[158] In the three years 1916-18 the percentage of conscripts
suffering from trachoma was 15.8.

[159] For farmers' budgets, see Appendix XIII (end).

BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST

CHAPTER XXII

"BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

(YAMAGATA, AKITA,[160] AOMORI, IWATE, MIYAGI, FUKUSHIMA
AND IBARAKI)

The worst of our education is that it looks askance, looks over its
shoulder at sex.--R.L.S.

A village headman, encountered in the train just as we were leaving
Yamagata prefecture, gave me some insight into the life of his little
community. The fathers of two-score families were shopkeepers and
tradesmen--- that is, tradesmen in the old meaning of the word. There
were also a few labourers. About two hundred and fifty families owned
land and some of them rented additional tracts. Another sixty were
simply tenants. The poorer farmers were also labourers or artisans.
Most of them were "comfortable enough." There were, however, half a
dozen people in the village who were helped from village funds. Of the
middle-grade farmers "it might be said that they do not become richer
or poorer."

The headman had formed a society which sent its members to visit
prefectures more developed agriculturally. This society had engaged an
instructor from without the prefecture and he had taught horse tillage
and the management of upland fields and had made model paddies. Five
stallions had been obtained and a simple adjustment of paddy-land had
been brought about. As a result the rice yield had risen.

This headman had also had addresses delivered in the village for the
first time. Further, after buying a number of books, he had visited
all the villagers in turn and shown them the books and had said to
each of them, "I wish you to buy a book and, after reading it, to give
it to the library." "And," he told me, "none of them objected." Soon a
valuable library came into existence.

This admirable functionary felt some satisfaction at having been able
to abate the custom according to which the young men, with the tacit
permission of their parents, had gone into the neighbouring town after
harvest "to visit the immoral women." "They used to spend as much as 5
yen," said our headman. He had started worthier forms of after-harvest
relaxation, and "the cost of the amusement days is now only 50 or 60
sen."

When we got on the main line again and pursued our way farther north,
it was through even stouter snow shelters and through man