home training. Candidly, we believe our morals are not so bad on the
whole. We are now putting most stress on economic development. How to
maintain their families is the question that troubles people most.
With that question unsolved it is preaching to a horse to preach
morality. We can always find high ideals and good leaders when
economic conditions improve. The development of morality is our final
aim, but it is encouraged for six years at the primary school. The
child learns that if it does bad things it will be laughed at and
despised by the neighbours and scolded by its parents. We are busy
with the betterment of economic conditions and questions about
morality and religion puzzle us."

When I reached Matsumoto I met a rural dignitary who deplored the
increasing tendency of city men to invest in rural property.
"Sometimes when a peasant sells his land he sets up as a
money-lender." I was told that nearly every village had a sericultural
co-operative association, which bought manures, mulberry trees and
silk-worm eggs, dried cocoons and hatched eggs for its members and
spent money on the destruction of rats. Of recent years the county
agricultural association had given 5 yen per _tan_ to farmers who
planted improved sorts of mulberry. About half the farmers in the
county had manure houses. Some 800 farmers in the county kept a
labourer.

I went to see a _gunchō_ and read on his wall: "Do not get angry.
Work! Do not be in a hurry, yet do not be lazy." "These being my
faults," he explained, "I specially wrote them out." There was also on
his wall a _kakemono_ reading: "At twenty I found that even a plain
householder may influence the future of his province; at thirty that
he may influence the future of his nation; at forty that he may