,
then, is a natural holiday. Whether with their men indoors the women
have much of a holiday is uncertain. But indoors should not be taken
too exactly. There is some hunting in the winter. Deer come within two
miles and hares are easily got.

Well-off though the village is, there is a strong desire to increase
incomes. The people are working harder than they have done in the past
because the cost of living has risen. An attempt is to be made to
increase secondary employments. Corporately, the village is said to
possess 10,000 yen in cash in addition to its land. It is said that
this money is lent out to some of the more influential people. What
the security is and how safe the monetary resources of a village
loaned out in this way may be I do not know, but there is obviously
some risk and I gathered that some anxiety existed.

The people of the village, like a large proportion of the population
of the prefecture, are distinctly progressive. Nagano is full of what
someone called "a new rural type" of men who read and delight in going
to lectures. Lectures are a great institution in Nagano. For these
lectures country people tramp into a county town in their _waraji_
carrying their _bento_. To these rustics a lecture is a lecture. A
friend of mine who is given to lecturing spoke on one occasion for
seven hours. It is true that he divided the lecture between two days
and allowed himself a half hour's rest in the middle of each three and
a half hours' section. He started with an audience of 500. On the
first day at the end of the second part of the lecture it was noticed
that the audience had decreased by about 70. On the second day about
100 people in all wearied in well-doing. But it was the townsfolk, not
the country people, who left.

[Illustration: A CRADLE]

I found upon enquiry that in the village in which I had been living
there had been one arrest only during the previous year. The charge
was one of theft. Half a dozen other people had got into trouble but
their arrests had been "postponed." Two of these six delinquents had
"caused fire accidentally," two had been guilty of petty theft, and
the remaining two had sold things of small value which did not belong
to them. During the twelve months there had been no charges of
immorality and no gambling. Perhaps, however, there may have been
police admonitions. It seemed to have been a long time since there had
been a case of what we should call illegitimacy or of a