that he had so
understood and that the community had so understood, but the farmers
were very busy men. Therefore, as he was the oldest man in the
district, they had sent him as their representative. Their
instructions were that he would be able to tell from his experience of
the district whether what the authorities proposed would be a good
thing for it or not. If he considered it to be a bad thing they would
not do it, but if he thought it to be a good thing they would do it.
He was to hear all that was said and then to give a decision on the
community's behalf to the officials who might attend. "So," said the
old man to the Tokyo official and the _guncho_, "if you convince me
you have convinced the village." And after two hours' explanation they
convinced him!

There are in Japan hydraulic engineering works as remarkable in their
way as any I have seen in the Netherlands. Some of these works, for
example the tunnels for conducting rice-field water through
considerable hills, have been the work of unlettered peasants. In one
place I found that 80 miles or more of irrigation was based on a canal
made two centuries ago. It is good to see so many embankings of
refractory streams and excavations of river beds commemorated by slabs
recording the public services of the men who, often at their own
charges, carried out these works of general utility.

In various parts of the country I came upon smallholders who had
reached a high degree of proficiency in the fine art of dwarfing
trees. One day I stopped to speak with a farmer who by this art had
added 1,000 yen a year to his agricultural income. A thirty-years-old
maple was one of his triumphs. Another was a pomegranate about a foot
and a half high. It was in flower and would bear fruit of ordinary
size. The wonder of dwarfing is wrought, as is now well known, by
cramping the roots in the pot and by extremely skilful pruning,
manuring and watering. While we drank tea some choice specimens were
displayed before a screen of unrelieved gol