of its official funds and by subscriptions. More than half the
expenditure of many a village is on education, which in Japan is
compulsory but not free. One cannot but be impressed by the pride
which is taken in the local schools. The dominating man-made feature
of the landscape is less frequently than might be supposed a temple or
a shrine: where the picture which catches the eye is not the vast
expanse of the crops of the plain or the marvels of terracing for hill
crops, it is the long, low school building, set almost invariably on
the best possible site. The poorly paid men and women teachers are
earnest and devoted, and their influence must be far-reaching. They
are rewarded in part, no doubt, by the respect which pupils and the
general public give to the _sensei_ (teacher).[116] At the school I
visited, the children, as is customary, swept and washed out the
schoolrooms and kept the playground trim. Above one teacher's desk
were the following admonitions:

Be obedient.
Be decent.
Be active.
Be social.
Be serious.

"Be serious"!--graver small folk sit in no schools in the world. Here,
as usual, corporal punishment was never given. I suggested to teachers
all sorts of juvenile delinquencies, but their faith in the
sufficiency of reprimands, of "standing out" and of detention after
school hours was unshaken.

A new wing, a beautiful piece of carpenter's work, had cost 4,000 yen,
a large sum in Japan, where wood and village labour are equally cheap.