heir
bickerings and feuds.

One of the thatched mud houses I came to was at once a primitive
co-operative sale-and-purchase society and the clubhouse of the old
people of the _oaza_. The rent the old folk received from the society
was enough to maintain the building. The oldsters gather from time to
time in order to eat, drink and make merry with gossip and dancing.
Dancing is a possibility for old people because it is swaying, sliding
and attitudinising, with an occasional stamp of the foot, rather than
hopping and whirling. One of the best amateur dances I have seen was
performed by a grandsire. Such clubhouses, places for the comfort of
the ageing and aged, are found in many villages. Young people are not
admitted. The subscription to this particular clubhouse was 2 yen and
3 _sho_ of sake on joining and 2 yen a year.

As we went on our way there was pointed out to me a house the owner of
which had sold half a _tan_ of land for 120 yen and was drinking
steadily. He had tried to make money by opening an open-air village
theatre which owing to rain had been a failure.

I visited an _oaza_ where all the land belonged to the man I called
upon. He assured me that most of his tenants "made ends meet." The
remainder had a deficiency at the end of the year due to "lack of will
to save" and to their "lack of capital which caused them to pay
interest to manure dealers." A co-operative society had just been
started.

In looking at a map of the village to which some of these _oaza_
belonged I noticed many holdings tinted a special colour. These were
called "jump land." They consisted of land subdued from the wild by
strangers. The properties were regarded as belonging to the _oaza_ in
which their cultivators lived.

I walked through a bit of woodland which had formerly been held in
common and had been divided up, amid felicitations no doubt, at the
rate of half a tan each to every family. But the well-to-do people
soon got hold of their poorer neighbours' portions.

In a roughish tract I came on burial grounds. One portion was set
apart for the eight families which recognised the chief landlord as
their head. The graves of lowlier folk seemed to occur anywhere. Each
grave was covered by a pyramidal mound of sandy earth with a piece of
twig stuck in it. Sometimes a tree had been planted and had grown. A
child's grave had some tiny bowls of food and a clay doll before a
little headstone. By way of shelter for these offerin