Farmers who are without secondary industries are short of cash except at the times when barley, rice and cocoons are sold, and in certain places they seem to have taken to saving money on salt.  An old man told us with tears in his eyes how he had protested to his neighbours against the tendency to do without salt.  An excuse for attempting to save on salt, besides the economical one, was the size of the salt cubes.  Neighbours clubbed together to buy a cube, and thus a family, when it had finished its share, had to wait until the neighbours had disposed of theirs and market day came round.[191]

I saw a monument erected to the memory of “a good farmer” who had planted a wood and developed irrigation.

We made a stay at the spot where, on a forest-clad hill overlooking the sea, there stands in utter simplicity the great shrine of Izumo.  The customary collection of shops and hotels clustering at the town end of the avenue of torii cannot impair the impression which is made on the alien beholder by this shrine in the purest style of Shinto architecture.  In the month in which we arrived at Izumo the deities are believed to gather there.  Before the shrine the Japanese visitor makes his obeisance and his offering at the precise spot—­four places are marked—­to which his rank permits him to advance. (This inscription may be read:  “Common people at the doorway.”) The estimate which an official gave me of the number of visitors last year, 40,000, bore no relation to the “quarter of a million” of the guide book.  But it had been a bad year for farmers.  Forty-seven geisha, who had reported the previous year that they had received 35,000 yen—­there is no limit to what is tabulated in Japan—­now reported that they had gained only half that sum in twelve months, “the price of cocoons being so low that even well-to-do farmers could not come.”  I noticed that there was a clock let into one of the granite votive pillars of the avenue along which one walks from the town to the shrine.  As I glanced at the clock it happened that the sound of children’s voices reached me from a primary school.  I wondered what time and modern education, which have brought such changes in Japan, might make of it all.

FOOTNOTES: 

[186] The railway has now been extended in the direction of Yamaguchi.

[187] See Appendix LI.

[188] Protests have been made against the way in which the country people are dunned for subscriptions to these semi-official organisations.  A high agricultural authority has stated that in Nagano the farmers’ taxes and subscriptions to the Red Cross and Patriotic Women Societies are from 65 to 70 per cent. of their expenditure as against 30 to 35 per cent. spent on outlay other than food and clothing.

[189] Satsuma-imo is sweet potato.  Our potato is called jaga-imo or bareisho. Imo is the general name.