e number of people had emigrated to South
America. The principal need of the villages, it was stated, was money
at less than the current rate of 20 per cent. In one place I found a
factory built on the side of a daimyo's castle.

I was told of crops of _konnyaku_ which had made one man the second
richest person in the prefecture and had therefore qualified him for
membership in the House of Peers. (The House includes one member from
each prefecture as the representative of the highest taxpayers of that
prefecture.)

During my journeys I picked up many odds and ends of information by
walking through the trains and having chats with country people. I was
also helped by county and prefectural agricultural officials who,
having learnt of my movements, were kind enough to join me in the
train for an hour or so. One head of an agricultural school which was
full up with students told me that there were already in Fukushima two
prefectural and five county agricultural schools.

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