ation that vegetarianism was impossible because without
meat-eating there would be no cattle and therefore no nitrogen for the
fields.

It was not only the bean cakes at the stations which caught my
attention but the extensive use of lime. Square miles of paddy field
were white with powdered lime, scattered before the planting of the
rice, an operation which in the higher altitudes would not be finished
until well on in July.

A contented and prosperous countryside was no doubt the impression
reflected to many passengers in the train that sunny day. But I knew
how closely pressed the farmers had been by the rise in prices of many
things that they had got into the way of needing. I had learnt, too,
the part that superstition[137] as well as simple faith played in the
lives of the country folk. When, however, I pondered the way in which
the rural districts had been increasingly invaded by factories run
under the commercial sanctions of our eighteen-forties, I asked myself
whether there might not be superstitions of the economic world as well
as of religious and social life.

I heard a Japanese speak of being well treated at inns in the old days
for 20 sen a night. It should be remembered, however, that there is a
system not only of tipping inn servants but of tipping the inn. The
gift to the inn is called _chadai_ and guests are expected to offer a
sum which has some relation to their position and means and the food
and treatment they expect. I have stayed at inns where I have paid as
much _chadai_ as bill. To pay 50 per cent. of the bill as _chadai_ is
common. The idea behind _chadai_ is that the inn-keeper charges only
his out-of-pocket expenses and that therefore the guest naturally
desires to requite him. In acknowledgment of _chadai_ the inn-keeper
brings a gift to the guest at his departure--fans, pottery, towels,
picture postcards, fruit or slabs of stiff acidulated fruit jelly (in
one inn of grapes and in another of plums) laid between strips of
maize leaf. The right time to give _chadai_ is on entering the hotel,
after the "welcome tea." In handing money to any person in Japan,
except a porter or a _kurumaya_, the cash or notes are wrapped in
paper.

On the journey from the city of Nagano to Matsumoto, wonderful views
were unfolded of terraced rice fields, and, above these, of terraced
fields of mulberry. How many hundred feet high the terraces rose as
the train climbed the hills I do not know, but I have ha