Our train, half freight with a locomotive at each end, went over the backbone of Japan through the usual series of snow shelters and tunnels.  Having surmounted the heights we slid down into Yamagata.  I should properly write Yamagataken, which we cannot translate Yamagatashire, for a ken (prefecture) is made up of counties.  There are eleven counties in Yamagataken.

Almost any sort of dwelling looks tolerable in August, but many of the houses that first caught our attention must be lamentable shelters in winter.  Some farmers, I learnt, were “in a very bad condition.”  We dropped from a silk and rice plateau and then to a region where the main crop was rice.  The bare hills to be seen in our descent were an appalling spectacle when it was realised how close was their relation to the disastrous floods of the prefecture.  A man in the train had lost 10,000 yen by floods, a large sum in rural Japan.  In two years the prefecture had spent in river-bank repairs nearly a million yen.  A flood some years ago did damage to the amount of 20 million yen.  The prefecture had a debt of 60 million yen, chiefly due to havoc wrought by its big river.  A yearly sum was spent on afforestation in addition to what was laid out by the State and by private individuals.  A forestry association was trying to raise half a million yen for tree planting.  But the flooding of the plains was not the only water trouble of the Yamagatans.  In one district they had a stream which contained solutions of compounds of sulphuric acid so strong that crops fail for three years on ground watered from it.  In other parts of the prefecture, however, farmers had the advantage, enjoyed in many parts of Japan, of being able to water from ammonia water springs.

Hereabouts I first noticed the device common to many districts of having on the roof of a cottage a water barrel, tub or cistern, ready to be emptied on the shingle roof when sparks fly from a burning dwelling.  Sometimes the wooden water receptacles are wrapped round with straw.

In the prefectural city of Yamagata I heard of a primary school which had a farm and made a profit, also of four landowners who had engaged an agricultural expert for the instruction of their tenants.  “A very certain crop” round about the city was grapes.  Some 25,000 persons yearly visited the prefectural 12 _-cho_ experiment station, which within a year had distributed to farmers 7,600 cyanided fruit trees and 80 bushels of special seed rice.

Near the experiment station was a crematorium of ugly brick and galvanised iron belonging to the city of Yamagata at which 1,000 bodies were burnt in a year in furnaces heated with pine blocks.  A selection might be made from four rates ranging from 35 sen to 5 yen.  The most expensive rate was for folk who arrived in Western-style coffins.