ganisations,
Teikoku Nokai, that is the Imperial Agricultural Society, and Dai
Nippon Nokai, that is the Great Japan Agricultural Society.

CHAPTER XXXVI

"THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN"

(GUMMA, KANAGAWA AND CHIBA)

I find the consolation of life in things with which Governments cannot
interfere, in the light and beauty the earth puts forth for her children.
If the universe has any meaning, it exists for the purposes of soul.--AE

One December night there walked into my house a professor of
agricultural politics, clad in tweeds and an overcoat, and with him a
man who wore only a cotton kimono and a single under-garment. The
sunburnt forehead of this man showed that he was not in the habit of
wearing a hat. There is a smiling Japanese face which to many
foreigners is merely irritating. It is not less irritating when, as
often happens, it displays bad teeth ostentatiously gold-stopped. This
man's smile was sincere and he had beautiful teeth. His hands were
nervous and thin, his bearing was natural and his voice gentle. Here,
evidently, was an altruist, perhaps a zealot, probably a celibate. He
was introduced as a rural religionist from Gumma prefecture set on
reforming his countrymen. It is important to know the strength of the
reforming power which Japan is itself generating: here was a man who
for eight years had lived a life of poverty in remote regions and had
shaped his life by three heroes, "St. Francis, Tolstoy and Kropotkin."
He believed that the way to influence people was "to work with them."
He lived on his dole as a junior teacher in an elementary school. His
food, which he cooked himself, was chiefly rice and _miso_. He had
been a vegetarian for ten years. He was twenty-nine.

He said that as far as the people of his village--largely peasant
proprietors who hired additional land--were concerned, "It is happy
for them if they end the year without debt." I asked how the men in
the village who owned land but did not work it spent their time. The
reply was: "They are chattering of many things, very trivial things,
and they disturb the village. They drink too much and they have
concubines or women elsewhere."

"If an ordinary peasant went to the next town to see women there," the
speaker continued, "young men of the village would go and give him a
good knock. In former times 'waitresses' were highly spoken of in the
village, but not now. There are some young men who may go at night to
a house wh