temple was not only an act of piety but a work of
commercial necessity. The colonists on the reclaimed land would never
have settled there if there had not been a temple to hold them to the
place and to provide burial rites for their old parents. Not all the
people were of the same sect of Buddhism, but "they gradually came
together." A third of what a tenant produced went for rent and another
third for fertilisers, the remaining third being his own. The
population was 1,800 in 300 families. The average area per family was
2 _cho_ and colonists were expected to start with about 200 yen of
capital. Some unpromising tenants had been sent away and "some had
left secretly." Half of the people were in debt to the landlord--the
total indebtedness was about 15,000 yen--for the erection of houses
and the purchase of implements and stock. The rate was 8 per cent. In
the district 10 per cent. was quite usual and 12 per cent. by no means
rare. The co-operative society lent at the daily rate of 2-1/2 sen per
100 yen.

The landlord told me that the sea dikes took two years to build and
that most of the earth was carried by women, 5,000 of them. Their
labour was cheap and the small quantities of earth which each woman
brought at a time permitted of a better consolidation of an embankment
that was 240 feet wide at the base. More than a million yen were laid
out on the work. The reclaimed land was free of State taxes for half a
century, but the landlord made a voluntary gift to the village of
2,000 yen a year. The yearly rent coming in was already nearly 56,000
yen. The cost of the management of the drained land and of repairs to
the embankment, 20,000 yen a year, was just met by the profits of a
fishpond. A valuable edible seaweed industry was carried on outside
the sea dikes. The landlord mentioned that he had had great difficulty
in overcoming the objections of his grandfather to the investment, but
that eventually the old man got so much interested that at
ninety-three he used to march about giving orders.

One day in the course of my journeying I was near a railway station
where country people had assembled to watch the passing of a train by
which the Emperor was travelling. No one was permitted along the line
except at specified points which were carefully watched. A young
constable who wore a Russian war medal was opposite the spot where I
stood. He politely asked me to keep one _shaku_ (foot) or so away from
the paling. When