about 1 per cent, have more than 25 acres.[177] Therefore most of
these men are either farmers themselves or must spend a great deal of
time looking after their tenants. Still, some landowners are able to
take things rather easily. The landowners I interrogated marvelled at
the open-air habits of English landed proprietors. They were greatly
surprised when I told them of a countess who is a grandmother but
thinks nothing of a canter before breakfast. The mark of being well
off was often to stay indoors or at any rate within garden walls,
which necessarily enclose a very small area. (Hence the fact that one
object of Japanese gardening is to suggest a much larger space than
exists.) A good deal of time is spent "in appreciating fine arts."
Ceremonial tea drinking still claims no small amount of attention. (In
many gardens and in the grounds of hotels of any pretensions one comes
on the ostentatiously humble chamber for _Cha-no-yu_.) No doubt there
is among many landowners a considerable amount of drinking of
something stronger than tea, and not a few men sacrifice freely to
Venus. Perhaps the greatest claimant of all on the time of those who
have time to spare is the game of _go_, which is said to be more
difficult than chess. One cannot but remark the comparatively pale
faces of many landowners.

As we went along by the coast it was pointed out to me that it was
from this neighbourhood that some of the most indomitable of the
old-time pirates set sail on their expeditions to ravage the Chinese
coast. They visited that coast all the way from Vladivostock, now
Russian (and like to be Japanese), to Saigon, now French. There are
many Chinese books discussing effectual methods of repelling the
pirates. In an official Japanese work I once noticed, in the
enumeration of Japanese rights in Taiwan (Formosa), the naive claim
that long ago it was visited by Japanese pirates! The Japanese
fisherman is still an intrepid person, and in villages which have an
admixture of fishing folk the seafarers, from their habit of following
old customs and taking their own way generally, are the constant
subject of rural reformers' laments.

I spent some time in a typical inland village. The very last available
yard of land was utilised. The cottages stood on plots buttressed by
stone, and only the well-to-do had a yard or garden; paddy came right
up to the foundations. Now that the rice was high no division showed
between the different paddy h