Our train, half freight with a locomotive at each end, went over the
backbone of Japan through the usual series of snow shelters and
tunnels. Having surmounted the heights we slid down into Yamagata. I
should properly write Yamagataken, which we cannot translate
Yamagatashire, for a _ken_ (prefecture) is made up of counties. There
are eleven counties in Yamagataken.

Almost any sort of dwelling looks tolerable in August, but many of the
houses that first caught our attention must be lamentable shelters in
winter. Some farmers, I learnt, were "in a very bad condition." We
dropped from a silk and rice plateau and then to a region where the
main crop was rice. The bare hills to be seen in our descent were an
appalling spectacle when it was realised how close was their relation
to the disastrous floods of the prefecture. A man in the train had
lost 10,000 yen by floods, a large sum in rural Japan. In two years
the prefecture had spent in river-bank repairs nearly a million yen. A
flood some years ago did damage to the amount of 20 million yen. The
prefecture had a debt of 60 million yen, chiefly due to havoc wrought
by its big river. A yearly sum was spent on afforestation in addition
to what was laid out by the State and by private individuals. A
forestry association was trying to raise half a million yen for tree
planting. But the flooding of the plains was not the only water
trouble of the Yamagatans. In one district they had a stream which
contained solutions of compounds of sulphuric acid so strong that
crops fail for three years on ground watered from it. In other parts
of the prefecture, however, farmers had the advantage, enjoyed in many
parts of Japan, of being able to water from ammonia water springs.

Hereabouts I first noticed the device common to many districts of
having on the roof of a cottage a water barrel, tub or cistern, ready