of the elemental things which lie at the basis of international understanding.  Several old men and women came up to me and bowed and made little speeches of kindness and cordiality.  Six was striking on a clock in the priest’s house as the doors of the temple were slid open, the great cryptomeria[12] which guard the village fane stood forth augustly in the morning light, and the congregation went out to its labour.

As I knelt at breakfast and ate my rice and pickles and drank my miso soup,[13] the priest, after the manner of a Japanese with an honoured guest, did not take food but waited upon me.  He asked if the English clergy wore a costume which marked them off from the people.  He liked the way of some of our preachers who wore ordinary clothes and eschewed the title of “reverend.”  He was also taken by the idea of the Quaker meeting at which there is silence until someone feels he has a message to utter.  As to the future of Buddhism, he deeply regretted to say that many priests were a generation behind the age.  If the priests were “more democratic, better educated and more truly religious,” then they might be able to keep hold of young men.  He knew of one priest in Tokyo who had a dormitory for university students.

The priest presented his wife, a kindly woman full of character.  “This is my wife,” he said; “please teach her.”  I spoke of a kind of kindergarten which I had learnt had been conducted at the temple for five years.  “We merely play with the children,” she said.  “I had the plan of it from the kindergarten of a missionary,” her husband added.  The priest and his wife were kneeling side by side in the still temple-room looking out on their restful garden.  Behind them was a screen the inscription on which might be translated, “We are to be thankful for our environment; we are to become content quite naturally by the gracious influence of the universe and by the strength of our own will.”

I could learn nothing from the priest concerning several helpful organisations which I had heard that the villagers owed to his influence and exertions.  But the manager of the village agricultural association told me that for a quarter of a century Otera San (Mr. Temple) had superintended the education of the young people, that under his guidance the village had a seven years’ old co-operative credit and selling society, 294 families belonged to a poultry society, 320 men and women gathered to study the doctrines of Ninomiya (whom we in the West know from a little book by a late Japanese Ambassador in London, called For His People), and the young men’s association performed its discipline at half-past five in the morning in the winter and at four o’clock in the summer.

[Illustration:  “TO ROUSE THE VILLAGE YOU MUST FIRST ROUSE THE PRIEST” (Autograph of Otera San)]

FOOTNOTES: 

[9] Exchange in 1916; in 1921 the yen is worth 2s. 8d.