Of the good influences at work in the village, the first I was once more assured, was “popular education and school ethics, a real influence and blessing.”  The second was “the disciplinary training of the army for regularity of conduct.” ("The influence of officers on their young soldiers is good, and they give them or provide them with lectures on agricultural subjects and allow them time to go in companies to experimental farms.”)

Someone spoke of “the influence of the religion of the past.”  “The religion of the past!” exclaimed an elderly man; “in half a dozen prefectures it may be that religion is a rural force, but elsewhere in the Empire there is a lack of any moral code that takes deep root in the head.  After all Christians are more trustworthy than people drinking and playing with geisha.”

On the other hand a prominent Christian said:  “There is a weakness in our Christians, generally speaking.  There is an absence of a sound faith.  The native churches have no strong influence on rural life.  There is often a certain priggishness and pride in things foreign in saying, ‘I am a Christian.’”

Another man spoke in this wise:  “I have been impressed by some of the following of Uchimura.  They seem ardent and real.  But I have also been attracted by strength of character in members of various sects of Christians.  The theology and phraseology of these men may be curious, may be in many respects behind the times, but their religion had a beautiful aspect.[275] Many of our people have got something of Christian ethics, but are no church-goers.  Some Japanese try to combine Christian principles with old Japanese virtues; others with some soul supporting Buddhistic ideas.  We must have Christianity if only to supply a great lack in our conception of personality.  People who have accepted Christianity show so much more personality and so much more interest in social reform.”

When we returned to agricultural conditions, one who spoke with authority said:  “In Old Japan the agricultural system has become dwarfed.  The individual cannot raise the standard of living nor can crops be substantially increased.  The whole economy is too small.[276] The people are too close on the ground.  They must spread out to north-eastern Japan, to Hokkaido, Korea and Manchuria.  The population of Korea could be greatly increased.  There is an immense opening in Manchuria, which is four or five times the area of the Japanese Empire and sparsely populated.  There is also Mongolia."[277]

“But in Korea,” one who had been there said, “there are the Koreans, an able if backward people, to be considered—­they will increase with the spread of our sanitary methods among a population which was reduced by a primitive hygiene and by maladministration.  And as to our people going to the mainland of Asia, we do not really like to go where rice is not the agricultural staple, and we prefer a warm country.  In Formosa, where it is warm, we are faced by the competition