I went back to Nagano to visit the silk industrial regions. My route
lay through the prefectures of Saitama and Gumma. I left Tokyo on the
last day of June. Many farmers were threshing their barley. On the
dry-land patches, where the grain crop had been harvested, soya bean,
sown between the rows of grain long before harvest, was becoming
bushier now that it was no longer overshadowed. Maize in most places
was about a foot high, but where it had been sown early was already
twice that height. The sweet potato had been planted out from its
nursery bed for weeks. Here and there were small crops of tea which
had been severely picked for its second crop. I noticed melons,
cucumbers and squashes, and patches of the serviceable burdock. Many
paddy farmers had water areas devoted to lotus, but the big floating
leaves were not yet illumined by the mysterious beauty of the
honey-scented flowers.

In order to imagine the scene on the rice flats, the reader must not
think of the glistering paddy fields[136] as stretching in an unbroken
monotonous series over the plain. Occasionally a rocky patch,
outcropping from the paddy tract, made a little island of wood.
Sometimes it was a sacred grove in which one caught a glimpse of a
Shinto shrine or the head stones of the dead. Sometimes there was a
little clump of cropped tree greenery which kept a farmhouse cool in
summer and, at another time of the year, sheltered from the wind. Few
householders were too poor or too busy to be without their little
patch of flowers.

Before the train climbed out of the Kwanto plain temperature of not
far below 100° F. the planting of rice seemed to be almost an enviable
occupation. The peasant had his great umbrella-shaped straw hat,
sometimes an armful of green stuff tied on his back, and a delicious