embankments, ridges or canals and for alterations in irrigation and
drainage which would ensure larger areas with channels and roads
straightened, made less numerous and less wasteful of time, labor
and land. Up to 1907 Japan had issued permits for the readjustment
of over 240,000 acres, and Fig. 14 is a landscape in one of these
readjusted districts. To provide capable experts for planning and
supervising these changes the Government in 1905 intrusted the
training of men to the higher agricultural school belonging to the
Dai Nippon Agricultural Association and since 1906 the Agricultural
College and the Kogyokusha have undertaken the same task and now
there are men sufficient to push the work as rapidly as desired.

It may be remembered, too, as showing how, along other fundamental
lines, Japan is taking effective steps to improve the condition of
her people, that she already has her Imperial highways extending
from one province to another; her prefectural roads which connect
the cities and villages within the prefecture; and those more local
which serve the farms and villages. Each of the three systems of
roads is maintained by a specific tax levied for the purpose which
is expended under proper supervision, a designated section of road
being kept in repair through the year by a specially appointed crew,
as is the practice in railroad maintenance. The result is, Japan has
roads maintained in excellent condition, always narrow, sacrificing
the minimum of land, and everywhere without fences.

How the fields are crowded with crops and all available land is made
to do full duty in these old, long-tilled countries is evident in
Fig. 15 where even the narrow dividing ridges but a foot wide, which
retain the water on the rice paddies, are bearing a heavy crop of
soy beans; and where may be seen the narrow pear orchard standing on