prefecture, which is at the extreme end of the
mainland and has the sea to the south, the east and the north, is not
so familiar as the name of its port, Shimoneseki. It was mentioned to
me that the farmers of Yamaguchi worked a smaller number of days than
in Ehime, possibly only a hundred in the year. The comment of my
companion, who had visited a great deal of rural Japan, was that 150
full days' work was the average for the whole country.[185]

I was told that here as elsewhere there was an unsound tendency to
turn sericulture from a secondary into a primary industry. "Experts
are not always expert," confessed an official. "Our farmers have had
bitter experience. Experts come who have learnt only from books or in
other districts, so they give unsuitable counsel. Then they leave the
prefecture for other posts before the results of their unwisdom are
apparent."

The same official told me of a "little famine" in one county which had
imprudently concentrated its attention on the production of grape
fruit to the annual value of about a million yen. When a storm came
one spring there was almost a total loss. "The river and the sea were
covered with fruit, fishing was interfered with, and the county town
complained of the smell of the rotting fruit." It seems that many of
the suffering orange growers were samurai who found fruit farming a
more gentlemanly pursuit than the management of paddies. Like rural
amateurs everywhere, "some of them would do better if they knew more
about the working of the land."

Rice was being assailed by a pest which survived in the straw stack
and had done damage in the prefecture to the amount of 30,000 yen.

In this prefecture and two others during our tour my companion
delivered addresses to farmers under the auspices of the National
Agricultural Association. The burden of his talk was their duty as
agriculturists in the new conditions which were opening for the
nation. His three audiences numbered about 700, 1,000 and 1,500. They
were composed largely of picked men. At the first gathering the
audience squatted; at the next chairs were provided; at the third
there were school forms with backs. What I particularly noticed was
the easy-going way in which the meetings were conducted. No gathering
began exactly at the time announced, although one of the audiences had
been encouraged to be in time by the promise of a gift of mottoes to
the first hundred arrivals. At each meeting the Governor