I visited the romantic coast of a peninsula a dozen miles from the railway.  Some 10,000 pilgrims come in a year to the eighty-eight temples on the peninsula, and in some parts the people are such strict Buddhists that in one village the county authorities find great difficulty in overcoming an objection to destroying the insect life which preys on the rice crops.  When rice land does not yield well, one landlord causes an investigation to be made and gives advice based upon it to the tenant, saying, “Do this, and if you lose I will compensate you.  If you gain, the advantage will be yours.”  Money is also contributed by the landlord to enable tenants to make journeys in order to study farming methods.

A landlord here—­I had the pleasure of being his guest—­had started an agricultural association.  It had developed the idea of a secondary school for practical instruction, “rich men to give their money and poor men their labour.”  In order to obtain a fund to enable tenants to get money with which to set up as peasant proprietors, this landlord had thought of the plan of setting aside each harvest 250 sho[27] of rice to each tenant’s 3 sho.

Good work was done in teaching farmers’ wives.  “When no instruction is given,” I was informed, “a wife may say, when her husband is testing his rice seed with salt water, ’Salt is very dear, nowadays, why not fresh water?’ If a husband is kind he will explain.  If not, some unpleasantness may arise, so wives are taught about the necessity of selecting by salt water.”

[Illustration:  LANDOWNER’S SON AND DAUGHTER OFF TO THE VILLAGE SCHOOL. p. 38]

[Illustration:  BUDDHIST SHRINE IN A LANDOWNER’S HOUSE. p. 33]

Tenants are advised to save a farthing a day.  In order to keep them steadfast in their thriftiness they are asked to bring their savings to their landlord every ten days.  It is troublesome to be constantly receiving so many small sums, but the landlord and his brother think that they should not grudge the trouble.  In two years nearly 1,000 yen have been saved.  Said one tenant to his landlord, “I know how to save now, therefore I save.”

[Illustration:  MR. YAMASAKI, DR. NITOBE, THE AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR NASU. p. xv]

[Illustration:  THE HOME IN WHICH THE TEA CEREMONY TOOK PLACE. p. 31]

One of my hosts, who was thirty-two, hoped to see all his tenants peasant proprietors before he was fifty.  The relation of this landlord and his tenants was illustrated by the fact that on my arrival several farmers brought produce to the kitchen “because we heard that the landlord had guests.”  The village was very kind in its reception of the foreign visitor.  A meeting was called in the temple.  I told the story of Wren’s Si monumentum requiris circumspice and pointed a rural moral.  Some months afterwards I received a request from my host to write a word or two of preface to go with a report of my address which he was giving to each of his tenants as a New Year gift.