[Illustration:  THE CHILD-COLLECTORS OF VILLAGERS’ SAVINGS. p. 230]

[Illustration:  NUNS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A “CELL” BY THE AUTHOR. p. 142]

[Illustration:  STUDENTS’ STUDY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. p. 50]

While in the highlands of Nagano I spent a night at Karuizawa, a hill resort at which tired missionaries and their families, not only from all parts of Japan but from China, gather in the summer months beyond the reach of the mosquito.[133] I stayed in the summer cottage of my travelling companion’s brother-in-law.  The family consisted of a reserved, cultivated man with a pretty wife of what I have heard a foreigner call “the maternal, domestic type.”  In their owlishness newcomers to the country are inclined to commiserate all Japanese housewives as the “slaves of their husbands.”  They would have been sadly wrong in such thoughts about this happy wife and mother.  The eldest boy, a wholesome-looking lad, had just passed through the middle school on his way to the university, and spoke to me in simple English with that air of responsibility which the eldest son so soon acquires in Japan.  His brothers and sisters enjoyed a happy relation with him and with each other.  The whole family was merry, unselfish and, in the best sense of the word, educated.  As we knelt on our zabuton we refreshed ourselves with tea and the fine view of the active volcano, Asama, and chatted on schools, holidays, books, the country and religion.  After a while, a little to my surprise, the mother in her sweet voice gravely said that if I would not mind at all she would like very much to ask me two questions.  The first was, “Are the people who go to the Christian church here all Christians?” and the second, “Are Christians as affectionate as Japanese?”

Karuizawa, which is full of ill-nourished, scabby-headed, “bubbly-nosed"[134] Japanese children, is an impoverished place on one of the ancient highways.  We took ourselves along the road until we reached at a slightly higher altitude the decayed village of Oiwake.  When the railway came near it finished the work of desolation which the cessation of the daimyos’ progresses to Yedo (now Tokyo) had begun half a century ago.  In the days of the Shogun three-quarters of the 300 houses were inns.  Now two-thirds of the houses have become uninhabitable, or have been sold, taken down and rebuilt elsewhere.  The Shinto shrines are neglected and some are unroofed, the Zen temple is impoverished, the school is comfortless and a thousand tombstones in the ancient burying ground among the trees are half hidden in moss and undergrowth.