the money taken at the store was for artificial manures.
Next came purchases of imported rice, for, like the Danish peasants
who export their butter and eat margarine, the local peasants sold
their own rice and bought the Saigon variety. The society sold in a
year a considerable quantity of _sake_. Stretched over the doorway of
the building in which the goods of the society were stored were the
rope and paper streamers which are seen before Shinto shrines and
consecrated places. The society had a large flag post for weather
signals, a white flag for a fine day, a red one for cloudy weather and
a blue one for rain.

I brought away from this village a calendar of agricultural operations
with poems or mottoes for each month, in the collection of which I
suspect the poet had a hand:

_January_: Future of the day determined in the morning.

_February_: The voice of one reading a farming book coming
from the snow-covered window.

_March_: Grafting these young trees, thinking of the days
of my grandchildren.

_April_: Digging the soil of the paddy field, sincerity
concentrated on the edge of the mattock.

_May_: Returning home with the dim moonlight glinting
on the edges of our mattocks.

_June_: Boundless wealth stored up by gracious heaven:
dig it out with your mattock, take it away with your
sickle.

_July_: Weeding the paddy field[132] in a happiness and
contentment which townspeople do not know.

_August_: Standing peasant worthier than resting rich man.

_September_: Ears of rice bend their heads as they ripen.
(An allusion to wisdom and meekness.)

_October_: White steam coming out of a manure house on
an autumn morning.

_November_: Moon clear and bright above neatly divided
paddy fields.

_December_: All the members of the family smiling and
celebrating the year's end, piling up many bales of rice.

In this district I first noticed cotton. It is sown in June and is
picked from time to time between early September and early November.
Cotton has been grown for centuries in Japan, but nowadays it is
produced for household weaving only, the needs of the factories being
met by foreign imports. The plant has a beautiful yellow flower with a
dark brown eye.

In one village I asked how many people smoked. The answer was 60 per
cent. of the men and 10 per cent. of the women. In the same village,
which did not seem particularly well off, I was told that 200 daily
papers might be take