In the house of a small peasant proprietor I visited the inscriptions on the two gaku signified “Buddha’s teaching broken by a beautiful face” and “Cast your eyes on high.”  On the wall there was also a copy of a resolution concerning a recent Imperial Rescript which 500 rural householders, at a meeting in the county, had “sworn to observe,” and, as I understood, to read two or three times a year.

Japan, as I have already noted, has always been a more democratic country than is generally understood; but the people have been accustomed to act under leaders.  Some time ago an official of the Department of Agriculture visited a certain district in order to speak at the local temple in advocacy of the adjustment of rice fields. (See Chapter VIII.) A dignitary corresponding to the chairman of an English county council was at the temple to receive the official, but at the time appointed for the meeting to begin the audience consisted of one old man.  Although the official from Tokyo and the guncho (head of a county) waited for some time, no one else put in an appearance.  So they asked the old man the reason.  He replied by asking them the object of the meeting.  They told him.  He said that he had so understood and that the community had so understood, but the farmers were very busy men.  Therefore, as he was the oldest man in the district, they had sent him as their representative.  Their instructions were that he would be able to tell from his experience of the district whether what the authorities proposed would be a good thing for it or not.  If he considered it to be a bad thing they would not do it, but if he thought it to be a good thing they would do it.  He was to hear all that was said and then to give a decision on the community’s behalf to the officials who might attend.  “So,” said the old man to the Tokyo official and the guncho, “if you convince me you have convinced the village.”  And after two hours’ explanation they convinced him!

There are in Japan hydraulic engineering works as remarkable in their way as any I have seen in the Netherlands.  Some of these works, for example the tunnels for conducting rice-field water through considerable hills, have been the work of unlettered peasants.  In one place I found that 80 miles or more of irrigation was based on a canal made two centuries ago.  It is good to see so many embankings of refractory streams and excavations of river beds commemorated by slabs recording the public services of the men who, often at their own charges, carried out these works of general utility.