When we took to an automobile for the first stage of our long journey through Yamaguchi and Shimane—­the railway came no farther than the city of Yamaguchi—­I noticed that just as the bridges are often without parapets, the roads winding round the cliffs were, as in Fukushima, unprotected by wall or rail.  This was due, no doubt, to considerations of economy, to a widely diffused sense of responsibility which makes people look after their own safety, and also, in some degree, to stout Japanese nerves.  That our driver’s nerves were sound enough was shown by the speed at which he drove the heavy car round sharp corners and down slippery descents where we should have dropped a few hundred feet had we gone over.

At our first stopping-place I saw a photograph showing a Shinshu priest engaged with the girl pupils of a Buddhist school in tree planting.  Our talk here was about the low incomes on which people contrive to live.  A little more than a quarter of a century ago the family of a friend of mine, now of high rank, was living in a county town on 5 yen a month!  There were two adults and three children.  Rent was 1.20 yen and rice came to 1.80 yen.  Even to-day an ex-Minister may have only 1,500 yen a year.  Many ex-Governors are living quietly in villages.  We went to call upon one of them who was getting great satisfaction out of his few tan.  Among other things he told us was that there were five doctors and one midwife in the community.  These doctors do not possess a Tokyo qualification.  They have qualified by being taught by their fathers or by some other practitioner, and they are entitled to practise in their own village and in, perhaps, a neighbouring one.

It was thoughtless of me, after inquiring about the doctors, to ask about the gravedigger.  I was told that when there was no member of a “special tribe” available it was the duty of neighbours to dig graves.  A community’s displeasure was marked by neighbours refraining from helping to dig an unpopular person’s grave. (One might have expected to hear that such a grave would be dug with alacrity.) Families which had run counter to public opinion had had to “apologise” before they could get neighbourly help at the burial of their dead.

Only one family in the village, I learnt from the headman, was being helped from public funds.  This family consisted of an old man and his daughter, who, owing to the attendance her father required, could not go out to work.  The village provided a small house and three pints of rice daily.  The headman in his private capacity gave the girl, with the assistance of some friends, straw rope-making to do and paid a somewhat higher price than is usual.

Of last year’s births in the village 10 per cent. had been legally and 5 per cent. actually illegitimate.  Four or five births had occurred a few months after marriage.

We ate our lunch in the headman’s room in the village office.  Hanging from the ceiling was a sealed envelope to be opened on receipt of a telegram.  Some member of the village staff always slept in that room.  The envelope contained instructions to be acted upon if mobilisation took place.