I was assured by a man competent to speak on the matter that a certain small town was notorious for receiving boys who had been stolen as small children from their homes in the hills.  Up to 30 yen might be given for a boy.  There might be a dozen of such unfortunates in the place.  Happily many of the children obtained by this “slave system,” as my informant called it, ran away as soon as they were old enough to realise how they had been treated.

I visited a well-known rural reformer in the village which he and his father had improved under the precepts of Ninomiya.  The hillside had been covered with tea, orange trees and mulberry; the community had not only got out of debt but had come to own land beyond its boundaries; gambling, drunkenness and immorality, it was averred, had “disappeared”; there were larger and better crops; and “the habit of enjoying nature” had increased.  The amusements of the village were wrestling, fencing, jujitstu, and the festivals.

I heard here a story of how a bridge which was often injured by stores was as often mysteriously repaired.  On a watch being kept it was found that the good work was done by a villager who had been scrupulous to keep secret his labours for the public welfare.  Another tale was of a poor man who bought an elaborate shrine and brought it to his humble dwelling.  On his neighbours suggesting that a finer house were a fitter resting-place for such a shrine, the man replied:  “I do not think so.  My shrine is the place of my parents and ancestors, and may be fine.  But the place in which the shrine stands is my place; it need not be fine.”

In travelling the roads notices are often seen on official-looking boards with pent roofs.  But all of these notices are not official; one I copied was the advertisement of a shrine which declared itself to be unrivalled for toothache.  The horses on the roads are sometimes protected from the sun by a kind of oblong sail, which works on a swivel attached to the harness.  Black velvety butterflies as big as wrens flit about. (There are twice as many butterflies and moths in Japan as at home.) Snakes, ordinarily of harmless varieties, are frequently seen, dead or alive.

Many of the people one passes are smoking, usually the little brass pipe used both by men and women, which, like some of the earliest English pipes, does not hold more tobacco than will provide a few draws.  The pipe is usually charged twice or thrice in succession.  One notices an immense amount of cigarette smoking, which cannot be without ill effect.  There is a law forbidding smoking below the age of twenty.  It is not always enforced, but when enforced there is a confiscation of smoking materials and a fining of the parents.  The voices of many middle-aged women and some young ones are raucous owing to excessive smoking of pipes or cigarettes.