“Sometimes a clock gets damaged and does not ring, so a few of us may be getting up later that morning.  Or a man becomes afraid of sleeping too late, fears his clock is wrong, and gets up at 3 o’clock and then goes off to waken members.  Hence complaints.  Some cunning fellows ask their friends or brothers to write down for them their names on the list of attendances.  But we find out their deceit by their handwriting.  It is very difficult to form the habit of early rising, because members are not expected to report at the secretaries’ houses on a rainy day.  As there is no control over them that day, they are easy in their minds and sleep on.  Thus they break the habit of early rising that they are forming.  Getting up early is necessary not only because it is good to begin work early but because early rising overcomes the habit of gadding about at night which is customary in many villages.

“You may say that all this is a great deal to ask of young men,” the chairman continued.  “But if you ask from them comfortable practices only, how can you expect from them a remarkable result?  Young men should ponder this and be willing to exert themselves.”  Later on it was explained to me that it had been found that it took a great deal of time for the secretaries to call up all the members in the morning by shouting to them, “so the secretary obtained bugles; but even the bugles were not heard everywhere, so they were changed to drums, and now five drums go round our village every morning.”

In every village of Japan there is a young men’s association, which is by no means to be confounded with the world-encircling Y.M.C.A.[18] The village Y.M.A. of Japan is an institution of some antiquity and it has nothing whatever to do with religious effort.  One day, when I was staying in a rural district, I was invited to a remoter part in order to see something of the discipline that the members of a group of young men’s associations were imposing on themselves.  The members of this group of Y.M.A. belonged to the branches established in a village of nineteen aza, that is hamlets.  This fact, with the further fact that the village containing the nineteen aza had four elementary schools and one higher school, will show that a Japanese village may be much larger than a Western one.

Nearly six hundred young men were in the parade.  They were dressed exactly alike in the tight blue calico trousers and kimono of jacket length which the Japanese farmer ordinarily wears.  Each man had the usual obi (waist scarf) tied round his kimono, and in the obi was thrust the small cotton towel which Japanese carry with them everywhere.  The young men wore puttees, waraji (straw sandals) and caps.  It is only of late that the Japanese worker has taken to wearing head-gear, or at any rate head-gear other than he could contrive with his towel.  The physical condition of the young fellows was good and their evolutions with dummy “rifles”