On the thatch of one house I noticed a small straw horse perhaps two feet long.  On July 7 such a horse is taken by young people to the hills, where a bale of grass is tied on its back.  On the reappearance of the figure at the house, dishes of the ceremonial red rice and of the ordinary food of the family are set before it.  “The offering of other than horse food indicates,” it was explained, “that the desire is to keep the straw animal as a little deity.”  Finally the horse is flung on the roof.

I went some distance to visit an oaza of twenty families.  It was described to me as “well off and peaceful.”  Alas, one peasant proprietor had gone to Tokyo, where he had made money, and on his return had built his second son a house with Tokyo labour instead of with the labour of his neighbours.  So the oaza was “excited with bitter inward animosity.”  Like our own hamlets, these oaza in the sunshine, seemingly so peaceful, whisper nothing to townsfolk of their bickerings and feuds.

One of the thatched mud houses I came to was at once a primitive co-operative sale-and-purchase society and the clubhouse of the old people of the oaza.  The rent the old folk received from the society was enough to maintain the building.  The oldsters gather from time to time in order to eat, drink and make merry with gossip and dancing.  Dancing is a possibility for old people because it is swaying, sliding and attitudinising, with an occasional stamp of the foot, rather than hopping and whirling.  One of the best amateur dances I have seen was performed by a grandsire.  Such clubhouses, places for the comfort of the ageing and aged, are found in many villages.  Young people are not admitted.  The subscription to this particular clubhouse was 2 yen and 3 sho of sake on joining and 2 yen a year.

As we went on our way there was pointed out to me a house the owner of which had sold half a tan of land for 120 yen and was drinking steadily.  He had tried to make money by opening an open-air village theatre which owing to rain had been a failure.

I visited an oaza where all the land belonged to the man I called upon.  He assured me that most of his tenants “made ends meet.”  The remainder had a deficiency at the end of the year due to “lack of will to save” and to their “lack of capital which caused them to pay interest to manure dealers.”  A co-operative society had just been started.

In looking at a map of the village to which some of these oaza belonged I noticed many holdings tinted a special colour.  These were called “jump land.”  They consisted of land subdued from the wild by strangers.  The properties were regarded as belonging to the oaza in which their cultivators lived.

I walked through a bit of woodland which had formerly been held in common and had been divided up, amid felicitations no doubt, at the rate of half a tan each to every family.  But the well-to-do people soon got hold of their poorer neighbours’ portions.