During the evening I was told this story.  In a village in a far part of the prefecture there lived a farmer called Yosogi.  He was a thrifty and diligent man.  When he became old he gave all that he had to his son.  But the old man could not stop working.  He would go to the farm and help his son.  The son did not like this.  He wanted his old father to rest.  In the end he found that the only way to cope with his industrious parent was to work very hard and leave him nothing to do.  But the old man was not to be balked.  He took himself off to the hillside and began to make a paddy field where there had never been a paddy field before.  To make a paddy field on such a slope is a difficult task.  The land must be embanked with stones and then levelled.  The building of the strong embankment alone calls for much labour.  The old man toiled very hard at his job and sometimes his son in despair sent his labourers to help him.  At length the paddy field was finished.  But it was only a tenth of a tan in area.  When the son saw the small result of so much labour he said to his father, “I grieve for the way you have toiled.  You have laboured hard for many days and my labourers have helped you, but all that has been accomplished is the making of a paddy field so small and distant that it is uneconomical.”

To this the old man replied:  “When you go to Tokyo and see the graveyard at Aoyama you will behold there many monuments of generals and ministers of State.  Their merits and their works in this world are described on those monuments.  But do you know where the monument of the famous hero Kusunoki Masashige is?  It is near Kobe, and it is not more than half as big as those monuments at Tokyo.  Do you know where the monument of the great Taiko is?  It is in Kyoto, but it is only recently that this monument was put up.  Thus the monuments of our greatest heroes are small or have been erected recently.  The reason is that it is unnecessary to raise big monuments for them because what they did in their lives was in itself their monument.  They built their monument in the hearts of the people.  Therefore we can never judge from the size of the monument the kind of work which was accomplished by the man who sleeps under it.  Monuments are not only for ministers and warriors.  We peasants can also erect monuments in our own way.  To open a new paddy field, to plant the bare hillside with trees, these are our monuments.  How lonely it would be for me if there were no monument left after my death.  However small this paddy field may be, it will not be forgotten so long as it yields for your posterity the blessing of its rice crop.”  “Happily,” the interpreter added, “the old man did not die so soon as he thought he would do.  He lived for several years and planted the bare hillside with trees.  Now the wood which grows there is worth 10,000 yen.”