A mental awakening by education was the final solution of the rural problem, the Governor thought.  Religion was also important for the development of the village.  Believers not under the eyes of others would avoid wrong-doing because watched by heaven.  Lectures on agriculture and sanitation had a good influence when delivered by priests.  Temples were often schools before the era of Meiji and so priests were socially active.  Under the new dispensation the work was taken out of their hands.  So they had come to care little for the affairs of the world.  But they were influential and the prefecture had asked for their help.  The merits of many priests might not be conspicuous, but the number of them who were active was increasing and the villagers deferred to them if they took any step.

The most hopeful thing in the villages was the awakening of the young men:  they were becoming “sincere,” a favourite Japanese word.  For the most part the credit societies were not efficient, but in one county credit societies had lessened the business of the banks.  The best way to furnish capital to farmers was out of the capital of their fellow farmers.

Possibly the girls of the villages were not making the same advance as the boys.  They did not go to their field labour willingly.  Sometimes when a woman was asked by a neighbour on the road, “Have you been working on the farm?” she would answer, “No, I have been to the temple.”  The host of women’s papers had a bad effect.  With regard to the habutae (silk goods) factories, there was a bright side, for they gave work to the girls in winter, when they were idle “and therefore poor and sometimes immoral.”  On the other hand, factory girls tended to become vain and thriftless and the stay-at-home girls were inclined to imitate them.

FOOTNOTES: 

[157] See Appendix XLV.

CHAPTER XXI

THE “TANOMOSHI”

(YAMAGATA)

Society is kept in animation by the customary and by sentiment.—­MEREDITH

Six feet of snow is common on the line on which we travelled in Yamagata prefecture, and washouts are not infrequent.  A train has been stopped for a week by snow.  It was difficult to think of snow when one saw groups of pilgrims with their flopping sun-mats on their backs.  The shrines on three local mountain tops are visited by 20,000 people yearly.

We bought at railway stations different sorts of gelatinous fruit preparations.  Most places in Japan have a speciality in the form of a food or a curiosity that can be bought by travellers.

In the great Shonai plain, which extends through three counties, there are no fewer than 82,500 acres of rice and the unending crops were a sight to see.  A great deal of the paddy land has been adjusted.  In one county there is the largest adjusted area in Japan, 20,000 acres.  When one raises one’s eyes from the waving fields of illimitable rice, the dominating feature of the landscape is Mount Chokai with his August snow cap.