At a county town I found a library of 4,000 volumes, largely an inheritance from the feudal regime.  Wherever I went I could not but note the cluster of readers at the open fronts of bookshops.[187]

On our second day’s journey in Shimane I had a kuruma with wooden wheels, and in the hills the day after we passed a man kneeling in a kago, the old-fashioned litter.  When we took to a basha we discovered that, owing to the roughness of the road, we had a driver for each of our two horses.  We had also an agile lad who hung on first to one part and then another of the vehicle and seemed to be essential in some way to its successful management.  The head of the hatless chief driver was shaved absolutely smooth.

It was a rare thing for a foreigner to pass this way.  My companion frequently told me that he had difficulty in understanding what people said.

We saw an extinct volcano called “Green Field Mountain.”  There was not a tree on it and it was said never to have possessed any.  The whole surface was closely cut, the patches cut at different periods showing up in rectangular strips of varying shades.  Wherever the hills were treeless and too steep for cultivation they were carefully cut for fodder.  In cultivable places houses were standing on the minimum of ground.  More than once we had a view of a characteristic piece of scenery, a dashing stream seen through a clump of bamboo.

When our basha stopped for the feeding of the horses, they had a tub of mixture composed of boiled naked barley, rice chaff, chopped straw and chopped green stuff.  I noticed near the inn a doll in a tree.  It had been put there by children who believe that they can secure by so doing a fine day for an outing.  When we started again we met with a company of strolling players:  a man, his wife and two girls, all with clever faces.  We also saw several peasant anglers fishing or going home with their catch.  A licence available from July to December cost 50 sen.

At a shop I made a note of its signs, the usual strips of white wood about 8 ins. by 3, nailed up perpendicularly, with the inscriptions written in black.  One sign was the announcement of the name and address of the householder, which must be shown on every Japanese house.  A second stated that the place was licensed as a shop, a third that the householder’s wife was licensed to keep an inn, a fourth that the householder was a cocoon merchant, a fifth that he was a member of the co-operative credit society, a sixth that he belonged to the Red Cross Society, a seventh that his wife was a member of the Patriotic Women’s Society,[188] the eighth, ninth and tenth that the shopkeeper was an adherent of a certain Shinto shrine, a member of a Shinto organisation and had visited three shrines and made donations to them.  An eleventh board proclaimed that he was of the Zen sect of Buddhism.  Finally, there was a box in which was stored the charms from various shrines.