Apart from a local spirit of pride and emulation and a belief in education, one of the reasons for the building of new schools and adding to old ones is to be found in the recent extension of the period of compulsory attendance.  It used to be from six to ten years of age; it is now from six to twelve.  The visitor to Japan usually under-estimates the ages of children because they are so small.  Japanese boys grow suddenly from about fifteen to sixteen.

In the whole of this county, with a population of 35,000, there were, I learnt at the county offices, 22 elementary schools with 36 branch schools, 3 secondary schools and 17 winter schools.  Within the same area there were 46 Buddhist temples with about 60 priests, and 125 Shinto shrines with 11 priests.

The chief police officer, in chatting with me, mentioned that, out of 71 charges of theft, only 47 were proceeded with.  When charges were not proceeded with it was either because restitution had been made or the chief constable had exercised his discretion and dismissed the offender with a reprimand.  When transgressors are dismissed with a reprimand an eye is kept on them for a year.  As the Japanese are in considerable awe of their police, I have no doubt that, as was explained to me, those who have lapsed into evil-doing, but are released from custody with a warning, may “tremble and correct their conduct.”  In the whole county in a year 14,400 admonitions were given at 14 police stations.  The noteworthy thing in the criminal statistics is the small proportion of crime against women and children.

The fact that the county was in a remote part of Japan may be held, perhaps, to account for the fact that there were in it, I was assured, only 14 geisha and 8 women known to be of immoral character.  All of them were living in the town and they were said to be chiefly patronised by commercial travellers and imported labourers.  I was told that there were pre-nuptial relations between many young men and young women.  Two undoubted authorities in the district agreed that they could not answer for the chastity of any young men before marriage or of “as many as 10 per cent.” of the young women.  In an effort to save the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes register illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and their wives.  Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father may call the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his daughter to her lover.  The figures for illegitimate births are vitiated by the fact that in Japan children are recorded as illegitimate who are born to people who have omitted to register their otherwise respectable unions.[118]

In the county in which I was travelling I was assured that half the still births might be put down to immoral relations and half to imperfect nourishment or overworking of the mother.  In this district girls marry from 17 or 18, men from 18 to 30.