3 million yen were made by cotton
factories. The factories are anticipating sharp competition from
China.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN

(EHIME)

The thing to do is to rise humorously above one's body which is the
veritable rebel, not one's mind.--MEREDITH

It is delightful to find so many things made of copper. Copper, not
iron, is in Japan the most valuable mineral product after coal.[182]
But there are drawbacks to a successful copper industry. Several times
as I came along by the coast I heard how the farmers' crops had been
damaged by the fumes of a copper refinery. "There are four copper
refineries in Japan, who fighted very much with the farmers," it was
explained. The Department of Agriculture is also the Department of
Commerce and "it was embarrassed by those battles." The upshot was
that one refinery moved to an island, another rebuilt its chimney and
the two others agreed to pay compensation because it was cheaper than
to install a new system. The refinery which had removed to an island
seven miles off the coast I had been traversing had had to pay
compensation as well as remove. I saw an apparatus that it had put up
among rice fields to aid it in determining how often the wind was
carrying its fumes there. The compensation which this refinery was
paying yearly amounted to as much as 75,000 yen. It had also been
compelled to buy up 500 _cho_ of the complaining farmers' land. When
we ascended by _basha_ into the mountains we looked down on a copper
mine in a ravine through which the river tumbled. The man who had
opened the original road over the pass had had the beautiful idea of
planting cherry trees along it so that the traveller might enjoy the
beauty of their blossoms in spring and their foliage and outlines the
rest of the year. The trees had attained noble proportions when the
refinery started work and very soon killed most of them. They looked
as if they had been struck by lightning.

Some miles farther on, wherever on the mountain-side a little tract
could be held up by walling, the chance of getting land for
cultivation had been eagerly seized. It would be difficult to give an
impression of the patient endeavour and skilful culture represented by
the farming on these isolated terraces held up by Galloway dykes.
Elsewhere the heights were tree-clad. In places, where the trees had
been destroyed by forest fires or had been cleared, amazingly large
areas had been closely