when children were kept at home.  He said that when a child had been absent a week he called twice on the parents in order to remonstrate.  If there was no result he reported the matter to the village authorities, who administered two warnings.  Failing the return of the truant a report was made by the village authorities to the county authorities.  They summoned the father to appear before them.  This meant loss of time and the cost of the journey.  Should the parent choose to continue defiant he was fined 5 to 10 yen for disobedience to authority and up to 30 yen for not sending his child to school.

I found that a local philanthropic association had provided the speaker’s school with a supply of large oil-paper-covered umbrellas so that children who had come unprovided could go home on a rainy day without a parent, elder brother or sister having to leave work to bring an umbrella to school.

In the playground of this school there was a low platform before which the children assembled every morning.  The headmaster, standing on the platform, gravely saluted the children and the children as gravely responded.  The scholars also bowed in the direction of Tokyo, in the centre of which is the Emperor’s palace.  An inscription hanging in the school was, “Exert yourself to kill harmful insects.”  In another school there was a portrait of a former teacher who had covered the walls of the school with water-colours of local scenery.  I noticed in the playground of a third school a flower-covered cairn and an inscribed slab to the memory of a deceased master.  Every school possesses equipment taken from the enemy during the Russo-Japanese war, usually a shell, a rifle and bayonet and an entrenching spade.

In this prefecture I heard of young men’s associations’ efforts to discourage “cheek binding,” which is the wearing of the head towel in such a way as to disguise the face and so enable the cheek binder to do, if he be so minded, things he might not do if he were recognisable.

One day I made my headquarters in a town that had just been rebuilt after a fire.  Within four hours the blaze aided by a strong wind had consumed 1,700 houses and caused the deaths of nine persons.  The destruction of so many dwellings is wrought by bits of paper or thatch, or the light pieces of wood from the shoji, which are carried aflame by the wind, setting fire to several houses simultaneously.

Beside street gutters I came across little stone jizo, the cheerful-looking guardian deities of the children playing near; but they looked as incongruous in the position they occupied as did a small shrine which was standing in the shadow of a gasometer.

I heard of contracts under which girls served as nurse girls in private families.  A poor farmer may enter into a contract when his girl is five for her to go into service at eight.  He receives cash in anticipation of the fulfilment of the contract.