oad. I was a
beholder of a family reunion at a railway station in which a young
wife met her young husband returned from abroad. There were merely
repeated bows and many smiles. The view taken of kissing in Japan is
shown by the fact that an issue of a Tokyo periodical was prohibited
by the police because it contained an allusion to it. We are helped to
understand the Japanese standpoint a little if we remember how
repugnant to English and American ideas is the Continental custom of
men kissing one another. Kissing is understood by the Japanese to be a
sexual act, as is shown by their word for it.

Early in November in the neighbourhood of Tokyo, where three crops are
taken in the year and sometimes four or five, I found between the rows
of growing winter barley two lines of green stuff which would be
cleared off as the barley rose. The barley was sown in clumps of two
dozen or even thirty plants, each clump being about a foot apart, and
liberally treated with liquid manure. In Saitama 100 bushels per acre
has been produced by a good farmer. The clump method of sowing is
believed to afford greater protection against the weather. (Outside
the volcanic-soil area ordinary sowing in rows is common.) The
volcanic soil, as one sees in spots where excavations have been made,
is originally light yellow. The humus introduced by the liberal
applications of manure has made it black.

I came upon a hollow in some low hills, studded with trees and
overlooking Tokyo Bay, which had been secured for the building of an
elaborate series of temples at a cost of three million yen. Acres of
grounds were being laid out with genius. The buildings were of that
beautiful simplicity which marks the edifices of the Zen sect. The
construction was in the hands of some of the cleverest master
craftsmen in Japan. The work was to be spread over four years. A great
hoarding displayed thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names and
the amounts of the subscriptions of the faithful. In one of the
completed temples a kindly priest was preaching. He added to the force
of his gestures by the use of a fan. He was being attentively listened
to by an intelligent-looking congregation. I caught the injunction
that in the attainment of goodness aspiration was little worth without
will.

The method of announcing subscriptions on hoardings was also adopted
outside the new primary school near by. The subscriptions were from a
hundred yen to one yen. The charge