The whole area of the oaza is officially recorded as 800 cho, but the real area may be double, or even more than that.  About 40 per cent. is cultivated either as paddy or as dry land.  The remaining 60 per cent., from which 18 cho may be deducted for house land, is under grass and wood.  Half of this grass and woodland belongs to the oaza and half to private persons.  The grass is mostly couch grass and weeds.  In places there is a certain amount of clover and vetch.  Of the 200 families, numbering about 1,700 people, less than a dozen are tenants.  Of the others, a third cultivate their own land and hire some more.  The remaining two-thirds cultivate their own land and hire none.  The outstanding crop beyond rice is mulberry.  A considerable amount of millet and buckwheat is also grown.

The village is obviously well off.  The signs are:  successful sericulture, the large quantity of rice eaten, the number of well-looking horses (the millet seems to be grown largely for them, but they also receive beans and wheat boiled), the fact that no attempt is made to collect the considerable amount of horse manure on the roads, the cared-for appearance of the temple and shrines, the almost complete absence of tea-houses, the ease with which new land may be obtained and the contented look of the people.

One does not expect to find in a remote and wholly Buddhist village many other animals than horses, and in this community the additional live stock consists of ten goats (kept for giving milk for invalids), two pigs and a number of poultry.  A working horse over four years was worth 150 yen.  The value of land[196] is to be considered in relation to local standards of value.  It is doubtful if the priest, who seemed to be comfortably off, is in receipt of more than 250 yen a year.  The midwife, who belongs to the oldest family and has been trained in Tokyo, gets from 2 to 2-1/2 yen per case.  As new land is always available on the hillsides there is very little emigration to the towns, but twenty girls are working in the factories in the big silk-reeling centre twelve miles off.  The hillside land which is owned by the village is not sold but rented to those who want it.  To make new paddies is primarily a question of having enough capital with which to buy the artificial manure required for the crops.

I was given to understand that no one in the village was poor enough to need public help, but that the school fees of twelve children were paid by the community.  This is a system peculiar to Nagano, which is a progressive prefecture vying with other prefectures to increase the percentage of school attendance.  One of the signs of the well-off character of the village which appears when one is able to investigate a little is that the place is a favourite haunt of beggars, who, I am told—­every calling is organised—­have made it over to the less fortunate members of their fraternity.  The village has enough money to spend