Suwa Lake lies more than 3,500 ft. above sea level and in winter is covered with skaters.  The country round about is remarkable agriculturally for the fact that many farmers are able to lead into their paddies not only warm water from the hot springs but water from ammonia springs, so economising considerably in their expenditure on manure.  A simple windmill for lifting the fertilising water is sold for only 4 yen.

We went to Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi prefecture, through many mountain tunnels and ravines.  Entrancing is the just word for this region in the vicinity of the Alps.  But joy in the beauty through which we passed is tinged for the student of rural life by thoughts of the highlander’s difficulties in getting a living in spots where quiet streams may become in a few hours ungovernable torrents.  I remember glimpses of grapes and persimmons, of parties of middle-school boys tramping out their holiday—­every inn reduces its terms for them—­and of half a dozen peasant girls bathing in a shaded stream.  But there were less pleasing scenes:  hills deforested and paddies wrecked by a waste of stones and gravel flung over them in time of flood.  Here and there the indomitable farmers, counting on the good behaviour of the river for a season or two, were endeavouring, with enormous labour, to resume possession of what had been their own.  The spectacle illustrated at once their spirit and their industry and their need of land.  At night we slept at Kofu at “the inn of greeting peaks.”  In the morning a Governor with imagination told me of the prefecture’s gallant enterprises in afforestation and river embanking at expenditures which were almost crippling.

FOOTNOTES: 

[135] The three leading silk prefectures are in order:  Nagano, Fukushima and Gumma.

[136] At this time of the year, when the rice plants are small, the water in the paddies is still conspicuous.

[137] An old Japan hand once counselled me that “the thing to find out in sociological enquiries is not people’s religions but their superstitions.”

[138] See Appendix IV.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF THE SILK-WORM

(NAGANO)

The mulberry leaf knoweth not that it shall be silk.—­Arab proverb

One acre in every dozen in Japan produces mulberry leaves for feeding the silk-worms which two million farming families—­more than a third of the farming families of the country—­painstakingly rear.

But the mulberry is not the only mark of a sericultural district.  Its mark may be seen in the tall chimneys of the factories and in the structure of the farmers’ houses.  Breeders of silk-worms are often well enough off to have tiled instead of thatched roofs; they have frequently two storeys to their dwellings; and they have almost always a roof ventilator so that the vitiated air from the hibachi-heated silk-worm chambers may be carried off.  Yet another sign of sericulture being a part of the agricultural activities of a district is its prosperity.  Silk-worms produce the most valuable of all Japanese exports.  Japan sends abroad more raw silk than any other country.[139]