What also helped in illuminating for me the old prints of warlike scenes was a display of a remarkable kind of fencing with naked weapons which one of my hosts kindly provided in his garden one evening.  The tournament was conducted by the village young men’s association.  The exercises, which, as I saw them, are peculiar to the district, are called ki-ai, which means literally “spirit meeting.”  They call not only for long training but for courage and ardour.  The combats took place on a small patch of grass which was fenced by four bamboo branches.  These were connected by a rope of paper streamers such as are used to distinguish a consecrated place.  Before the first bout the bamboos and rope were taken away and a handful of salt was thrown on the grass.  Salt was similarly thrown on the grass before every contest.  The idea is that salt is a purifier.  It signifies, like the handshake of our boxers, that the feelings of the combatants are cleansed from malice.

Most of the events were single combats, but there were two meetings in which a man confronted a couple of assailants.  The contests I recall were spear v. spear, spear v. sword, sword v. long billhook, spear v. the short Japanese sickle and a chain, spear v. paper umbrella and sword, pole v. wooden sword, pole v. pole, and long billhook v. fan and sword.  The weapons were sharp enough to inflict serious wounds if a false move should be made or there should be a momentary lack of self-control.  The flashing steel gave an impression of imminent danger.  There was also the feeling aroused in the spectators by the way in which the combatants sought to gain advantage over one another by fierce snarls, stamping on the ground and appalling gestures.  The neck veins of the fighters swelled and their faces flamed with mock defiance.  Their agility in escaping descending blades was amazing.  But the ki-ai player’s dexterity is famous.  It is his boast that with his sword he could cut a straw on a friend’s head.  I noticed that no women were present at the “spirit meeting.”

More than once I found that my landlord host was accustomed to make a circuit of his village once or twice a week in order to see how things were going with his tenants.  Public-spirited landlords were working for their people by means of co-operation, lectures and prizes, the distribution of leaflets and the giving of from 2-1/2 to 7-1/2 per cent. discount in rent when good rice was produced.  The rural philanthropist in Japan sees himself as the father of his village.[32] The Japanese word for landlord is “land master” and for tenant “son tiller.”  The old idea was patronage on the one side and respect on the other.  This idea is disappearing.  “We wish,” said one landlord to me, “to pass through the transition stage gradually.  We do not feel the same responsibility to our people, perhaps, now that they do not show the same reverence for us, but we do not say to them that they may go to the factory and we will invest our money for our children.  We check ourselves.  We know well, however, that things will change in our grandsons’ time.  We therefore try to mix our grandfathers’ ideas and modern ideas.  We are believers in co-operation and we try to be counsellors and to work behind the curtain.”