Sericultural Experiment Station (with a staff of 87), where I saw
all sorts of research work in progress. This experiment station has
half a dozen branches scattered up and down the silk districts.

[Illustration: SOME OF THE SILK FACTORIES IN KAMISUWA. p. 161]

[Illustration: VILLAGE ASSEMBLY-ROOM. p. 133]

At Ueda I went through corridors and rooms, sterilised thrice a year,
to visit professors engaged in a variety of enquiries. One professor
had turned into a kind of beef tea the pupæ thrown away when the
cocoons are unwound; another had made from the residual oil two or
three kinds of soap. The usual thing at a silk factory is for the
pupæ, which are exposed to view when the silk is unrolled from the
scalded cocoons, to lie about in horrid heaps until they are sold as
manure or carp food. The professor declared that his product was equal
to a third of the total weight of the pupæ utilised, and was sure that
it could be sold at a fifteenth of the price of Western beef essences.
The Director of the College had tried the product with his breakfast
for a fortnight and avowed that during the experiment he was never so
perky.

It was a pleasure to look into the well-kept dormitories of the
students, where there was evidence, in books, pictures and athletic
material, of a strenuous life. The young men are made fit not only by
_judō_, fencing, archery, tennis and general athletics, but by being
sent up the mountains on Sundays. The men are kept so hard that at the
open fencing contest twice a year the visitors are usually beaten. The
director quoted to me Roosevelt's "Sweat and be saved."