d feet had we gone over.

At our first stopping-place I saw a photograph showing a Shinshu
priest engaged with the girl pupils of a Buddhist school in tree
planting. Our talk here was about the low incomes on which people
contrive to live. A little more than a quarter of a century ago the
family of a friend of mine, now of high rank, was living in a county
town on 5 yen a month! There were two adults and three children. Rent
was 1.20 yen and rice came to 1.80 yen. Even to-day an ex-Minister may
have only 1,500 yen a year. Many ex-Governors are living quietly in
villages. We went to call upon one of them who was getting great
satisfaction out of his few _tan_. Among other things he told us was
that there were five doctors and one midwife in the community. These
doctors do not possess a Tokyo qualification. They have qualified by
being taught by their fathers or by some other practitioner, and they
are entitled to practise in their own village and in, perhaps, a
neighbouring one.

It was thoughtless of me, after inquiring about the doctors, to ask
about the gravedigger. I was told that when there was no member of a
"special tribe" available it was the duty of neighbours to dig graves.
A community's displeasure was marked by neighbours refraining from
helping to dig an unpopular person's grave. (One might have expected
to hear that such a grave would be dug with alacrity.) Families which
had run counter to public opinion had had to "apologise" before they
could get neighbourly help at the burial of their dead.

Only one family in the village, I learnt from the headman, was being
helped from public funds. This family consisted of an old man and his
daughter, who, owing to the attendance her father required, could not
go out to work. The village provided a small house and three pints of
rice daily. The headman in his private capacity gave the girl, with
the assistance of some friends, straw rope-making to do and paid a
somewhat higher price than is usual.

Of last year's births in the village 10 per cent. had been legally and
5 per cent. actually illegitimate. Four or five births had occurred a
few months after marriage.

We ate our lunch in the headman's room in the village office. Hanging
from the ceiling was a sealed envelope to be opened on receipt of a
telegram. Some member of the village staff always slept in that room.
The envelope contained instructions to be acted upon if mobilisation
took place.

When we ha