I was told that here as elsewhere there was an unsound tendency to turn sericulture from a secondary into a primary industry.  “Experts are not always expert,” confessed an official.  “Our farmers have had bitter experience.  Experts come who have learnt only from books or in other districts, so they give unsuitable counsel.  Then they leave the prefecture for other posts before the results of their unwisdom are apparent.”

The same official told me of a “little famine” in one county which had imprudently concentrated its attention on the production of grape fruit to the annual value of about a million yen.  When a storm came one spring there was almost a total loss.  “The river and the sea were covered with fruit, fishing was interfered with, and the county town complained of the smell of the rotting fruit.”  It seems that many of the suffering orange growers were samurai who found fruit farming a more gentlemanly pursuit than the management of paddies.  Like rural amateurs everywhere, “some of them would do better if they knew more about the working of the land.”

Rice was being assailed by a pest which survived in the straw stack and had done damage in the prefecture to the amount of 30,000 yen.

In this prefecture and two others during our tour my companion delivered addresses to farmers under the auspices of the National Agricultural Association.  The burden of his talk was their duty as agriculturists in the new conditions which were opening for the nation.  His three audiences numbered about 700, 1,000 and 1,500.  They were composed largely of picked men.  At the first gathering the audience squatted; at the next chairs were provided; at the third there were school forms with backs.  What I particularly noticed was the easy-going way in which the meetings were conducted.  No gathering began exactly at the time announced, although one of the audiences had been encouraged to be in time by the promise of a gift of mottoes to the first hundred arrivals.  At each meeting the Governor of the prefecture was the first speaker.  At one meeting the Governor arrived about 8.30 a.m., made his speech and departed.  When my friend had been introduced to various people in the anteroom, had drunk tea and had smoked and chatted a little, he was taken to the platform half an hour or three quarters after the conclusion of the Governor’s speech.  Nothing had happened at the meeting in the interval.  The idea was that the wait would help the audience’s digestion of the speech it had had and the speech it was going to have.  There was no formal introduction of the orator.  He just mounted the platform and spoke for two hours.

[Illustration:  SCHOOL SHRINE FOR EMPEROR’S PORTRAIT. p. 113]

[Illustration:  THE AUTHOR ADDRESSING, THROUGH AN INTERPRETER, LAFCADIO HEARN DEATH-DAY MEETING AT MATSUE. p. 253]

At the second meeting the Governor awaited our arrival but “went on” alone.  The star speaker meanwhile refreshed himself in the anteroom with tea, tobacco and conversation as before.  In a few minutes the Governor, having done his turn, rejoined us, and my friend proceeded to the meeting to deliver his speech, the Governor taking his departure.