to
me that it might be serviceable if I could have ready, for the period
of rural reconstruction and readjustment of our international ideas
when the War was over, two books of a new sort. One should be a
stimulating volume on Japan, based on a study, more sociological than
technically agricultural, of its remarkable small-farming system and
rural life, and the other a complementary American volume based on a
study of the enterprising large farming of the Middle West. I proposed
to write the second book in co-operation with a veteran rural reformer
who had often invited me to visit him in Iowa, the father of the
present American Minister of Agriculture. Early in 1915 I set out for
Japan to enter upon the first part of my task. Mr. Wallace died while
I was still in Japan, and the Middle West book remains to be
undertaken by someone else.

The Land of the Rising Sun has been fortunate in the quality of the
books which many foreigners have written.[3] But for every work at the
standard of what might be called the seven "M's"--Mitford, Murdoch,
Munro, Morse, Maclaren, "Murray" and McGovern--there are many volumes
of fervid "pro-Japanese" or determined "anti-Japanese" romanticism.
The pictures of Japan which such easily perused books present are
incredible to readers of ordinary insight or historical imagination,
but they have had their part in forming public opinion.

The basic fact about Japan is that it is an agricultural country.
Japanese aestheticism, the victorious Japanese army and navy, the
smoking chimneys of Osaka, the pushing mercantile marine, the
Parliamentary and administrative developments of Tokyo and a costly
worldwide diplomacy are all borne on the bent backs of _Ohyakusho no
Fufu_,[4] the Japanese peasant farmer and his wife. The depositories
of the authentic _Yamato damashii_ (Japanese spirit) are to be found
knee deep in the sludge of their paddy fields.

One book about Japan may well be written in the perspective of the
village and the hamlet. There it is possible to find the way beneath
that surface of things visible to the tourist. There it is possible to
discover the _foundations_ of the Japan which is intent on cutting
such a figure in the East and in the West. There it is possible to
learn not only what Japan is but what she may have it in her to
become.

A rural sociologist is not primarily interested in the technique of
agriculture. He conceives agriculture and country life as Arthur Young