In Chiba, as in other prefectures, one is impressed by the way in which the exertions of many generations have resulted in the levelling of wide areas and even the complete removal of small hills.  In many places one can still see low hills in process of demolition.  In Tokyo itself several small hills have been carried off in recent years.

I was in Chiba several times and I remember to have noticed one winter day with what considered roughness the paddies had been dug in order to receive from frost and sun the benefits which are as good as a manuring.  Some notion of the strength of the weather forces at work may be gathered from the fact that, though I was walking without an overcoat and was glad to shade my eyes by pulling down the brim of my hat, the frost of the two previous nights had produced ice on the paddies an inch thick.

Sometimes at the irrigation reservoirs one may see notice boards announcing that these water areas are stocked with koi (carp).  This fish is also kept in the paddies.  The carp are put in as yearlings or two-year-olds, when the paddies are flooded, and a score out of every hundred come out in the autumn—­assuming the happiest conditions—­ten inches or so long.  Carp culture flourishes in the sericulture districts, where the pupae which remain when the cocoons are unwound are thrown to the fish; but pupae fed carp have a flavour which diminishes their value.  Indeed paddy-field fish, which on the whole must have a rather troubled existence, do not bring the price of river carp.  Other fish than carp, eels for instance, are also kept in paddies.[206]

I visited a vigorous personality who was at once a landowner and rural oculist, as his father and grandfather had been before him.  He had graduated at Tokyo and had kept himself abreast of German specialist literature.  There was accommodation for about a hundred patients in the buildings attached to his house.  He believed in the efficacy in eye cases of “the air of the rice fields,” not to speak of the shrine which overlooks the patients’ quarters.  As the number of blind people in Japan is appalling,[207] it was interesting to hear the opinion that the chief causes were gonorrhoea, inadequate attention at birth, insufficient nourishment in childhood and nervous disease—­all more or less preventible.  Nearly a quarter of my host’s patients had had their eyes wounded by rice-stem points while stooping in the paddies.  As the people are hurt in the busy season they often put off coming for help until it is too late.

The landowner-oculist’s premises were lighted by natural gas from a depth of 900 ft.  According to a fellow-guest, who happened to be an expert in this matter, natural gas is to be had all over Japan.[208]

The room in which I slept belonged to a part of the house which was of great age, but by my futon there was laid an electric torch.