to cross Japan to the Inland Sea en route for Kobe and Tokyo.

As we came through Hyogo prefecture my companion pointed to hill after
hill which had been afforested since his youth. One of the things
which interested me was the number and the tameness of the kites which
were catching frogs in the paddies.

Before I left Hyogo I had the advantage of a chat with one who for
many years past had thought about the rural situation in Japan
generally. He spoke of "the late Professor King's idealising of the
Japanese farmer's condition." He went on: "While King laid stress on
the ability to be self-supporting on a small area he ignored the
extent to which many rural people are underfed. The change in the
Meiji era has been a gradual transference from ownership to tenancy.
Many so-called representative farmers have been able to add field to
field until they have secured a substantial property and have ceased
to be farmers. An extension of tenancy is to be deplored, not only
because it takes away from the farmer a feeling of independence and of
incentive, but because it creates a parasitic class which in Japan is
perhaps even more parasitic than in the West. A landowner in the West
almost invariably realises that he has certain duties. In Japan a
landowner's duties to his neighbourhood and to the State are often
imperfectly understood.

"On the other hand the position of the farmer has been very much
improved socially. A great deal of pity bestowed by the casual foreign
visitor is wasted. The farmer is accustomed to extremes of heat and
cold and to a bare living and poor shelter. And after all there is a
great deal of happiness in the villages. It is hardly possible to take
a day's _kuruma_ ride without coming on a festival somewhere, and
drunkenness has undoubtedly diminished."

I spoke with an old resident about the agricultural advance in the
prefecture. "In fifteen years," he said, "our agricultural production
has doubled. As to the non-material condition of the people, generally
speaking the villagers are very shallow in their religion. Not so long
ago officials used to laugh at religion, but I don't know that some of
them are not now changing their point of view. Some of us have thought
that, just as we made a Japanese Buddhism, we might make a Japanese
Christianity which would not conflict with our ideas."

FOOTNOTES:

[192] This is, I am officially informed, the highest rank ever
bestowed on a foreigner; but then