As we went along by the coast it was pointed out to me that it was from this neighbourhood that some of the most indomitable of the old-time pirates set sail on their expeditions to ravage the Chinese coast.  They visited that coast all the way from Vladivostock, now Russian (and like to be Japanese), to Saigon, now French.  There are many Chinese books discussing effectual methods of repelling the pirates.  In an official Japanese work I once noticed, in the enumeration of Japanese rights in Taiwan (Formosa), the naive claim that long ago it was visited by Japanese pirates!  The Japanese fisherman is still an intrepid person, and in villages which have an admixture of fishing folk the seafarers, from their habit of following old customs and taking their own way generally, are the constant subject of rural reformers’ laments.

I spent some time in a typical inland village.  The very last available yard of land was utilised.  The cottages stood on plots buttressed by stone, and only the well-to-do had a yard or garden; paddy came right up to the foundations.  Now that the rice was high no division showed between the different paddy holdings.  I noticed here that the round, carefully concreted manure tank which each farmer possessed had a reinforced concrete hood.  I asked a landowner who was in a comfortable position what societies there were in his village.  He mentioned a society “to console old people and reward virtue.”  Then there was the society of householders, such as is mentioned in Confucius, which met in the spring and autumn, and ate and drank and discussed local topics “with open heart.”  There were sometimes quarrels due to sake.  Indeed, some villagers seemed to save up their differences until the householders’ meeting at its sake stage.  At householders’ meetings where there was no sake peace appeared to prevail.  The householders’ meeting was a kind of informal village assembly.  That assembly itself ordinarily met twice a year.  There were in the village, in addition to the householders’ organisation, the usual reservists’ association, the young men’s society and agricultural association.  As to ko, from philanthropic motives my informant was a member of no fewer than ten.

My host told me that he spent a good deal of time in playing go, but in the shooting season (October 15 to April 15) he made trips to the hills and shot pheasants, hares, pigeons and deer.  In the garden of his house two gardeners were stretched along the branches of a pine tree, nimbly and industriously picking out the shoots in order to get that bare appearance which has no doubt puzzled many a Western student of Japanese tree pictures.  Each man’s ladder—­two lengths of bamboo with rungs tied on with string—­was carefully leant against a pole laid from the ground through the branches.  Many of the well-cared-for trees in the gardens and public places of Japan pass the winter in neat wrappings of straw.