the men. But the women were nearly all handicapped by having a
child tied on their backs. Uchimura, returning to his objection to
foreign political adventure, said that Japan, properly cultivated,
could support twice its present population. There were many marshy
districts which could be brought into cultivation by drainage. Then
what might not forestry do? But the progress could not be made because
of lack of money. The money was needed for "national defence."

"For myself," said Uchimura, "I find it still possible to believe in
some power which will take care of inoffensive, quiet, humble,
industrious people. If all the high virtues of mankind are not
safeguarded somehow, then let us take leave of all the ennobling
aspirations, all the poetry, and all the deepest hopes we have, and
cease to struggle upward. The question is whether we have faith." We
still waited, he declared, for the nation which would be Christian
enough to take its stand on the Gospel and sacrifice itself
materially, if need be, to its faith that right was greater than
might.

And so "impractical, outspoken to rashness, but thoroughly sincere and
experienced," as one of his appreciative countrymen characterised him
to me, we take leave of the "Japanese Carlyle." With whom could I have
gone more provocatively towards the foundation of things at the
beginning of my investigation in farther Japan?

FOOTNOTES:

[100] The statement is, he told me, a calumny. He explained that he
lost his post for refusing to bow, not to the portrait, but to the
signature of the Emperor, the signature appended to that famous
Imperial rescript on education which is appointed to be read in
schools. Uchimura is very willing, he said, to show the respect which
loyal Japanese are at all times ready to manifest to the Emperor, and
he would certainly bow before the portrait of His Majesty; but in the
proposal that reverence should be paid to the Imperial autograph he
thought he saw the demands of a "Kaiserism"--his word, he speaks
vigorous English--which was foreign to the Japanese conception of
their sovereign, which would be inimical to the Emperor's influence
and would be bad for the nation.

[101] But journalism is one of the most powerful influences for good,
and some of the best brains of the country is represented in it.
Papers like the _Jiji, Asahi, Nichi Nichi_, and the Osaka papers run
in conjunction with them have altogether a circulation approaching two
millio