ment in the temple.[33]

Many landlords are "endeavouring to cultivate a moral relation"
between themselves and their tenants. They have often the advantage
that their ancestors were the landlords of the same peasant families
for many generations. But there are still plenty of absentee landlords
and landlords who are usurers. There are also the landlords who have
let their lands to middlemen. The cultivator therefore pays out of all
proportion to what the landlord receives. Of landlords generally, an
ex-daimyo's son said to me: "Many landlords treat their tenants
cruelly. The rent enforced is too high. In place of the intimate
relations of former days the relations are now that of cat and dog.
The ignorance of the landlords is the cause of this state of things.
It is very important that the landlord's son shall go to the
agricultural school, where there is plenty of practical work which
will bring the perspiration from him." The object of most good
landlords is to increase the income of their tenants. It is felt that
unless the farmers have more money in their hands, progress is
impossible. There is one direction in which the landlords are not
tried. The franchise is so narrow that farmers cannot vote against
their landlords.

In the house of one old landowning family in which I was a guest I saw
a _gaku_ inscribed, "Happiness comes to the house whose ancestors were
virtuous." I was admitted to the family shrine. Round the walls of the
small apartment in which the shrine stood were the autographs or
portraits of distinguished members of the house going back four or
five hundred years. It was easy to see that the inspiring force of
this family was its untarnished name. It was a crime against the
ancestors to reduce the prestige or merit of the family. No stronger
influence could be exerted upon an erring member of such a family than
to be brought by his father or elder brother before the family shrine
and there reprimanded in the presence of the ancestral spirits. The
head of this house is at present a schoolboy of twelve and the
government of the family is in the hands of a "regent," the lad's
uncle. I saw the boy and his younger sister trot off in the morning
with their satchels on their backs to the village school in democratic
Japanese fashion. Japan is a much more democratic country than the
tourist imagines. Distinctions of class are accompanied by easy
relations in many important matters.

I went for a second