Birth of a child, 10 sen (that is, 2-1/2 d. or 5 cents). 
  Wedding, 15 sen. 
  Adoption, 15 sen. 
  Graduation from the primary school, 10 sen; advanced
      school, 20 sen. 
  Teacher or official on appointment, 2 per cent. of salary;
      when salary is increased, 10 per cent. of increase. 
  When an official receives a prize of money from his
      superior, 5 per cent. 
  Every villager to pay every quarter, 1 sen.

On the basis of this assessment it is expected that fifty-seven years after the Coronation such a sum will have been accumulated as will enable the villagers to live rate free.  Some villages have thanksgiving associations in connection with Shinto shrines.  Aged villagers are “respected by being blessed before the shrine and by being given a present.”  Worthy villagers who are not aged “receive prizes and honour.”

More than once when I went to a village I was welcomed first by a parade of the Y.M.A., then by the school children in rows, and finally in the school grounds by two lines of venerable members of an Ex-Public Servants’ Association.  The object of an E.P.S.A. is to strengthen the hands of the present officials and to give honour to their predecessors.  A headman explained to me:  “If ex-officials fell into poverty or lacked public respect, people would not be inclined to work for the public good.  A former clerk in the village office whom everybody had forgotten was working as a labourer.  But as a member of the association he was seen to be treated with honour, so the children were impressed.  The funeral of such a man is apt to be lonely, but when this man died all the members of the association attended his funeral in ceremonial dress and offered some money to his memory.[23] His honour is great and the villagers say, ’We may well work for the public benefit.’”

Every village in Japan has a Village Agricultural Association.  One V.A.A., which belongs to a village of less than 6,000 people, sees the fruit of its labours in the existence of “322 good manure houses.”  The gift of a plan and the grant of a yen had prompted the building of most of them.  Then the organisation incites its members to cement the ground below their dwellings.  This is not so much for the benefit of the farmer and his family as for the welfare of their silkworms.  A fly harmful to silkworms winters in the soil, but it cannot find a resting-place in concrete.

[Illustration:  A WIDE EXPANSE OF ADJUSTED RICE-FIELDS. p. 71]

A word may also be said about the way in which silkworm rearers have been induced by the V.A.A. to keep the same breed of caterpillar, so facilitating bulking of cocoons at the association’s co-operative sales.  A small library of silkworm-culture books has been started in the village, and there is a special pamphlet for young men which they are urged to keep in “their pockets and to study ten minutes each day.”  A general library has 2,400 volumes divided into eight circulating libraries.  The cost of the building which provides the library in chief, a meeting hall and also a storehouse for cocoons has been defrayed by the commissions charged for the co-operative sale of cocoons.