I told Mr. Yamasaki one day that there was an old Scotswoman who divided good people into “rael Christians and guid moral fowk.”  What I was curious to know was what proportion of Japanese rural people might be fairly called “real Buddhists” and what proportion “good moral folk.”  “There are certainly some real Buddhists, not merely good moral folk,” he assured me.  “If you penetrate deeply into the lives of the people you will be able to find a great number of them.  In ordinary daily life, during a period when nothing extraordinary happens, it is not easy to distinguish the two classes; but when any trouble comes then those real religious people are undismayed, while the ordinarily good moral people may sometimes go astray.  The proportion of religious people is rather large among the poor compared with the middle and upper classes.  These poor people are always weighted with many troubles which would be a calamity to persons of the middle or upper classes.  Such humble folk get support for their lives from what is in their hearts.  Though they may suffer privation or loss they are glad that they can live on by the mercy of Buddha.  There are some religious people even among those who are not poor.  They are usually people who have lost some of their riches suddenly, or a dear child, or have been deprived of high position, or have met some kind of misfortune.  Sometimes a man may become religious because he feels deeply the misfortunes or miseries of a neighbour or the miseries of war.  Or his religion may come by meditation.  A man who begins to be religious is not, however, at once noticed.  On the contrary, if he is a true believer his daily life will be most ordinary.”

One day I passed a primary school playground.  The girls had just finished and the boys were beginning Swedish drill.  Everyone engaged in the drill, including the master, was barefoot.

I saw that some of the cottages were built in an Essex fashion, of puddled clay and chopped straw faced with tarred boards.  Some dwellings, however, were faced with straw instead of boards.  They had just had their wall thatch renewed for the winter.

In one spot there was a quarter of a mile of wooden aqueduct for the service of the paddy fields.  Much agricultural pumping is done in Aichi.  I visited an irrigation installation where pumps (from London) were turning barren hill tops into paddy fields.[56] The work was being done by a co-operative society of 550 members who had borrowed the 40,000 yen they needed from a bank on an undertaking to repay in fifteen years.

It was stated that common paddy near Anjo had been bought at 5,000 yen per cho and not for building purposes.  When one member of our company said, “The farmers here are rivalling each other in hard work,” the weightiest authority among us replied:  “What the farmer must do is to work not harder but better.  At present he is not working on scientific principles.  The hours he