FOOTNOTES: 

[192] This is, I am officially informed, the highest rank ever bestowed on a foreigner; but then Hearn was naturalised.  In 1921 an appreciation of “Koizumi Yakumo” was included by the Department of Education in a middle-school textbook.  Curiously enough, the fact that Hearn married a Japanese is overlooked.  Owing to the fact that Hearn bought land in Tokyo which has appreciated in value his family is in comfortable circumstances.

[193] Coastwise traffic is also forbidden to foreign vessels, as is traffic between France and Algeria to other than French vessels.

[194] See Appendix LIII.

TWO MONTHS IN TEMPLE

CHAPTER XXX

THE LIFE OF THE PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

(NAGANO)

The condition of the lower orders is the true mark.—­JOHNSON

The Buddhist temple in which I lived for about two months stands on high ground in a village lying about 2,500 ft. above sea-level in the prefecture of Nagano and does not seem to have been visited by foreigners.  It is reached by a road which is little better than a track.  No kuruma are to be found in the district, but there are a few light two-wheeled lorries.  Practically all the traffic is on horseback or on foot.  There is a view of the Japanese Alps and of Fuji.

Running through the village[195] is a river.  Most of the summer it may be crossed by stepping stones, but the width of the rocky bed gives some notion of the volume of water which pours down after rains and on the melting of the snow.  Two or three miles up from the village a considerable amount of water is drawn off into two channels which have been dug, one on either side of the river, at a gentler slope than that at which the stream flows.  The rapid fall of the river is indicated by the fact that these channels reach the village more than 100 ft. above the level at which the river itself enters it.  The channels, cut as they have been through sharply sloping banks packed with boulders and big stones, and strengthened throughout by banking, in order to cope as far as possible with the torrents which rage down the hillside in winter, represent a vast amount of communal labour.  By the side of each channel the excavated earth and stones have been used to make a path for pack horses.  The water which comes down these channels serves not only for the ordinary uses of the village but for irrigating the rice fields and for driving the many water wheels, the plashing and groaning of which are heard night and day.

[Illustration:  THE BUDDHIST TEMPLE (WITH SHINTO SHRINE ON THE LEFT) IN WHICH THIS CHAPTER WAS WRITTEN]