who told her friend that “Queen Victoria was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen.”  Generally the conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices.  Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular, “because they provoked hilarity,” were family discords and sexual questions.  One man with whom I spoke about the morality of the village said cautiously, “They say there are some moneylenders here.”

IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE

CHAPTER XXXII

PROGRESS OF SORTS

(SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)

I am not of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population.—­BORROW

The torrents that foam down the slopes of Fuji are a cheap source of electricity, and, though the guide book may not stress the fact, it is possible that the first glimpse of the unutterable splendours of the sacred mountain may be gained in the neighbourhood of a cotton, paper or silk factory.  The farmers welcomed the factories when they found that factory contributions to local rates eased the burden of the agricultural population.  The farmers also realised that to the factories were due electric light, the telephone, better roads and more railway stations.  The farmers are undoubtedly better off.  They are so well off indeed that the district can afford an agricultural expert of its own, children may be seen wearing shoes instead of geta, and the agriculturists themselves occasionally sport coats cut after a supposedly Western fashion.  But the people, it was insisted, have become a little “sly,” and girls return from the factories less desirable members of the community.

Mention of these matters led an agricultural authority whom I met during my trip in Shidzuoka to deliver himself on the general question of the condition of the farmer in Japan.  He expressed the opinion that 10 per cent. of the farmers were in a “wretched condition.”  Big holdings—­if any holdings in Japan can be called big—­were getting bigger; it was an urgent question how to secure the position of the owners of the small and the medium-sized classes of holding.  The fact that many rural families were in debt, not for seed or manure but for food spoke for itself.  The amounts might seem trivial in Western eyes, but when the average income was only 350 yen a year a debt of 80 yen was a serious matter; and 80 yen was the average debt of farming families in the prefecture of Shidzuoka.  No one could say that the farmers were lazy:  they were working hard according to their lights.  They were working too hard, perhaps, on the limited food they got.  There could be no doubt that the physical condition of the countryman was being lowered.